They are both equally important. However, the truth is a two edged sword that kills as often as it saves people. So, if you do not have kind intentions when speaking or writing the truth you can easily destroy people's lives with your knowledge about them often. So, one must become wise as young as possible in order to not just blab out the truth about everything around you like a child because you will destroy people with the truth and you will also tend to destroy your own life too by telling the truth about them that destroys your life along with theirs.
The reason I'm emphasizing this is I was one of those people that thought the truth was everything, Until I realized how what I said to people was not just helping them but often harming them too by my early 20s. My father was brilliant but was also one of those guys whose favorite sayings was "Let the chips fall where they may!" But, this can be a problem in life if you live by this rule too.
So, by my mid 20s I began to see the problem of being overly truthful with people about everything, because I had not only harmed others (unintentionally) but also harmed my own life by being as truthful as I had been always in my life.
I also looked a lot at Christian people and often they killed with the truth more than anything else and so I began to see Christians often as very cruel and people who harm others because of their self righteousness and this doesn't really help anyone to be like this. So, what many Christians call the truth is just like taking a sword and destroying all the lives around you just for spite.
This moved me towards Buddhism because Compassion began to be for me more important than judging people's lives with the truth. For example, "Judge not lest ye be judged" became a motto of mine and I refused to judge people because of what happened to me from speaking truth so much it started to destroy my own life too at 21.
So, by 25 and 26 I began to see that Compassion is what is actually the most important and to only speak the truth if it helps people survive and live better lives in general. So, being aware of the consequences more of anything I said or did I found powerful in ways beyond anything I had ever thought of before.
Then in my 30s I took a vow of Ahimsa which is a vow not to kill any other beings even insects and strangely enough this gave me incredibly good karma to actually live this.
So, I prefer now to usher even insects out of my house if I can including hornets, bees, spiders (but not poisonous spiders) I have to kill poisonous spiders both for humans to stay alive but also so they don't get karma for harming or killing human beings as souls. So, one must protect even insects from harming humans if one can to help all souls do better in the past, present and future.
So, for me ahimsa (do not kill) combined with Compassion for all sentient beings in the past, present and future of the whole universe, combined with Truth when it heals and helps people is how I have lived my life pretty much now since the mid 1970s since I discovered all this for myself on my path towards enlightenment.
By God's Grace
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