Acharya Mahaprajna
The day man aspired to the forbidden fruit, the seed of dishonesty sprouted in him. Integrity means the acceptance of what is right and proper and the abandonment of what is wrong and improper. A man caught in desire does not observe decorum and thereby becomes inauthentic and dishonest.
Dishonesty in itself is a kind of thieving. There is the dishonesty of speech, of thought, of action. In Sanskrit literature a dishonest person has been called as a 'wicked soul.'
According to a poet:
A person endowed with the unity of thought, speech and action is a great soul; he who suffers from the incongruity of thought, word and action, is wicked.
Honesty is nothing but harmony between thought, speech and action and contradiction between them is dishonesty. Honesty is non-stealing: dishonesty is stealing. Our philosophers have laid down a wonderful criterion for honesty. They have said:
A man is entitled to only that much food, which satisfies his hunger. Only that much belongs to him, the rest belongs to others. He who claims more than his share is a thief and deserves to be punished.
This definition of honesty or non-stealing is of a very high standard. One thing is very clear that a man moving in the direction of more and more accumulation cannot be authentic or honest. In other words, an authentic or honest person will never accumulate things.
