Living Wisely Living Well | With Asha Nayaswami

Tune into others’ inner realities. Though the words you speak be similar, your realities may be as different as unrelated languages.

Let nothing tempt you ever to compromise an ideal. Morality is not a question of convention. The Ten Commandments are engraved in human nature on tablets of light. The true reason why theft, violence, murder, and other crimes are wrong is that they hurt first of all the perpetrator himself, condemning him to ever-deeper dungeon levels in the rock fortress of his egoism. If you arm yourself, however, with truthfulness, honesty, and integrity, you will emerge someday into perfect soul-freedom.

Purity, innocence, and an absence of selfish motive: these, together, form a diadem more brilliant than that displayed on any emperor’s brow.

Welcome any suggestion for improving your ideas. At the same time, protect them from others’ meddling. Be clear in your mind as to your true intentions.

Make it a point this day to single out someone whose worth many have failed to appreciate. Take the time to show him or her your appreciation. (That person must, after all, have some admirable quality! Emphasize it.)

Make it a point today to tell someone whom you love, “I deeply appreciate you for what you are, for what you have done for others, and for what you have given me.” Never take anyone close to you for granted.

To achieve inner freedom, make a mental bonfire every night, before you go to sleep, of all your attachments, self-definitions, desires, and aversions. Nothing that can be measured, weighed, timed, or hoarded can ever truly belong to you. Toss into the flames, piece by piece, every obstacle to your inner peace. Feel your joy soaring skyward, as your limitations, one by one, go up in smoke.

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Attachments are self-limiting—like prison bars. Ah, but see! Between the bars there is space. If you concentrate on that space, the bars will disappear: they consist only of your own “iron” stubbornness, its atoms being your repeated affirmation of a false reality.

If you have a good idea, it may be “the better part of valor” to discuss it with those only who share your ideals. Protect it from people who might jeer, simply because it fails to conform with their preconceptions. Let your confidence gain strength before exposing the idea to human goats, who take pleasure in nibbling on other people’s inspirations.

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Generosity in victory is self-conquest. It loosens the shackles of pride, and fills one with a deep sense of inner gratitude.

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