Know you duty and do them as best as you can, consistently

1.Know your duty and do them as best as you can, consistently. Tend your parents with love, speak the truth and act virtuously. When you have spare time, repeat the Name of the Lord, with the form that pleases you the most in your mind. Never indulge in talking ill of others or trying to discover faults in someone else. Do not cause pain to others in any form. Be like the lotus, unattached to the slush where it is born in and the water in which it is bred. The merits and demerits earned in past births is the slush, where the individual is born; the enticing illusion called world is the water that sustains. Do not allow that enticement to affect you. Be above and beyond earthly attachments like the lotus. Though you may be in it, you should not allow the world to get into you and affect your sense of values.

2.‘Holy days’ have now become ‘holidays’ when you make merry, eat your fill, go out on picnics and hikes, and generally indulge in sensual pleasures. These typically end in dejection, disease and discord. Sacred places have a subtle and powerful influence on human beings. Attach yourself to the Highest, call it by any name and conceive it in any form. But remember, without dharma (righteousness) you cannot attain it. If you yield to alpabuddhi (inferior thoughts), you will be losing the akhanda-thathwa (principle of the Universal). Don't be led away into the bylanes; keep to the highway.

3.A small seed grows slowly into a huge spreading tree. So too, through little acts, soft words and kind deeds, you can elevate yourself into a Divine Being. The worst action is to do the opposite of what you preach – to deny by the hand what you dole out of your mouth. If you cannot act up to your declarations, be quiet. Do not go about advising others on virtues and advertising yourself as a hypocrite. Do not preach dharma (righteousness) while decrying it in deed. Dharma (Righteousness) is steady, unchanging and never declining; those who do not adhere to it do not decline dharma but themselves. One is judged by practise not by the precepts one pours forth. 

Bagavan Sri Sri Sri Sathya Sai Baba