Basic rules of living

1.One of the basic rules of living is not to be ashamed of your forefathers. As you read more of the history of the past, and visualise the human condition in those ages, your pride is bound to increase. Let faith in the supreme achievements of your forefathers flow in and energise the blood in your veins. Let the strength of that faith render your body, mind and spirit equally strong. The fruit of Vidya (true learning) is the recognition that every community of people and every religion has, along with a basic unity, something special of its own to offer.

2.We may each have different ideas on the nature and characteristics, the form and attributes of God. One person may believe that God has the qualities and form of humans. Another may believe in a God devoid of human form and signs but yet manifesting in embodiments. Another may believe in God as altogether formless. Every one of these can find in the Vedas declarations supporting their stands. For all have faith in God, that is to say, in a mysterious Sakthi (power) which is the source, support and sustenance of all, a Power which subsumes all.

3.Virtues are the most effective means for purifying the inner consciousness at all levels, for they prompt the person to discover what to do and how to do it. Only those who have earned good destiny can claim excellence in discrimination. Adherence to this determination is the raft that can take one across Bhava Sagara (the worldly ocean of flux and fear). A person of virtues has a place in the region of the liberated. That person can merge in Brahman (Divinity), the embodiment of Supreme Bliss.

4.People may have performed a variety of Vedic rites and sacrifices; they might even be expounding the contents of a variety of sacred scriptures that they have mastered; they may be endowed with prosperity, owning vast wealth; they might teach the Vedas and their complementary disciplines with due exposition of meanings. But without moral character, they have no place where Brahman (Divinity) is taught or learned. This is the important lesson conveyed by divine aphorisms.

Bagavan Sri Sri Sri Sathya Sai Baba