Rachel reveals to Cooper (the apparent family man who is her husband) how she came to suspect him to be ‘the butcher’, ‘I saw you make up a lie once. To our neighbour. About why we couldn’t come to his party. He sort of surprised us at our car. You lied so convincingly, so honestly off the top of your head, right in front of me. No one would ever know you were lying. It gave me chills. I thought, “Where did he learn to do that?”‘
As the Buddha taught (in Itivuttaka 1.25),
‘For the person who transgresses in one thing,
I tell you,
there is no evil deed that is not to be done.
Which one thing?
This: telling a deliberate lie.
The person who lies,
who transgress in this one thing,
transcending concern for the world beyond:
there’s no evil
s/he might not do.’
If a person is capable of lying,
that person can do other evil deeds,
such as killing, stealing and sexual misconduct,
and lie that s/he did not do them,
time and again.
This person obviously does not care
about her/his many evil karmas created,
which leads to more evil deeds done,
and a deeper fall into a lower realm,
if there is no repentance in time.
When a one-time liar seems to ‘get away’,
this person might become a habitual liar,
with increasing misplaced confidence,
that becomes overconfidence,
thus unwittingly revealing that s/he is a liar.
