Look at your mouth; through it, when you eat to excess, illnesses enter your body. Behave in such a way that when you finish your dinner, you want to eat a little more.
Eating to excess is not considered to be a sin by many, because it produces no noticeable harm. But there are sins which destroy human dignity, and eating to excess is one such sin.
March 5
Just as it’s folly to try to lift yourself into the air, you should not praise yourself too much. When you praise yourself, you produce the opposite effect in others, and appear lower in their eyes.
If you want other people to speak well of you, do not speak well of yourself.
—BLAISE PASCAL
A man who praises himself does not see anything except himself around him. It is better to be a blind man than to see only yourself and nobody else.
—MUSLIH-UD-DIN SAADI
He who always listens to what other people say about him will never find inner peace.
A flatterer speaks his flattery because he has a low opinion of himself and of others.
—JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
If you want to preserve your good name, do not praise yourself and do not so much as allow others to praise you.
March 6
Love of God is love in itself; it is love for the sake of love. This kind of love is the highest blessing. It does not allow the slightest possibility of treating even a single creature without love; if there is even one person whom you do not love, then you lose God’s love and blessing.
Love of your neighbor without love of God is a plant without roots. You should love God—this love is a real and firm love. It does not become weaker, only stronger, and it gives good to those who have it.
Some say that you should be afraid of God. Not true; you have to love God. How can you love those whom you are afraid of? God is love, and how can you be afraid of love? No, you should not fear God, but love Him. And if you love God, then you will not be afraid of Him, or anything else in the world.
March 7
Physical work, physical exercise for your body, is a necessary condition of life. A man can force others to do things for him, but he cannot free himself from the necessity of his own physical work. And if a man does not work at necessary and good things, then he will work at unnecessary and stupid things.
Work, the process of work in itself, is the most important thing for us, and its reward should be of minor importance; if it is, you please your creator, God. If the reward is of major importance for you, and the work itself of minor importance, then you are the slave of the reward and its creator, the devil, and even the lowest and the least among all devils.
—JOHN RUSKIN
A European praised the advantages of mechanized labor to a Chinese man: “This invention relieves a man from the need for physical work.” But the Chinese man replied, “Physical work is good. Being relieved from physical work will be an enormous disaster.”
Every physical labor makes a man more noble. If you do not teach your son some physical skills, you teach him to rob others.
—After the TALMUD
Without exercise of their muscles, neither man nor animal can live.
So that this exercise may give you joy and satisfaction, do good physical work. This is also the best way to serve others.
March 8
Prayer is a time to remind yourself of your attitude to limitless things, to God.
Through prayer, you establish your attitude to the beginning of everything; you clarify your attitude toward people, your relationship with and your duties to them, and to the Father of all of us.
—After the TALMUD
It is good to pray at the same time each day. If you cannot collect your thoughts, better not to pray, because you should always pray with your heart, not simply repeat words with your tongue.
It is good and necessary to pray in solitude, but is also good to pray when you are in the crowd, when you are excited or irritated—to think about your soul and about God.
Do not think that you can please God with prayer. You will please God by submitting to Him. Prayer is just a reminder for you of who you are and what the purpose of your life is.
March 9
War and Christianity are not compatible.
War is one of the worst, most terrible things in this world.
War in this world can be stopped not by the ruling establishment, but by those who suffer from the war. They will do the most natural thing: stop obeying orders.
The armed world and the wars it wages will be destroyed one day, but not by the kings or the rulers of this world. War is profitable for them. War will stop the moment the people who suffer from war fully understand that it is evil.
March 10
That which gives life is the same in all things.
All living creatures fear pain and death. Try to understand yourself in every living creature: do not torture and do not kill. Stop suffering and death. All living creatures want what you want; all living creatures praise their lives.
—DHAMMAPADA, a book of BUDDHIST WISDOM
All living creatures have the same divine beginning, all are in unity. We are all members of one great body.
Nature created us related to each other, from the same material, for the same purpose. Because of this, somewhere within all of us is mutual love for each other.
—LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA
There is only one right pathway of life. Sooner or later, we all will meet each other on this pathway. The understanding of it is very clearly inscribed in our hearts, and it is wide and easy to find. At the end of this way is God, and He calls us to Himself. It is so painful to watch people who miss this way of life and go along the other pathway, the way of death.
—After NIKOLAI GOGOL
Expunge from yourself anything which interferes with your feeling of a special connection between yourself and all living creatures.
March 11
Food is necessary for the life of an individual, and marriage is necessary for the life of humanity. If eating to excess is evil for an individual, then excess in marriage and sexuality creates evil both for individuals and for human society.
A marriage is a special obligation between two people, of opposite sexes, to have children only with each other. To break this pact is a lie, a deception, and a crime.
It is a great thing when two souls are united to support each other in their work, in their successes and misfortunes, until the last silent minutes of the last good-bye.
—GEORGE ELIOT
The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.