here is a reasonably respectable discourse on truth. i have copied the last section and pasted it here. http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/budarist.htm one thing to be wary of is the comment "Unwillingness to accept things as they are is the basis of lying," if some unwholesome condition arises and you have the ability and strength to counteract it then that is the best thing to do Siddhartha didn't let 'his' defilements trample all over him. some 'things' you may not be able to change, so you have to deal with them the best you can. but, if you simply accept all tendancies, and go with them, then who knows, one day you could be walking down the street shouting obscenities, believing that you have "tourette's syndrome".
Let us look at some issues regarding "right" speech. The Buddha explained that right speech is the expression of both right views and right conception. Right view must be both comprehensive and attuned to individual variations as possible. (The latter qualification joins right mindfulness to the total vision of right view.) It requires attaining a mean between absolute certainty and absolute doubt. Right view also means between the subjective and the objective. All truths are basically intersubjective truths. A comprehensive view has to be both objective and subjective--i.e., everything that is an object had some subject in it; and everything that is a subject had some object in it. This follows because of interdependent coorigination.
Specifically, suitable speech means not to lie or slander, but this is not to be taken as an absolute prohibition. Obsession with lying in Judeo_Christian ethics culminated in Kant's moral absolutism, in which even white lies were not allowed. The concept of right speech as "suitable" speech is found in Confucian ethics as well as in Buddhism. Confucius once told his servant to get rid of an especially irritating visitor by saying that he was not home. In Mahayana Buddhism the idea of fitting or appropriate speech is found in the doctrine of "expedient means." The loving father in the Lotus Sãtra found that he had to lie to his children in order to get them to leave a burning house, symbolic of the fire of craving. Suitability in Buddhist ethics parallels quite closely Aristotle's view that what is "suitable is . . . relative to the person, the circumstances, and the object" (1122a25_6).
Those who insist on an absolute prohibition against lying are those who are secretly craving that the world should be different from what it is. As Bahm states: "Unwillingness to accept things as they are is the basis of lying, and any expression of that unwillingness is wrong speech." This is one of the subtlest forms of self-deception--lying to oneself about the nature of the world--which is obviously a deeper and more profound lie than the father's white lie in the Lotus Sãtra. Acceptance of the world as it is and not craving that it can be radically changed is fundamental for the realism and pragmatism found in Buddhist ethics. This is one way of understanding the Mahayanist's provocative claim that Samsara is Nirvana and Nirvana is Samsara. Nirvana is not simply personal extinction at the end of life, but full commitment to this world as the focus of the spiritual life. Reaching Nirvana while in the body does not entitle the aspirant to ignore worldly concerns; on the contrary, it means that this person is supposed to be even more committed to the moral and spiritual welfare of all living beings.
