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Wednesday, Dec 25 2024  

TRUTH - 23 JUNE 2003


My humble pranams at the Lotus Feet of Swami.

Sai ram Uncles, Aunties, Brothers and Sisters. Today, I am going to speak on Truth. Truth is the foundation. Out of the five human values, I believe truth is the most important. It is the foundation of a good life. While constructing a house, we first lay the foundation. The foundation of the house is below the ground, hence it is not seen, but the whole mansion is built on the foundation. So the foundation must be strong. The foundation supports everything else, just like truth.

Learning to speak the truth is the most important first step. It is the foundation of the mansion of life. Telling lies hurts and disturbs our mind. We are afraid that someone will find out what really happened and we would be caught. Sometimes to hide one lie we have to tell even more lies. So we start with one small lie and soon we find ourselves speaking so many more untruths. Another danger is that we get accustomed to telling lies. We think there is no harm. If nobody knows the truth, we may think that we are safe with our lies. But there are two who always know when we speak an untruth. The first is God and the second is our own heart. We can sometimes escape punishment from our parents, even our teachers will not know, but in our heart our conscience knows and it will tell us "You told a lie, You told a lie. It is not right to tell lies." So our conscience troubles us and makes us both mentally and physically ill.

It is a must to tell the truth under any circumstances. If we did something wrong, we should say exactly what, how and why it happened. Then we should apologise and commit not to repeat the wrong act again. Let me illustrate this point by telling you a short story.

There was once a villager. He was very stingy and would not share anything with anyone. He always kept everything to himself. One day, he lost his purse, which contained two hundred dollars. He announced that whomever could find his purse for him will get a hundred dollars as a reward. Everyone began looking for the purse but could not find it. A poor farmer found it. That farmer was very poor but always truthful. He immediately went to the villager and gave him back his purse. Now, the villager was very stingy, he did not want to give the one hundred dollars reward that he had promised. So he thought of an excuse and his face brightened up with a smile.

He said to the farmer "Oh you clever man. You have already taken the reward I wanted to give you myself. I had three hundred dollars in my purse and now I am only left with two hundred." The farmer was angry and said to the villager "Sir, I have not taken anything from your purse. If you still do not believe me, let us go to the Head of the village and tell him everything." "Well and good" said the villager.

So they went to the Head of the village. The Head of the village was a wise man and knew how stingy the villager was. He also knew the farmer well and knew that he would never tell a lie. He listened to both of them carefully and then asked the villager "Are you sure your purse contained three hundred dollars?" The villager looked at his purse and nodded his head doubtfully. The Head of the village could see the villager's pale and fearful looking face. Then he said to the villager, "If you had three hundred dollars in your purse then this purse is not yours." With that he took the purse away from the villager and gave it to the farmer who was overjoyed. Instead of losing a hundred dollars, the stingy villager lost two hundred dollars because he did not speak the truth.

Brothers and Sisters, from this story we can learn that we should always speak the truth and never lie.

Jai Sai Ram

Sis Karishma
SSEHV Group 3


 

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