12 Feb 2012 - QA 7

In terms of speech, what is Satya (truth) and Asatya (untruth) and when we take a vow that we’ll speak only satya, what do we mean by that?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Be true to yourself, honest to yourself. That is what it is. If your conscience says I don’t want to do it, don’t do it. If it says you should do it, you should do it, got it?
If you tell a lie, your whole body loses its strength.
That is why it is said ‘Satyam Bruyat, Priyam Bruyat, Na Bruyat Satyam Apriyam, Priyam Cha Nanrutam Na Bruyat.’ – speak the truth; speak pleasant truth. Don’t speak unpleasant truth and don’t speak sweet lies. This is the ancient Sanatana Dharma. These are couplets but we don’t know who wrote these, but these are called Subhashita, means the golden words, the invaluable couplets. And there are thousands of them which have been existing from ancient times.
In school these used to be in our text books but I don’t know what happened. These days they have removed all of this from the text book. We need re-establish these once again.