Satya — Truthfulness

In the morning, we dedicate ourselves to practice, beginning with the reading of a Sūtra from the Yoga Sūtra.

This morning we encountered Satya, the principle of truthfulness, through Sūtra 2.36:

satya-pratiṣṭhāyāṁ kriyā-phala-āśrayatvam

“When one is firmly established in truthfulness, actions begin to bear their fruits.”

We have already explored the principle of non-violence, ahimsa, and seen how a sense of restlessness constantly drives our actions. This restlessness, this failure to see, this concealing of “something” from ourselves, sets a series of consequences into motion.

Ethical principles can be read and interpreted individually. However, they are not closed boxes or commandments from a catechism. They must be brought into our lives with a sense of responsibility and courage.

This is not about becoming preachers or judging where we fall short. There is no concept of sin, but there is responsibility.

Here we sit in meditation and, little by little, gather the strength and stability to observe ourselves.

To see where we have been untrue. Where we constantly tell ourselves a false story.

We do not have to do everything at once.

We complain that things are not going well in the world: wars, poverty, the climate crisis. We read books, follow a politician, a guru, a writer, a motivational speaker.

Good… that is only 10% of the work.

The Yogi sits down and brings everything into meditation.

Patañjali gives us two fundamental tools: abhyāsa and vairāgya.

Abhyāsa, constant practice, allows us to return to practice again and again, even when the mind wants to take us elsewhere.

Vairāgya, non-attachment, allows us to observe without being completely carried away by what arises: to decolorize the mind.

Through this combination, we can begin to see more clearly.

We practice, we observe, we let go, and we return to practice.

Not once.

Again and again.

This is how, slowly, we become stable.

And it is from this stability that Satya can be lived, rather than simply understood as a principle.

What does it mean to bring everything in?

It means observing ourselves and noticing our tendencies, our behaviors, our emotions, and finally our inner dialogue, which describes the reality around us and within us.

Instead of constantly turning outward, we begin to look within.

How do we drive our car? When we overtake someone, are we releasing our anger? There we are, in a perpetual war. We honk the horn as if we were shooting an arrow at an enemy.

What enemy? We do not even know that person.

We may recognize the fear of being late for work, unmanaged stress, anxiety, and perhaps a judgment toward ourselves. An expectation that the city should move at our own pace, according to our own rhythm.

As if we were the only ones in a hurry and everyone else were not.

As if our hurry had greater priority than everyone else’s.

This is where practice becomes concrete: observing what is happening within us at the very moment it happens.

Part of practice, sādhana, is to decolorize the mind, reducing the grip of our preconceptions, fears, and prejudices:

I am this. I am a man. I am a woman. I am Italian.

The whole practice is about loosening our grip on these ideas.

This does not mean denying our origins.

It means that when we immerse ourselves in the ocean, we have to take off our clothes.

What happens when we loosen our grip on these aspects?

We feel freer, more peaceful, more connected. A sense of humanity emerges, together with compassion and a willingness to listen to others.

What does it mean to lie to ourselves?

It means that we desire something, but then we are afraid to pursue our dreams: the judgment of others, adolescent memories, the fear of not being accepted or recognized, the fear of abandonment.

We want to build a project, perhaps pursue an MBA, but with what kind of mind are we deciding to do it?

Are we genuinely interested in that path, or do we want to conquer the world out of revenge, to prove how good we are? Have we ever honestly looked at our fears and our weaknesses?

Perhaps during adolescence we were isolated, bullied, or not recognized. Or perhaps we come from a modest family and now seek social redemption.

We want to tell the world:

“I am here. I exist.”

And this is not necessarily a problem. But if we fail to see this dynamic in its entirety, the desire for recognition can turn into a permanent war with others, consuming both our personal and professional lives.

The project itself is not necessarily wrong. What matters is seeing the mind with which we are building it.

A part of us may have wanted to become a pianist or study art.

We deny to ourselves the fact that we chose to become a doctor because our parents expected it of us. We convince ourselves that it is fine, while denying ourselves the possibility of discovering an artistic part of who we are.

