Sacca: The Parami of Truthfulness

This essay continues our series on The Ten Paramis, taken from a talk given by Mark Donovan on February 10, 2026

This talk includes excerpts from Lila Kate Wheeler’s talk,
Parami of Truthfulness: Living the Truth, Dharma Seed 2010-10-25.  

Here is my effort to be truthful: It’s almost 10 am Tuesday morning, this morning, and this talk is not yet composed, there’s confusion, a feeling of some anxiety and cold sweat with each minute that passes, awareness of a background narrative of unworthiness, a sense of being stuck.  There’s some identification with this state - I AM these things - and yet I am also able to zoom out a bit and remember how these states historically arise and pass and to know deep down that I am much more than the mind objects presently arising.  This makes me think of Buddha sitting under the bodhi tree assailed by Mara: you’re unworthy of becoming the buddha, you’re not worthy of being free.  Maybe you can identify with that? Lila Kate Wheeler says: A big piece of the Buddha’s victory was being able to set aside that voice and go beyond it.  She says: One way of interpreting the earth-touching mudra - when the Buddha touched the Earth and called on it to witness his right to enlightenment, to exist - was that he dropped down from the level of the thoughts in his mind to a different form of reality. 

We experience this ourselves when we anchor attention in the body, ground our attention in the body, just having something where we know we were distracted when thinking that we can come back to, gives us a sense of the relativity of this whole world of thought.  That’s why we often emphasize the pause when you recognize you’re thinking, when you pause you’re no longer carried away by the stream of thoughts, you can actually take a stand somewhere else- touching earth, grounded.  And then you get a choice how you’re going to relate to those thoughts.  We’ve probably all had that experience of the thought balloon kind of popping and it was like being lost in a daydream and now I’m back to reality.

So we can call it Mara when we start to be dragged down by that voice that says your life has been nothing but mistakes.  I shouldn’t have done this or that.  When we feel haunted by things that seem diminishing to us and make us forget that the paramis belong to us and we can adopt them as our rightful place, solid ground.  Meditation practice is about having an experiential sense of the truth, the truth of this moment.  It gives us a perch to say I see you Mara.  I know who you are.  I see that you’re just a thought.  Seeing through Mara means seeing through the nature of what thinking is and the nature of our story, our narrative.  The book The Buddha’s Brain gives a physiological description in terms of brain science of how the brain takes in sense data, mixes it with memory and calls it YOU.  The brain makes it seem to be so solid and yet that’s not really the case.  So we start to pick apart our sense of ourselves a little bit, which can feel both  scary, and also freeing.

The Buddha said, you should train yourself like this:  “When you see a form you simply see.  When you hear a sound you simply hear.  When you smell an aroma you simply smell.  When you taste a flavor you simply taste.  When you feel a sensation in the body, simply feel.  Whenever a thought arises, let it just be a thought.  Then you will not exist  and whenever you do not exist you will not be found in this world, another world, or in-between.  That is the end of suffering.” This is the truth of anatta, right, there is no fixed, enduring self. With the bare attention of our practice, with our awareness grounded in elemental sensation, we begin to see more clearly how our conceptual overlays, our sense of identity, is not fixed nor objective.  It doesn’t have to limit us.  There is more room for improvisation, for acting more on our values, from a place of caring.  

In our practice we also get a lot more familiar with our conditioning, the truth of our conditioning.  We are conditioned beings.  We are conditioned by our families, schools, society, by the stories we hear, by the advertising on the sides of buses driving by and all the other advertising that bombards us on a daily basis.  We absorb all this stuff unconsciously and believe things not based on any critical thinking but just by osmosis.  This is happening throughout our lives, and so we have all these points of view and ideas that we’re conditioned by.  Through our practice we start to see this conditioning a little more clearly and can begin to let go of what doesn’t serve us.

Sylvia Boorstein published a book on the parami called Pay Attention for Goodness Sake. This is the opening paragraph to her chapter on truthfulness: “To perfect my truthfulness, I need to be able to tolerate seeing clearly all of who I am and all of what is happening.  I need to not feel ashamed or afraid.  If I pay attention clearly and steadily, my mind will be unbiased and its secrets will reveal themselves to me in an honest, gentle way.  I will not be distressed.  The pleasure I’ll experience from not hiding from myself will inspire me to create intimacy of non-judgmental, gentle honesty with everyone.” As she says - tolerate seeing -this is a big lift, right?, that non-judgmental openness to our experience.  It’s not so easy, sometimes it hurts, maybe there’s fear or shame or unworthiness.  But like wisdom, truthfulness is about seeing clearly, and it’s to hold all of our experience in equanimity.  Equanimity is the capacity to be intimate with our experience without needing it to be different.  Equanimity is another one of the paramis - which as a group they interweave and support one another.  And metta and compassion are so important here as well.  When our experience is painful it is so important to hold ourselves with compassion and kindness.

