Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Why Buddha said you can’t hide this..


Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
- Buddha

Buddha, like other wise gurus, spoke about life and philosophy relating them to easily understandable realities.

Can you hide the moon and the sun? Yes, but not for long.

As day follows night, truth follows darkness. They, the sun and the moon, keep showing up to all. Likewise one can’t hide truth for long. Look at all the scandals, think of all the secrets you hid for sometime in your own lives. Could you keep them for ever? Did they not tumble out, did you not fumble or mumble? Were you not caught, embarrassed and ashamed?

Why should you tell the truth?
The benefits of telling the truth is that you don’t have to remember anything in your life (old saying). It simply means that when you speak the truth, you do not have to rehearse or recall or dust your memory. You need not remember whether you must say this or not. You need not worry about what you said to whom, when and where! You see there are no variations in telling the truth. There are a dozed variations when you lie.

Another benefit of saying the truth is that it frees your mind. You feel so light when you have shared the truth you’ve buried in your mind for some time.

Of course, it keeps your conscience clean. And the good karma keeps adding up. And sure it brings you a lot of happiness.

Besides, it earns you the trust of other people. Doesn’t it? Let me tell you the story of Gandhi’s moment of truth.

I made love when my father was dying: Mahatma Gandhi (My Experiments with Truth)
Gandhi, the man the world revers for his non violence philosophy, was by his ill father’s bedside for many days. Taking care of him with love. When his uncle came by and offered to relieve him for some hours, Gandhi went to his room woke up his wife and made love. Minutes later he was woken up by the servant who announced that his father was dead.

He could have kept this to himself and struggled with his conscience. But he wrote about it in his autobiography “My Experiments with truth.” A man who was loved by martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and feared by the British in all humility admits this wrong in a book. That’s why we remember Gandhi. He asked people to speak the truth and he walked the talk himself.

Don’t hide the truth. Don’t be afraid of speaking the truth. Say it like it is. And go to sleep peacefully.

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