Compulsive lying

[RedLantern]

There are a number of reasons that people lie.The most common is fear.They are taking shelter from a perceived punishment.It maybe because they know they have done something wrong in a single time,in
which case is not compulsive lying.It becomes a habit if they are always in fear of being punished,which is lying by reflex.Even confronted,they insist the lie is the truth.Learning to lie by modeling is when people see others lie and get with it.They may be prone to lie,
Finally,people lie because if they tell the truth,they won't get what they want.Lying by habit can truly be called
compulsive lying.

[Positive Change]

What this person is doing may be caused by an imprint from her past life. Though she has the karma to be connected to Dharma she may not have the karma to tell the truth. However, her karma from being involved in the dharma, she may have the chance to be a better person and reduce her amount of lying. In buddhism, all is forgiven if you have the motivation to transform and  being benefits to all sentient beings. Lying may arise from a different perspective such as to cover up another persons faulty actions, avoid projecting pain to others, protect somebody. It's only bad if the person lies for his/her own pleasure and entertainment.

It's only human to lie and it doesn't take a nighter to change. As a fellow dharma sibling you should assist her in transforming her mind. What you say or do defines what a person is. You must understand the situation from both sides to completely, maybe she doesn't want to lie but her mind is insisting on it. In this case on her compulsive lying, it may be deeper than just lying. It could be a phase of a compulsive disorder.

Perhaps one way to deal with a compulsive liar is to make him/her understand that we don't put credit in anything he/she says, as this is the reality.

The effect of lying is that one does not create causes to be trusted and creates causes for people to betray and lie to him/her.

Perhaps within a Dharma environment, the liar may see the reality of the karma he/she creates and make the necessary effort to change her/his behavior.

There is another aspect in lying too, for lying is like the capping over a previous non virtuous action, like a nice-looking wrapping over some garbage, how long would it take for someone to smell the garbage through the nice wrapping?

So instead of dealing with garbage directly and cleaning up the mess, we wrap it up thinking "that will do", but the garbage gets worse and worse with time.

Lying is never a solution but only a procrastination.

[sonamdhargey]

Compulsive liars tells lies as if it is second nature. There are Not bad people just that they need to lie to feel natural when lying and the dangerous part is they find comfort in lying. Most of the time these compulsive liars have lied enough to become habitual like an addiction and some are due to Personality disorders. If we want to help this person, firstly we need to get to the bottom of that person. The underlying problem may shed some light if why they lie. One way is to point out to that person about their lying habit and we need to provide conselling. However, most liars will not take it easily when we point out their weakness. It takes patience to point out their lies on the spot and always show care and be encouraging to them and let them feel that telling the truth is far better. Some people lie because they were severely punished for their mistakes. So they lie to escape. So maybe we change our ways of how we deal with people first then maybe there will be some improvements.

[Jessie Fong]

A compulsive liar is someone who lies out of habit.  Once this becomes second nature, we can never be sure if whatever comes out from that person's mouth is the truth or something that he fabricated.

Some people lie just to feel good while others lie to cover up something.  This bad habit is actually a weakness as that person cannot see beyond what he is doing and the hurt it is causing to others.

It is like the boy who cried "Wolf".

[brian]

compulsive lying can be caused by the ego of oneself. probably she/he wants to look good and just always twist statements to be in the favour of oneself. However, this is small lies compared to more severe ones but nevertheless it is still lying and it is not the kind of behaviour one would want to have because this is habituation. the more we lie, it will surely lead to more serious ones. so compulsive lying has to be addressed in the early stages and one would ask why not compulsive honesty??

[montymonkey123]

What this person is doing may be caused by an imprint from her past life. Though she has the karma to be connected to Dharma she may not have the karma to tell the truth. However, her karma from being involved in the dharma, she may have the chance to be a better person and reduce her amount of lying. In buddhism, all is forgiven if you have the motivation to transform and  being benefits to all sentient beings. Lying may arise from a different perspective such as to cover up another persons faulty actions, avoid projecting pain to others, protect somebody. It's only bad if the person lies for his/her own pleasure and entertainment.

It's only human to lie and it doesn't take a nighter to change. As a fellow dharma sibling you should assist her in transforming her mind. What you say or do defines what a person is. You must understand the situation from both sides to completely, maybe she doesn't want to lie but her mind is insisting on it. In this case on her compulsive lying, it may be deeper than just lying. It could be a phase of a compulsive disorder.

[dondrup]

Lying is one of the ten non-virtuous actions.  If your friend had not lied in the past, she will not experience the effects of lying.  There are three effects of lying – the ripened effect, the effects similar to the cause and the environmental effect.  The fact that she was born as human means that she has not experienced the ripened effect of being born in one of the three lowered realms in this life.  However, she has experienced effects similar to the cause and the environmental effect.

The environmental effect for her is that she lives in an environment where people cheat and deceive and there is no one she could trust.  Perhaps that is why she finds the said Dharma organisation very accommodating to her.  She gains the trust and confidence of Dharma friends easily compared to the place where she might be living where she can find none of these.

