Being Truthful is Our Nature

Written by Dr Harish Chandra

Wednesday, 11 October 2006 06:40

The greatest human value is said to be truthfulness. Indeed, it must be so because all of us were born truthful. Every small child is truthful.Let’s enjoy a small story. One man – let’s give him a name, say, Jhootabhai – borrowed Rs. 100 from his close friend to tide over some unforeseen problems. Jhootabhai had promised his friend that he (i.e. Jhootabhai) would return the money first day of the next month when he would receive his salary.

However, once his immediate problems were solved, he forgot to return the same on the promised date. Furthermore, he became complacent and even greedy. Thus, Jhootabhai began to avoid his good friend – the latter’s name being, say, Sahayakbhai. After several failed attempts, Sahayakbhai decided to catch Jhootabhai unannounced. So, Sahayakbhai reached Jhootabhai’s home one fine early morning before the latter could think of going anywhere.

When Sahayakbhai pressed the door bell, Jhootabhai’s instinctive guilty conscious told him that it must be Sahayakbhai at the door. As he was shaving at that time, he had an excuse to ask his little son (Master Innocenti) to open the door. But, before the child could reach the door, the father told him that if it’s Uncle Sahayakbhai at the door then he should tell him that: “I am not at home.” Indeed, the child found Uncle Sahayakbhai at the door. So he obediently declared that: “My father says that he is not at home.” Needless to say, Sahayakbhai caught Jhootabhai off-guard. Rest is history.

It’s true that the child said absolute truth that: “My father says that he is not at home.” The child is truthful by nature. But, it happens that as we grow we pick up telling lies, cheating others, and so on for petty short-term gains. In so doing, we harm ourselves in the long run.

Let us now become what we were as small children – we used to say what we meant. We were truthful – manasa-vaca-karmana – harmony in thoughts, words and deeds. Let us not lose this wonderful innocence that we had in plenty in the childhood. Besides speaking truth, we loved knowing truth. We were inquisitive to know about everything under the sky and about the sky itself. Every moment we used to ask questions about so many things around us to know more about them. As a grown up person, now it happens that sometimes we don’t ask questions to know about something that we don’t know much about. We begin to wonder what the people will think that we don’t even know such simple things. Very often, we don’t even ask questions and choose to remain ignorant forever. It is said right that if we ask a question then we are ignorant only once but if we don’t ask then we remain ignorant forever.

So, we should be truthful in two major ways. First, there should be harmony in our thoughts, words and deeds. We should say what we mean and we should do what we say. Second, we should be ever inquisitive to gain true knowledge from all possible sources. While we have enormous advantages to gain by the dual-strategy to follow truth, we will lead a stress-free life the way we lived as children. So we will be able to keep away from stress – the number one killer in the modern times.

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