A Calendar of Wisdom

Soldiers who stand idle in a shelter during a battle as reinforcements will try to involve themselves in almost any activity in order to distract themselves from the impending danger. It seems to me that people who want to save themselves from life behave like these soldiers: some distract themselves with vanity, some with cards, politics, laws, women, gambling, horses, hunting, wine, or state affairs.

It is difficult to imagine what wonderful changes would occur to human lives if people would stop poisoning themselves with brandy, wine, tobacco, and drugs.

They say that there is one religious sect that at the end of their gatherings they turn down the lights and have an orgy. In our society, people who participate in constant dissipations turn down the light of the intellect with addictive things such as drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.

Making yourself addicted is not a crime, but it is a preparation for crime.

Some people say, “It is not important if you drink or smoke.” If it is of no importance, then why not just stop, if you know that you harm yourself and, with your example, others?

The closer people are to the truth, the more tolerant they are of the mistakes of others.

Those who don’t believe in the spiritual foundations of their faith, who only pay lip service to the outer shell of their religious rituals, cannot be tolerant of others.

There is one hard and fast rule we must always remember: if a good end can be achieved only through bad means, either it is not good after all, or its time has not yet come.

Intolerant and power-hungry priests and pastors bring about the negation of religion.

Unbelievers can be equally intolerant as those who believe with crude, primitive understanding.

A real truth, a real faith, needs neither worldly support nor an outer glamour, nor does it need to be forcefully introduced to others. God has time; for Him thousands of years pass as one. Those who feel the need to spread their faith through violence and force either lack faith in God, or in themselves.

God cannot be understood by the human intellect, only felt by the human heart. We only know that he exists, and regardless of whether we want it or not, we know this for sure.

The intellect is like a light that comes through a translucent glass: I see it, and though I do not know where it comes from, I know that it exists. We can say the same about God.

Believe in God, serve Him, but don’t try to understand His essence. You will get nothing from your painful efforts except disappointment and fatigue. Do not even strive to find out whether he exists or not, just seive hinr as if he does, as if he is present everywhere. Nothing else is necessary.

No one except God comprehends the secret of the great beginning; no one can step outside himself.

We can understand the existence of God with our intellect only when we understand our complete dependence on him, as if we have the same feeling an infant understands when his mother holds him. A baby does not know who feeds him, who warms him, who takes care of him, but he understands that there is someone who does this, and even he loves the force in whose power he rests.

Do not be alarmed if the notion of God is not clearly expressed to you. The more clearly it is expressed, the further it is from the truth, from its foundation.

Real goodness is not something that can be acquired in an instant, but only through constant effort, because real goodness lies in constantly striving for perfection.

The following words were carved on the bathroom of the king Jinx-Hang: “Renew yourself completely every day, and starting afresh, from the beginning.”

The journey of the wise to virtue is as a journey to a remote land, or the ascent of a high mountain. People who travel to a faraway place start with a single step, and those who climb a high mountain start from the bottom.

Strive for goodness without any expectations for rapid or noticeable success. You will not see the results of your efforts, because the further you progress, the higher the ideal of perfection toward which you strive rises. The effort of striving for goodness, the process itself, justifies our lives.

You should teach others with a good example, but if you reach with evil, then you do not teach, but destroy.

Sinful people had once accepted their right to punish others - and most of our misfortunes started from this.

If you think someone is guilty of wronging you, forgive him. If you have never forgiven the guilty before, you will experience a new joy: the joy of forgiving.

Punishment is always cruel, always painful.

The American Indians had no laws, no punishments, and no government. They obeyed the moral understanding of good and evil that is part of every human nature.

The strongest proof that in the name of “science” we pursue unworthy and sometimes even harmful things is the existence of a science of punishment, which in itself is one of the most ignorant and offensive types of action known to man, a vestige of the lowest level of human development, lower than that of a child or a madman.

People jump back and forth in pursuit of pleasures only because they see the emptiness of their lives more clearly than they do the emptiness of whichever new entertainment attracts them.

The things we do to make our life more comfortable remind me of an ostrich who hides his head in order not to see his enemies. We behave even worse than an ostrich. In order to achieve some dubious questionable future, we definitely destroy our life in the clearly defined present time.

People today foolishly try to believe that all the world’s senselessness and cruelty - the richness of the few, the great poverty of the many, the violence and warfare - happens outside their own lives and does not interfere with them and their way of life.