She must have lied so much in her past lives causing her to experience the effects similar to the cause which is lying.  There are two types of effects similar to the cause – tendencies similar to the cause and experiences similar to the cause.  Hence, she experienced the effects that are tendencies similar to the cause by continuing to have a strong compulsion to lie.  The lying pattern is similar as in the past and it gets worst each time she lied.  This effect makes it extremely difficult for her to avoid creating the cause for many future rebirths in the lower realms.

The effects that are experiences similar to lying is that no one trust what she says and people do not listen to her advice.  She needs to cover her acts by continuing to lie to others who do not know her behaviour.  But sooner or later her compulsive lying will be exposed. When that happens she has no choice but to either go to another place to continue her bad habituation or resolve to transform herself to stop lying.

There is no point of her apologising if she continued to lie. She must realise her negative actions have severe consequences not only to herself but to the organisation as a whole, and she will face disciplinary actions for her negative actions if she persist to lie within or outside the organisation.  If she sincerely regretted her actions and wanted to change for the better, then there is hope that she will stop lying. She can’t transform alone and will need careful guidance and help from her guru and fellow practitioners in the Dharma organisation. She loves Dharma but does she put Dharma into practice purely and sincerely? If she did, in time she will recover from her compulsive lying.

[Positive Change]

To add further...

The very fact is a compulsion to lie in itself tells your the state of mind. It is VERY conscious! I do not believe for one moment that a compulsive liar does it out of 'habit' because that mean the person may not be aware but does it out of a habituation.

Compulsive liars do it consciously and with the intent to cover their tracks (previous lies) and that is why it is so dangerous as sometimes they slip as they forget what they have actually said in the past. The truth is easy to remember but lies are hard to keep track of especially if they were made up to cover another lie.

[Carpenter]

People who lie are normally due to some of the reason:
1)   They have a very huge ego that don’t want to look bad in front of people, therefore they lie hope to cover whatever they have not done that make them lose face.
2)   People who are very lazy, because when the things are not done, they do not want scolding or force themselves to do it, then they lie so that they don’t need to do it again.
3)   Habit, when someone are so used to lying, eventually they will pick up the habit of lying, they might not do it intentionally, but it has already became a habit that cannot get rid of.

Lying can cause many problems, it created disharmony between people around them, it created loses for the company when we lie, lie can even cause a life of a person. So, sometimes don’t think that this lie I’m telling now is very small matter, but bear in mind that, this might look small to us, it might be very important to other people.

[Jessie Fong]

If you lie to cover another lie, then do you not see the domino effect?  One lie leads to another, to another .... it never ends.  How many more lies would you need to tell?

Like Carpenter said, some people lie because of their ego, some are lazy and some do it out of habit.  NO matter what the reason, a lie means not telling the truth.  When that happens, say to cover your ego, and the truth prevails (it always does at the end), does it not make you "lose" more face?

Which is better - lose face now or tell a lie and lose more face later?   Either way, you do not win.  Karma catches up.

[ratanasutra]

Lying is the easy way to cover up, hiding the truth of the problems. so they no need to take any responsibility towards it. Its also can be lying to get something from someone.

So the best way is for you to observe your friend that which type of lying she always does, from that you can find the cause and if she is very open mind. You can tell her straight away when she lie so that she know that people are know about her lie and she might think to resolve the cause of it.

[Vajraprotector]

In the Ambalatthika-rahulovada Sutta, while giving instruction to his son Rahula, Buddha said that, “when anyone feels no shame in telling a deliberate lie, there is no evil, I tell you, he will not do.
If we study about karma, the results of negative karma in that first there are the main result, a similar result, a reaction result, and a place or condition result. 

If one examines the cause, then there is a direct result of that cause.  In the case of lying, the direct result would be being lied to or being blamed unjustly.  There would also be a similar result, meaning that the direct result would occur in conditions similar to the original cause.  Then there would a reaction effect, meaning that there would be the development of a habitual tendency to lying – which in this case of your friend, has become so strong. The effect of place and habitual tendency associated with lying could include people failing to believe anything the person who lie told them or being wrongfully jailed without guilt.

Unfortunately, there is no other antidote besides being very truthful in all matters, practicing Right Speech even to her detriment, and only she can make this choice. Because only by applying this antidote, she is able to change her habitual tendency of lying and stop creating negative causes which produce suffering for herself.  It takes a lot of hard work to purify negative habitual tendencies, but the results are worth it as it will not only reduce our own suffering, but the suffering we cause in others we lie to or about whom we lie.

[Positive Change]

Where does compulsive lying stem from? If we understand or perhaps accept where it comes from, then we can begin to know why and how to curb it.

For me, I believe lying, compulsive or not, comes from the egotistical and selfish mind. A need to right and not be wrong, a need to look good, a need to be the one in the limelight, a need to cover a mistake one has made, a need to have something for oneself, etc...

And i trust we all know how lying can be so easy... especially the first one! What becomes difficult in time is the need to have to cover up the lies previously which could have been avoided from that one truthful statement to begin with. So much so, compulsive liars become so caught up in that one lie that has rippled into a multitude of uncountable lies!

All that for just a temporal relief for our egotistical and selfish mind. And the thing is, the compulsion to lie can be stopped immediately by correcting the initial lie but that would take a huge blow to the ego and selfish mind which perhaps the person that has now become so "conditioned" to lying cannot or will not accept.