सत्यमेव तुष्टते — Embrace truth to empower oneself

The curse of lying is that it teaches you to escape situations and hence makes you weak.
The blessing of honesty is that it teaches you to face situations and hence makes you strong.

Being truthful and not lying is commonly taught as a moral virtue. Mundaka Upanishad proclaims सत्यमेव जयते — Truth alone wins. The German theologian Martin Luther said “Peace if possible, truth at all costs”.

Spiritual seekers are also told about the virtue of being truthful as a pre-requisite for any spiritual progress. The great saint Ramakrishna used to promote truthfulness as “the only austerity of the Kali Yuga”.

Without undermining the moral and spiritual values of truthfulness, I would like to make a case for truthfulness as a tool for personality development.

Let us consider below scenario:

A boy is up till late playing some MMORPG on a Sunday night. He then wakes up late in the morning, and ends up going late to school. When the teacher enquiries about the delay, the boy lies that their vehicle had a flat tyre and hence his parent got delayed in dropping him at school. The teacher accepts the story, and lets the boy into the class.

That the boy got away with the lie will make him more prone to adopt more lies in future. If anything, the intensity of the lies can escalate slowly. The boy will realise that lying provides an easy way out of difficult situations that he would face due to lack of discipline.

However this is not sustainable and at some point the boy will face the consequences of the lack of discipline. Most people will start seeing through the lies and will lose trust in whatever the person is telling.

If the boy was convinced of the power of truth, and had the strength to tell the truth that the delay to reach school was his mistake, he would have found that either the teacher would have forgiven him for a one-off mistake, or chastised him for lack of discipline. Either ways, the boy would have realised that lack of discipline would not provide much joy, and hence realised the value of discpline.

The ability to value delayed gratification is key to succeed in life. Sticking to truth is a component of it. In the modern world, instead of सत्यमेव जयते the slogan सत्यमेव तुष्टते (Truth alone is sufficient) is probably more important!