Integrity of Thought, Speech, and Action
Communities, relationships, and especially teacher-student relationships are built upon trust.
Trust is not established through friendliness, gifts, compliments, appearances, charm, or displays of affection. It is built through integrity.
In the Zoroastrian tradition, integrity is measured by the degree of coherence between thought, speech, and action. Trust develops when these are aligned together. It begins to erode when they move in different directions.
Questioning, inquiry, disagreement, and critical thinking are healthy and necessary. Students should feel free to ask questions, challenge ideas, seek clarification, and make their own assessments of teachers, teachings, and methods.
What undermines trust is not disagreement. It is the absence of integrity.
A person who speaks respectfully to someone’s face but differently in their absence lacks coherence. A person who continually concerns themselves with the affairs of others while robbing energy and attention from their own development gradually disperses their attention and weakens their capacity for self-cultivation.
If concerns exist, they should be addressed directly and transparently with the person involved. Learning environments depend upon honesty, clarity, and the courage to communicate openly.
Likewise, learning requires trust, respect, and receptivity. It does not require blind obedience, but it does require coherence. If you genuinely believe a teacher lacks integrity, competence, knowledge, or character, you should have the courage to address your concerns openly or seek guidance elsewhere.
Study with teachers you respect. Learn from people whose knowledge, experience, and character you genuinely value. Be grateful for what they have to offer while remaining free to think critically, ask questions, and make your own decisions.
From the perspective of Neijing Chinese medicine, lack of integrity and coherence are not merely a question of etiquette or morality. They reflect a disturbance in the relationship between the Heart and the Liver.
The Heart houses the Shen. Shen is often translated as spirit, but it refers more broadly to our
capacity for awareness, presence, perception, discernment, sincerity, and consciousness itself. It is
reflected in the brightness of the eyes, the quality of our attention, and our ability to perceive reality
clearly rather than through projection, fantasy, or assumption.
The Liver houses the Hun, often translated as the Ethereal Soul. The Hun gives a person vision,
direction,planning, aspiration, and the capacity to move toward a meaningful future. It provides a sense of purpose and direction that helps organize attention and action.
When the Shen is clear and the Hun is strong, a person’s attention naturally returns to their own life,
their own development, their own responsibilities, and their own path. They have somewhere
meaningful to place their energy. Their speech reflects what they genuinely think. Their actions
reflect what they genuinely believe. Thought, speech, and action become coherent.
When this relationship becomes disturbed, attention begins to wander. When Shen lacks clarity and Hun lacks direction, attention becomes disorganized and poorly oriented. Rather than being occupied
with one’s own cultivation, it becomes fascinated by the affairs of others. Curiosity becomes
intrusion. Observation becomes speculation. Discernment becomes judgement. Attention is drawn
toward stories, rumours, private matters, and the lives of people who are not present.
At the same time, a lack of direction often produces a lack of directness. Concerns that could be
addressed openly are discussed elsewhere. One face is presented in public and another in private.
Speech no longer reflects what is genuinely present in the Heart. Energy that could be used to
improve one’s own life becomes invested in discussing, analysing, and managing the lives of others.
For this reason, gossip, reputation-building and reputation-damaging, fascination with
other’s private lives, and speaking differently in a person’s absence than in their presence can be
understood as more than a question of morality or ethics. They are signs that attention has lost its proper orientation. They reflect a fragmentation of attention, character, and direction. The Shen has become scattered, the Hun has lost direction, and energy has become dispersed outward rather than directed toward one’s own development.
A healthy Heart and Liver allow a person to remain sincere, direct, and well-oriented. Their
attention returns naturally to their own practice, their own responsibilities, and their own path. Their speech reflects what they genuinely think and feel rather than changing according to the audience around them. Their energy is invested in cultivating themselves rather than becoming occupied with the lives of others.
In Yoga, this same principle is reflected in the practice of Pratyāhāra. Often translated as withdrawal of the senses, Pratyāhāra is the capacity to remain sovereign over one’s attention rather than allowing it to be continually pulled outward by distractions, impulses, stories, and objects of fascination .
The person preoccupied with the affairs of others outside the shala is often the same person whose attention continually wanders toward others during Āsana practice on the mat. Rather than remaining absorbed in their own experience, they become occupied with what everyone else is doing. Who is absent? Who is progressing? Who is struggling? Who is pregnant? Who is dating whom? Why did the teacher say this to one person and not another?
Observation quickly becomes assumption. Assumption becomes projection. A student appears tired and a story is created. A teacher appears quiet and a story is created. Very little information is available, yet conclusions are drawn with great confidence.
This constant outward orientation disperses attention. Rather than meeting reality directly, the mind becomes occupied with interpreting, analysing, and constructing stories about the lives of others.
Attention is one of our most valuable resources. Whatever repeatedly occupies our attention gradually shapes our thoughts, emotions, habits, and character. Character influences the choices we make, and those choices ultimately determine the direction of a life. For this reason, the direction of our attention becomes the direction of our lives.
Through the skillful practice of Yama, Niyama, Āsana, Prāṇāyāma, and Meditation, a mature practitioner gradually learns to leave other people’s lives to them.
Rather than becoming preoccupied with the actions, choices, and affairs of others, their attention increasingly returns to their own Dharma: the work that is theirs to do, the responsibilities that belong to them, and the places where their presence is most needed.
Practice teaches us to direct our energy toward what is meaningful, to recognize where attention is being wasted, and to reduce unnecessary leakage of energy.
Over time, we become less interested in discussing, comparing, and interpreting the lives of others, and more interested in understanding ourselves, our conditioning, our limitations, and the work required to build a life aligned with our values and aspirations.
Svādhyāya, the ongoing work of understanding oneself, is already a lifelong effort.