Master’s Words

The Most Important
Spiritual Qualities

Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, Germany,
December 17, 2006 (Originally in German and English)

You have to learn to be humble. Number one: Selfless. Number two: Humble. The most important is selflessness, and then humility; they are the most important. Then everything will come; you’ll quickly go higher. But if you always think of yourself, then you’ll stay there. This I can promise you, 100%. The first thing is selfless. Selflessness means you think about others before yourself. You sacrifice. Then, number two is humility. And number three is maybe... well, they all come together. These two are enough. Selflessness means always love; be loving and kind. Humility means you put yourself last; you’re obedient; you listen to instructions; you think you are no one. And that’s good, because you don’t have any body. You are a Saint. So, behave like one. You are Saints; therefore, we have nobody or have no self.

Selflessness is normal for us. It should be normal, because we are Saints. We don’t have any body. We don’t have any desires. We are not here! We don’t exist. Because of that, you will go up faster. If you realize that we are not really here, that we’re just a shadow in this non-existent planetary world, then how can we worry about ourselves so much? Therefore, whatever anyone says is OK. If they tell you to go here, you go here. If they tell you to go there, you go there. Especially when I say so! If I say and you don’t even listen, how would you listen to anyone else, like your boss in the job or your friends? How would you yield or give way to other people?

So, if you realize that you are no one and you don’t need to really consider this “self,” then you always have the bigger Self. But when you only think of this little self here, which is only the body, then you’re just stuck there with the little one, and you’ll never go anywhere else; you’ll never grow any bigger. When you were little and very young, like a baby or even two, three or four years old, you loved childhood so much. Father takes care, mother takes care, you always have something to eat, with no worries and everyone protecting you. You don’t have to work; you don’t even have to go to school. Wow! That’s a wonderful time! But do you want to stay three or four years old forever? That is impossible!

So, it’s not possible to stay three or four years old forever, enjoying all kinds of spoiling and love and care without any worries. You cannot do that! Similarly, we cannot stay forever the small saint, ignorant saint or very low-level saint. We have to let it go in order to grow bigger.