If you want to succeed in life, keep a clean heart.

Keep a Clean Heart

If you want to succeed in life, keep a clean heart.
Free your heart from greed, lust, and pride — these three diseases are your greatest enemies.

Every action we take in life is like planting a seed. Whatever you sow, you shall surely reap. But how do you know what is good to sow? It begins with having a clean heart. Anything done from greed, lust, or pride will always yield destruction. But whatever you sow with humility, contentment, and chastity will produce peace.

Greed is born out of ignorance.
If you were given everything in this world — all the cars, all the women, all the money, all the fame — could you even handle it? Yet you crave for it endlessly. That is madness. You have no space to contain the surplus that life offers, yet you are never satisfied.

If you give in to pleasure, it soon turns to pain; and if you endure pain, it often transforms into pleasure. What seems pleasurable now becomes painful when you have too much of it, and what feels painful at first becomes sweet in the end.

And why should anyone feel better than others, when we are all made of the same dust? What ends the poor will end the rich. What ends the mighty will end the weak. We will all die, and soon not be remembered — no matter how great we become. Generations will arise that will not even know our stories.

Let us therefore walk in humility, knowing we are not even greater than a grain of corn — for a hungry man can eat the grain, but can he eat you? The grain can feed thousands, but can they feed on you? Everything in creation has its purpose. Let us not think that life without us is impossible or that we are greater than others.

Even we are not better than maggots — for can we decompose waste as they do? We can’t. Can we give shade like the trees or quench thirst like water? No. Everything has its place and importance.

So, let us stay away from arrogance and excessive pride, and keep our hearts clean — for only a clean heart can see life clearly and live in peace.