The Seventeenth Chapter

     IF YOU wish peace and concord with others, you must learn to break your will in many things. To

live in monasteries or religious communities, to remain there without complaint, and to persevere

faithfully till death is no small matter. Blessed indeed is he who there lives a good life and there

ends his days in happiness.

     If you would persevere in seeking perfection, you must consider yourself a pilgrim, an exile

on earth. If you would become a religious, you must be content to seem a fool for the sake of Christ.

Habit and tonsure change a man but little; it is the change of life, the complete mortification of

passions that endow a true religious.

     He who seeks anything but God alone and the salvation of his soul will find only trouble and

grief, and he who does not try to become the least, the servant of all, cannot remain at peace for

long.

     You have come to serve, not to rule. You must understand, too, that you have been called to

suffer and to work, not to idle and gossip away your time. Here men are tried as gold in a furnace.

Here no man can remain unless he desires with all his heart to humble himself before God.

     Prabuddha Bharata>>>

     Vedanta Kesari>>>