We may desire a partner, yet we are not even able to send our friends a simple message every day: “How are you?”

Am I speaking in general?

Alright. I’ll speak about myself.

For years, I lied to myself by pretending to be heterosexual.

This behavior, driven by the fear of not being accepted, seen, or loved, continued for years and affected my career choices and the way I related to work: as an escape, a form of redemption, a way of asserting myself.

No one wins this war.

An unprepared society does not provide fertile ground for compassion and self-love to grow. And without the necessary tools, we find ourselves at the mercy of this anger and this inner fire.

But now we can begin to calm that fire.

Not by suppressing it, but by learning to know it and direct it where it is needed, so that it can nourish and restore peace and balance within ourselves and in our lives.

This is not about rejecting who we are, but about compassionately accepting where we continually hide from ourselves.

In an arid world, we can begin to protect the seeds of goodness and love.

And we can learn how to cultivate these seeds, what kind of nourishment to provide in different circumstances so that they can germinate quickly.

Truthfulness as a Practice

A broader reading concerns our escape from the ultimate reality of things.

Our failure to see that we are immersed in impermanence, suffering, attachment, and anger. Our failure to see that we set mechanisms of escape into motion.

Truthfulness manifests when body, speech, and mind are aligned.

When the mind is pacified and aligned with the words we speak.

This is not about accessing some positive inner mental state in order to sell a product. Those are techniques of manipulation intended to alter a state of consciousness.

Here we are talking about entering a deep meditative state and allowing what we truly are to emerge from it.

In this sense, we do not have to become someone else.

Rather, we have to remove what continually prevents us from seeing clearly.

The Sūtra is telling us this: when we become established in truthfulness, our actions acquire a different kind of strength and begin to bear their fruits.

This same principle is further developed within the tradition of mantra.

Mantra is protection of the mind. A revealed mantra emerges from a deep state of meditation. The words that emerge do not belong to the meditator; they are a manifestation of the Absolute. They carry specific properties and create reality — that is, they bear the fruits of those words.

In the previous Sūtra, 2.35, Patañjali tells us that in the presence of a yogi established in non-violence, hostility disappears.

Think about how important our environment is.

Here he is describing a law of reality. He is not saying that some holy man performs a miracle. He is saying that a dynamic exists.

If we are in the company of a stable, grounded, peaceful person, the qualities of their mind will influence our own way of being.

The relationship is reciprocal? Yes. But because the person is stable and grounded, they can receive our energies, our essence, and transform them.

Think about practices of compassion and meeting others.

It is a dance, but the yogi, being stable and centered, has the strength to pacify the other.

To what extent?

Well, if we are in a theater of war, it is difficult for the enemy to immediately become peaceful, because the forces at play are overwhelming.

Let us begin by experimenting and practicing with ourselves and with those around us.

We do not practice mantras?

But we breathe.

The breath is a subtle vehicle sufficient to bring body and consciousness into alignment.

Righteousness does not come from a commandment. Therefore, simply memorizing rules is rather useless. It may actually be useful only insofar as it slows us down and makes the mind even more complicated.

The alignment of thought, speech, and action can take place in deep meditation.

When I was 28, I came out to my family following an intensive period of meditation practice.

I was calm, centered, stable.

I had thoroughly encountered my fears and anxieties, not with a sense of rejection or judgment.

When we are in deep meditation, a space of wisdom emerges, temporarily free from our habitual definitions and reactions.

To perceive it, we need to lower the ego, the definitions, the labels.

We are looking for solutions to our problems, but then we must find the strength to face what is dysfunctional from an evolutionary perspective: anger, attachment, fear of death, the sense of separation from what is, and the inability to see and accept that life is a gift given to us by an entire Universe.

The first step is to begin recognizing and reducing the grip of the kleśas.

Then we can ask ourselves the question:

Where do we come from? Why are we here? And what is the purpose of all this?

Satya serves to pacify the mind and our lives, making everything fluid, harmonious, without friction.