Lying

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

Speech goes wrong in four distinct ways, and only one of them is untruth.

False speech

Musāvāda — saying what is not so. The canon’s fuller definition, given elsewhere, is precise: knowing one thing and saying another, for one’s own sake, another’s sake, or some trifling worldly gain.

Two elements matter in that definition. The speaker must know; a false statement made in error is not this fault. And there must be a purpose, however small — the ‘trifling worldly gain’ clause exists to close the loophole of the unimportant lie.

Backbiting

Pisuṇāvācā, divisive speech — literally speech that is malicious or slanderous, and defined in the canon by its effect: repeating here what was heard there in order to divide people, or repeating there what was heard here.

The definition is entirely about function. Nothing is said about whether the report is true, and that is deliberate. A true account repeated in order to set two people against each other is divisive speech; the fault is in the dividing.

This is the item most often missed when the four are collapsed. It is possible to be scrupulously truthful and to be doing this constantly.

Harsh speech

Pharusāvācā — speech that is rough, cutting, abusive. The canonical definition describes it by its reception: words that are hurtful, that make people angry, that are far from peace.

Again the definition is not about truth. A true and accurate criticism delivered in a way that wounds is on this list, which is why AN 4.3’s requirement of examination before criticism is not the whole of what the collection asks about criticizing people.

Nonsensical speech

Samphappalāpa, talking nonsense — defined as speech that is untimely, false, useless, contrary to the teaching and training, not worth treasuring, unreasoned, rambling, and unbeneficial.

This is the widest of the four and the hardest to take seriously, because it covers ordinary idle talk. It is worth noticing that AN 4.22 used almost this same list to define the childish senior — the old person whose speech fails — and its positive form to define the astute one.

So the fourth item is not a minor addition. It is the same criterion the collection uses to decide who deserves the standing of an elder, applied here as a course of action with a destination attached.

The four as a set

Truth, effect on relationships, effect on the hearer, and worth. Those are four independent axes, and speech can fail on any one while passing the others.

That independence is the reason for having four rather than one. A person who has resolved not to lie has addressed one axis. The collection’s standard of right speech, given at AN 4.22 and elsewhere, requires all four: timely, true, meaningful, and in line with the teaching.

AN 4.81 and this discourse together give the seven bodily and verbal courses of action, each with hell and heaven attached. The remaining three of the tenfold scheme are mental, and the chapter does not give them their own discourse.

Key terms