3. Sacca (Truth or Honesty). Honesty unites people who live together; for example, husband and wife, relatives and friends, one’s social group, one’s village, and so on until one comes to one’s district and country. Society will break up if it is composed of dishonest people.
If people are honest in business, their business becomes wholesome. If fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, childred and relatives are honest, then their families become wholesome. If citizens, councilors, governors of the community and rulers of the nation are honest, then the nation becomes wholesome. “Saccam Have Sadhutanam Rasanam” (As far as benefit is concerned, truth has the best flavour).
Because of keeping to the truth, one gains a good repatation and is well respected. Because honesty brings people together, the truthful man does not bring discord into his society. Truth is thus a Dhamma virtue which brings many benefits.
When honesty and truth make up society and yet one finds that there is no harmony or concord, then one should investigate to see why this is so. One is sure to find that it is due to greedy attachment to things. Thus, they want to get ours, and we stop them; and when we want to get theirs, they stop us. This is the reason for the break up of that society. Therefore one should develop the fourth Dhamma virtue, which is:
4. Caga (Generosity or Benevolence). This means the sharing of those things with others that we ought to share with them, so that when we have something that they need, then we share it with them; or if they have something that we need, then they share it with us.
If all are prepared to give, then there is no “ours” and “their”. In this realm of sense desires, people want sense pleasures, and the external objects that give rise to sense pleasures are common to all, so everyone should benefit from them while they are alive, for when they are dead, they cannot take them along. So we ought to share with each other until we become gold mines filled with virtue and merit which will support us both in this world and the next.
These four virtues are called Dhamma for the lay people. It is this Dhamma which holds society together which leads to happiness and which establishes existence in both the human and heaven states. One who is a householder cannot lose by it; and as for one who is a monk, he must also maintain these Dhamma virtues as his basis or foundation which must be firmly established before he goes on to develop further aspects of Dhamma.
If those who want to practice the further aspects of Dhamma have not cultivated these four Dhamma virtues, then the group to which they belong cannot become strong and harmonious. This is so because, all people in that group experience some things which they like and others which they dislike. If they do not practice restraint of the heart, forbearance, truthfulness and generosity, they are then free to follow their lower nature (Kilesa), which is made up of greed, hate and delusion that flow out of the heart.
One’s heart without these four controls, is like a car without brakes which will run over animals and people and other things, causing destruction and loss. The heart, not having any control bursts out, and with nothing to check it, flows into the body and speech so that they also break into activities which are false and deceitful.
The wrong practice of morality causes one to fall from the human or heaven states to the states of misfortune. One who does not understand and guard his heart has a changeable heart which is liable to swing between depressed and elated states (Hell and Heaven) in this very life.
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