Character Improvement 
Parables and Sayings
"We are slaves of what we dont know;of what we know we are masters.
Whatever vice or weakness in ourselves we discover
and understand its cause and workings,
we overcome it by the very knowing.
The primary purpose of meditation is to become more conscious
and familiar with our inner life.
The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life."
Sri Nisargadatta Mahahaj
"By exhaustively examining one's own mind,
one may understand his nature.
One who understands his own nature understands Heaven."
Mecius, Confucian sage
He who regards
With an eye that is equal
Friends and comrades,
The foe and the kinsman,
The vile and the wicked,
The men who judge him,
And those who belong
To neither faction:
He is the greatest.
From the Gita
There was once a miser who lived in a leaky house; the rainwater poured into the house through the roof but the miser sat through it all. Neighbours laughed at him and warned him to get the roof repaired. But in the rainy season, he replied: "Let the rains subside, how can I repair it now?" And when the rains stopped, he replied, "Why should I worry about leaks now? The rains have stopped."
Sathya Sai Baba
Consciousness and Virtues
And it was a suprise to me that as you become silent, as you become conscious, more alert, your actions start changing - but not vice versa. You can change your actions, but that will not make you more conscious. You become more conscious and your actions will change - that's absolutely simple and scientific. You were doing something stupid; as you become more alert and more conscious, you cannot do it.
It's not a question of reward or punishment. It is simply your consciousness, your silence, your peace, which makes you look so far away and so deep into everything that you do. You cannot do harm to anybody; you cannot be violent: you cannot be angry, you cannot be greedy, you cannot be ambitious. Your consciousness has given you so much blissfulness...what can greed give you except anxiety? What can ambition give you? Just a continuous struggle to reach high on some ladder.
As your consciousness becomes more settled, all your life patterns change. What religions have called sin will disappear from your life, and what they have called virtue will automatically flow from your being, from your actions. But they have been doing just vice versa: first change the acts. It is as if you are in a dark house and you are stumbling, light is not possible. What I am saying is, bring light in and stumbling will disappear, because when there is light why should you stumble over things? Every time you stumble, every time you hit your head on a wall it hurts. It is a punishment in itself - a wrong act is a punishment in itself; there is nobody recording your acts. And every beautiful action is a reward unto itself. But first bring light into your life.
Meditation is an effort to bring light and to bring joy and to bring silence and to bring blissfulness, and out of this beautiful world of meditation it is impossible for you to do anything wrong.
'Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic' by OSHO, pp124
"I am amazed at the heart of man: It possesses the substance of wisdom as well as the opposites contrary to it ... for if hope arises in it, it is brought low by covetousness: and if covetousness is aroused in it, greed destroys it. If despair possesses it, self piety kills it: and if it is seized by anger, this is intensified by rage. If it is blessed with contentment, then it forgets to be careful; and if it is filled with fear, then it becomes preoccupied with being cautious. If it feels secure , then it is overcome by vain hopes; and if it is given wealth, then its independence makes it extravagant. If want strikes it, then it is smitten by anxiety. If it is weakened by hunger, then it gives way to exhaustion; and if it goes too far in satisfying its appetites, then its inner becomes clogged up. So all its shortcomings are harmful to it, and all its excesses corrupt it.
There are four things that make the heart die: wrong action followed by wrong action, playing around with foolish people, spending a lot of time with women, and sitting with the dead. Then they asked Imam Ali: 'And who are the dead, O Commander of the believers?' He replied: 'Every slave who follows his desires.'
Surely want is a trial, and having sickness of the body is more difficult to bear than indigence, and having a sickness of the heart is more difficult to bear than having a sickness of the body. Surely being very wealthy is a blessing, and having a healthy body is better than being very wealthy, and having awe of Allah in your heart is better than having a healthy body.
Surely hearts have desires, and they turn towards, and they turn away ... so approach them by means of what they desire and what they turn towards, for surely if the heart is forced to do some thing against its will, it goes blind."
Imam Ali
"The true secret of natural goodness lies in the recognition of the contending rights of the Pairs of Opposites; there is no such antimony as between Good and Evil, but only balance between two extremes, each of which is evil when carried to excess, both of which give rise to evil if insufficient for equipoise."
Dion Fortune
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