Satya: Truthfulness

This second yama, Satya, deals with truthfulness of speech, thoughts, intentions and actions. Truthfulness (Satya) has a deeper meaning than just not telling lies.  It means that our attitude to others is marked with sincerity, integrity and authenticity, to use a term loved by existentialists. 

There is a also the deeper dimension expressed in the saying: “Truth is God, God is Truth.”

Practice: Honesty, owning feelings, loving communication, assertiveness, giving constructive feedback, forgiveness, non-judging, and letting go of masks.

Brutal honesty as a weapon is not Satya

Honesty can be used as a weapon, so be careful to be COMPASSIONATE. It is not about being “right.” Love is higher than truth. “Brutal Honesty” is not truth. If LOVE directs how you use truth then you are practicing Satya. Ahimsa (non-violence) must be practiced with Satya.

Concepts and notions keep us from the truth, keep it murky. Learn to be accepting like a newborn baby. Don’t let Ego get in the way of Heart.

Telling the Truth: Satya 

Few things feel more like betrayal than a lie.

Like Ahimsa, this second yama, Satya, has many layers. A lie feels just as much as a betrayal as all other forms of violence. Pantajali guides us toward Satya in various ways. The first and most obvious is to tell the truth as best we can. This may not be as easy as it sounds.

Truth on a material level is always relative truth

Researchers have found that eyewitnesses to an event are notoriously unreliable. Amazingly, the more adamant the witnesses are, the more inaccurate they tend to be. Even this simple example shows that truth can be relative; we cannot really prove what happened five minutes ago. To speak the truth is to speak from a point of view.

Even trained scientists, whose job requires them to be completely objective and who study the most straightforward of events in nature, disagree on what they see and the interpretation of their results. 

So what does telling the truth, practicing the first level of satya,mean? It means that when given a choice (life is about choices) speak with the intention of being truthful. From this perspective, “truth” is filtered through our experience and beliefs about the world, but when we speak with the intention of speaking from truth, we have a better chance of not harming others.

Satya with Ahimsa:

A wise teacher once stated that nothing could be true if it was harmful to others. In other words, unless we speak first from ahimsa we are not practicing Satya. 

 

 

Honesty vs Integrity (Inner Truth)

Another layer of Satya has to do with inner truth. This is the difference between honesty and integrity. Honesty or telling the truth, as best we can, is a more external practice. Integrity is an internal form of honesty. Honesty is what we do when others are around and might judge our actions or words. Integrity is to act in an honest manner when others are not around and will never know about our actions. Integrity is a deeper form of Satya. 

Eternal Unchanging Truth Beyond Knowing

A final way to think about the practice of Satya is to look more closely at the actual meaning of the word in Sanskrit. “Sat” means the eternal unchanging truth beyond all knowing. “Ya” is the activating suffix, which means, “Do it.” By this definition, satya means “actively expressing and being in harmony with the ultimate truth.”

When one is in this state of Eternal Truth one cannot lie or act in anyway untruthful because at that moment one is unified with pure truth itself. While we may only occasionally feel connected to this level of “truth,” it nonetheless is an important level of truth to understand.