Truthfulness Paramis is very important. And it has many levels. Without Truthfulness in the beginning, we'll never find the Truth. Truthfulness Paramis is so important. Most important in Truthfulness is Truthfulness to ourselves. Because many people lie to themselves. To feel better about themselves, they lie. So we have to begin with Truthfulness. Truthfulness to ourselves is aided by Wisdom, and understanding the Four Noble Truths.
Sometimes we're just not truthful with ourselves because we don't have enough wisdom to understand why our Dukkha is arising. We have wrong view, thinking that somehow Dukkha is arising because of something else in life or that person or our bad luck or this or that. But if we understand, if we're truthful to ourselves and we understand the Four Noble Truths, we say, "Dukkha is arising, I take responsibility for it." That's the first part of Truthfulness.
Once we've taken responsibility for it, we can learn how to let it go. But unless we see the true cause of it we'll never let it go. So it begins with Truthfulness. Truthfulness to ourselves. Truthfulness to others is very important, too, that's showing compassion to oneself, because unless you're truthful to others, people won't trust you. If you lie to people, then they don't take much notice of what you say, and then when you're actually saying the truth and they won't believe you, you may wonder why. But this is just the result of your Kamma coming back to you, the results of untruthfulness. If you want people to feel you're dependable, feel you're lovable, Truthfulness to yourself, Truthfulness to others.
We also have to link Truthfulness with Compassion and Lovingkindness. Because we don't have to tell everybody everything that we're thinking. That wouldn't be compassionate. Sometimes we think really strange thoughts that we wouldn't want anybody to know but ourselves. So if someone is asking you, "What do you really think of me?," it may be better at times to avoid that question without lying. There are skillful ways of linking our Truthfulness with Compassion and Lovingkindness, understanding that all of our emotions are impermanent, and what you think of that person one day may be not the same as to what you think of them the next day. So Truthfulness also has to be balanced with Compassion and Lovingkindness, to know what to say and how to say it, in a truthful way.
Truthfulness is very important in order to get over self-pity. Because often when we're in self-pity, we're lying to ourselves. We may be exaggerating something, "This is so terrible! Isn't it?!" What type of language are we using? Are we using excessive language to describe the situation? Can we make our use of language more truthful to the situation? For example, perhaps someone wanted to do something, and something gets in the way, and they only get half what they wanted to do. And then at the end of it they say, "I didn't get to do anything I wanted to do this morning!" Is that truthful? Actually it's not, is it? "I got to do half of what I wanted this morning!" Rather than actually making a blanket statement about, "I didn't get to do anything I wanted to do this morning." This is actually a manifestation of self-pity.
We can actually start to work on that level by making our speech more truthful, less exaggerated. Toning it down a bit. I know a person who uses exaggeration a lot, and because they exaggerate their speech, they cause a lot of distressing emotions for themselves. So if we want less Dukkha, it's important to try to tone down our language to make it more in line with reality. This is practicing on the level of Right Speech. Because if we say it's terrible, when it's just inconvenient, that's not being truthful. And then the mind gets ready for something that's terrible, and causes a lot of stress and agitation. So Truthfulness is important in our speech, not only to make ourselves more reliable and someone that people want to trust, but also to cause less suffering for ourselves and let go of self-pity as well, causing less suffering and Dukkha for ourselves.