One interpretation of the word Dharma is truth, to know the dharma is to know the truth and seeing the truth, it’s said, one’s heart is freed.  And from this view, ignorance/avijja is the source of difficulties.  Samyutta Nikaya: “Ignorance is the leader in the attainment of unskillful qualities followed by lack of conscience and concern.  In an unknowledgeable person immersed in ignorance, wrong view arises, in one or wrong view wrong intention, in one of wrong intention wrong speech, in one of wrong speech wrong action… wrong livelihood, wrong effort, wrong mindfulness.” That’s a big pile of dukkha, that’s a lot of suffering.  Ignorance is really just not paying attention.  And so the traditional antidote is knowledge and vision of things as they really are.  This isn’t about coming to some grand, ultimate philosophical truth with a capital T, but instead learning to tune into, to bear witness, to our small “t” truth.  Dharma practice means living a life of truth. Sacca also means acting and speaking in accord with the truth, which includes the qualities of loyalty, trustworthiness, honesty, and sincerity.

So finally I’ll say a few words about truthfulness in speech.  The Buddha clearly put a great emphasis on speech as it’s included as one of the five householder precepts and a part of the Noble Eightfold Path.  

I like this concise quote by Jack Kornfield: He says: Try this in your next argument or conflict: Take a pause. Hold everyone's struggle in compassion. Connect with your highest intention. Whenever things get difficult, pause before you speak and sense your wise motivation. From there, it will all flow better. This is the secret of wise speech. As the Buddha describes it: "Speak with kindly motivation. Speak what is true and helpful, speak in due season and to the benefit of all." When we connect with our highest intention, we learn to see with the eyes of compassion and everything becomes more workable.  

The following are notes by Narayan Liebenson (BCBS) on Wise Speech:
Observing the ways in which we speak can be a guide to observing what is going on in our minds. What comes out of our mouths may be quite different from what we want to come out, or may be very different from what we think is coming out. We can use aware­ness of speech as a guide to the inner life, to more self-understand­ing.  

In the Buddha’s discourses there are four guidelines that relate to the awareness of wise speech. These are: speech that is truthful, unify­ing, kind and useful.  

The first guideline is speaking truth­fully; saying that which is true, accurate and direct. With the commitment to try to speak truthfully, the mind is quieter, softer, more open and at ease, and natu­rally more harmonious. Remorse, con­fusion and complications are often the results when we don’t tell the truth. We may lie because of fear, anger, self-pro­tection or desire, and because of insecu­rity and wanting to be seen in a certain way. We may notice that we often exag­gerate or understate. In dharma practice we make a commitment to seeing the truth in all ways, and truthfulness of speech is a way of expressing that commitment. In dharma practice we make a commitment to non-harmful action; speaking truth­fully allows for trust.
The second guideline is speaking in a way that unifies and brings people to­gether. This expresses itself by trying to refrain from divisive speech—undermin­ing, fault finding, and malicious gossip. When we speak in an unkind way we may notice the judgmental mind. We may become aware of how contracted the mind is through resentment and self-righteousness. In refraining from divisive speech we may be giving others the space and accep­tance that we want for ourselves. In this way our speech becomes a vehicle for discovering more compassionate connec­tion to ourselves and others.
The third guideline is kind or gentle speech versus harsh, arrogant, or cruel speech. A way of observing harsh speech is to notice the tone of what is said rather than the content. Harsh speech often has to do with impatience, this feeling of “I want something different to be happening than the way it is” or, “I want you to be different than the way you are.” Per­haps there is aversion or annoyance, maybe some self-righteousness mixed up in it too, and it rubs up against this “I wantness” that we have. We may no­tice that the impact of harsh speech is that it pushes people away. Aldous Huxley came to a realization before he died that all of spiri­tual practice is learning to be kind to one another. And, of course, learning to be kind to ourselves as well. 
The fourth guideline has to do with speech that is useful rather than speech that is really just a waste of energy. This aspect has very much to do with inten­tion rather than content. If youve been on retreat you discover how much energy goes into speaking. Speaking hides boredom, loneliness, restlessness and fear. Can we notice when we are chattering -what’s going on inside? What is the reason for it? Then perhaps we can at­tend directly to the loneliness, restless­ness or boredom. 
Truthfulness, sacca, is an integral part of our dharma practice.  Mindfulness gives us ways to connect to our truth experientially, to be more honest with ourselves and therefore more honest with others.  And through truthful and wise speech, and commitment to non-harming, we build a kinder relationship with both ourselves and others.