Author: Fafu
Translator : Lotus
The Terrible Consequence of Telling a Lie
You may doubt, “How can it be relevant to tell a lie? I don’t kill, steal and have sexual action but only tell a lie, how can it be relevant that I just tell a lie? It’s very hard for many people to understand it, isn’t it? Because all of you are just like this kind of people I talk about above, always thinking it’s not a big problem.
From the standpoint of the worldly society, if you want to live in this human world, it’s not a very big problem for you to tell a lie now. Anyway, you will receive the corresponding consequence if you plant a cause of telling a lie. However, for you who want to cultivate the unsurpassed Bodhi and be a person practicing the bodhisattva path, first of all, the most important thing is not to tell a lie, which is even more serious than killing, stealing and having sexual desire.
You may ask, “Have you exaggerated it?”No, I haven’t overstated it. Why have I dared to speak this? Because you should know that what you want to cultivate now is the unsurpassed Bodhi and now you need to establish all on the basis of meditation, however, firstly, the cause of telling a lie in you can make all of your goodness become delusive.
What’s the meaning of making your goodness become delusive? For example, when you go shopping and find a very good cheap piece of clothing which is qualified and has good fabric with fine design, you want to buy it very much. You go home to take money, run back and find that it has been sold and you can’t buy it. Why can’t you buy it with your money? Remember that is because you have planted a delusive cause and then received a delusive consequence, which is within sight but not within reach.
Through this illustration, we should know that we can’t obtain success. We can’t even succeed in buying a favorite clothes, nevertheless in cultivating the unsurpassed Bodhi. All those are the consequences of telling lies and all good things can’t come true in the end. So now we should know that we want to obtain the unsurpassed Bodhi and accomplish all merits and virtues and all abilities which are very meaningful and useful for sentient beings. If you have the former delusive causes, those will be within your insight but not within your reach, so you’d better not to learn and practice those. You can do that after you build up a good basis for those.
Remember: the consequence of telling a lie is that all your retributions become delusive, including your achievements.
If you always tell lies, everything that belongs to you will become delusive, even including your cultivation. You make vows every day, but you can’t practice them each day.
I am making a vow that all sentient beings will regard like their true selves the mentor as the Buddha, fathom the terrible consequence of telling a lie and tell the real and beneficial words. I am making this vow become one part of myself through undisturbed and dedicated thought in my mind with great joyful faith and the persistent and courageous power and then will make it become wisdom within myself and fit the roots of all beings. I will rescue all sentient beings with this wisdom and countless perfect kindness, compassion, joy and giving.
