Humility

A moral person has to be humble, free of arrogance. Being humble means thinking you are still lacking. Being arrogant means thinking you are already accomplished. From the humble person's sense that they are still lacking comes a good feeling: respect for everyone. From the arrogant person's belief that they are accomplished comes a negative one: contempt for the people around them.

Respect shows naturally in a humble person's face, words and gestures, and it pleases everyone. An arrogant person, however hard they try to hold it in, ends up showing contempt for others, and earns resentment and dislike.

But before anyone gets around to disliking them, the arrogant person's own brain cannot stand the arrogance. Thoughts of praising oneself and quietly belittling others, kept up over time, distort the brain. Many neurons are destroyed and important brain functions are lost.

One of those functions is holding back the free flow of thoughts that would otherwise strain the brain for nothing. Conceit wrecks it, leaving the mind unable to stop thinking, stressed, sleepless, headachy and forgetful, unable to focus on work and tired all over.

Another is restraining improper desires so that a person can live decently as a responsible, law-abiding member of society. Conceit gradually wrecks this too, and the person is driven hard by those desires. Sexual desire suddenly grows stronger, so strong that it crosses the limits of nature and the law. Once they have committed a sexual offense, their honor is gone.

Another is the ability to learn, train and develop one's talents. Conceit kills this function, and the person ends up with no talent and no use.

That is how much harm the habit of praising yourself and quietly belittling others does to the brain. Conceit also produces unlucky karmic consequences. Conceited people often fall into misfortune and failure, and whatever they try goes wrong.

Humility, by contrast, opens the brain to a higher level. A humble person slowly grows smarter, holds their bad habits in check and keeps a light, peaceful mind. Favorable circumstances come to them more easily through the law of cause and effect, and they are more likely to have a graceful, pleasing face.

Once pride has set in, it is very hard to correct. People hold their view stubbornly, criticize everything, offend everyone and damage their own brain. Only when they see the danger and resolve to change does a hard struggle begin. Every day they kneel before whichever holy being they revere, promise to give up their pride, and ask that being to quietly help them let go of it. They promise to respect everyone and always acknowledge their own shortcomings. They ask like this every day.

And still, when they meet people, one moment of forgetting and pride is back. It is very hard.

Turning pride into humility is extremely hard work. But we must change if we do not want to fall into hell.

Once we have changed, once we are humble and can see our own shortcomings, the first reward is a mind far more at ease than before.

Then many good things come, one after another, without end.