Noble Qualities – Part 3

In continuation to my previous post on noble qualities -part 1 and noble qualities – part 2, here we go on couple of more noble virtues that one must possess.

4. Develop noble qualities of Compassion, gratitude, humility and love

Transform and direct your emotions to love, empathy, compassion and gratitude. Actually when you practice mindfulness and acceptance, negative emotions like anger, jealousy, resentment, hatred are easily overcome. In addition when you observe the noble qualities of goodness, and truthfulness, you will already feel an inner calm that will lead you to empathy, compassion and gratitude. This is a natural flow of emotion.

After all, when you have empathy, compassion and gratitude, love flows naturally. Love is divine and when divinity descends negativity vanishes. When pure love blossoms, you will see you are more empathetic towards all beings. Not just humans, even animals start loving you, compassion overflows and you live in gratitude forever.

Gratitude

We notice the value of something or someone only in their absence. We take things and persons around for granted and when time takes away from us , we suddenly realize their real value. Gratitude is the response for everything that you already have and everything life has bestowed upon you.

Be thankful now, be it sorrow or joy, for everything benefits you in the larger scheme of things. Look around and you will see people suffering for food, shelter, sickness combined with lack of resources to attend to. Many of us have three delicious meals a day, comfortable home to rest, good health and more, yet we complain.

Come to think of it, if we believe that we need to have certain things in life in order to be grateful, am sorry the time will never come, since human needs are insatiable. Gratitude is not dependent on the materiality of the things we possess, it is a mental state, an expression of the mind, a feeling of fulfilment and thankfulness, a feeling of contentment, tolerance and acceptance.

Gratefulness gives you inner peace, for sure!

Love all, serve all – Sri Sathya Sai Baba

5. Humility

Last but not the least, being humble at all states is another noble quality one must practice. Every being likes to be respected and hurting one’s esteem is an undesirable quality. We often observe in this world, some people get this superior feeling about themselves, the moment they reach a particular level of status, so to say in terms of wealth or power or both. But the fact is that, they don’t get real respect unless they behave human, i.e treat others respectably.

Don’t we see frenzy fan following of media celebrities or political leaders? Well, how many of them demand the respect and how many have truly earned the respect? That’s the difference – Humility is the underlying factor. When one rises retaining their humility, they earn respect and are loved by all.

The illusion that we already know everything is the hindrance which crops up due to lack of humility and stops one from excelling to higher levels of enlightenment. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna declares humility as the prime quality. The bird that soars on high sky builds the nest on the ground.

Irrespective of what you are and what you have achieved, being humble and grounded is a noble virtue.

The famous Tamil poet Shri Kannadasan was inspired by these noble qualities one must possess, that he penned this beautiful song “aaru maname aaru”. Do listen and enjoy, it echoes with what I have learnt from my Spiritual Master and sums up all my previous posts in a nutshell.

I hope you enjoyed this series on noble qualities, stay tuned for my next post. Please do drop your valuable feedback on the comments section below.