To trust a stranger without investigation invites troubles so endless that even descendants must endure them. To rust a man who has not been tested and to suspect a man who has proven trustworthy lead alike to endless ills.
A man’s value depends upon his courage and resolution, his veracity depends upon his traits of nobility and self respect and his chastity depends upon his sense of honour.
Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent school-masters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.
It is hard to find a man who has desire for what he has not tasted, or who tastes the world and is untouched. Here in the world some crave pleasure, some seek freedom but it is hard to find a man who wants neither. It is hard to find a man who has an open mind, who neither seeks nor shuns wealth or pleasure, duty or liberation, life or death…He does not want the world to end. He does not mind if it lasts. Whatever befalls him, He lives in happiness.
If we only practice compassion at the mind level, we run a great risk of our compassion being just talk. As we know, talk is cheap. To develop true compassion we have to put our money where our mouth is.
Internally I am a hermit, and externally I am a prince. Arms mean protection to the poor and destruction of the tyrant. Baba Nanak had not renounced the world but had renounced maya, that is, self and ego.
