Humility sheds luster on greatness

Proud as a peacock, strutted Snavidhka, with foolish boast he babbled: "Young I am still, not of full age, if ever to full age I grow, I will make the earth a wheel and I will make the heaven a chariot. I will bring Spenta Mainyu down from the shining paradise and I will drag Angra Mainyu out from the stinking hell. They will draw my chariot, both Good and Evil Spirits, if the manly-minded Keresaspa would not kill me." But the manly-minded Keresaspa humbled his pride and humiliated him and did kill him with an end to his life, with destruction of his being.

Pride feeds on vanity and thrives on birth and rank and riches and power. The proud of purse and possession know not how fickle and fleeting is all fortune. Sure as the flower that blossoms but to fade, so do the proud rise to their fall. Pride brings the fall of the great on earth, as it overthrows the angels in heaven. The humble, in the end, are exalted, when the proud are humiliated.

Humility has sympathy and mercy and gentleness and self-sacrifice for its comrades, pride is harnessed to harshness and impudence and callousness and selfishness. Humility is the prime virtue for frail humanity. The humble of heart ask forgiveness for the wrongs of life. Pride declines to bend its knees and bow its head to pray and to repent, and man cannot do without either. If ever in pride I indulge, let me be proud of my honor and goodness in the world.

Humility moves in simplicity and beautiful it looks. Pride plods in the trappings and trimmings of affectation and ugly still it remains. Richness shines the more in the garb of humility than in the raiments of pride. Humility is fairer in rags than pride in the garments of gold.

Let me not with pride look upon what I have accomplished, let me with humility look to what lies before me still to be achieved. Let me hide my worth than expose it. Let me not be proud and inaccessible to the poor and the lowly, when I sit on the seat of authority. Teach me to be humble to the great and the small, to the rich and the poor all alike. Make me meek in mind and humble of heart and inspire me to emulate Zarathushtra's graceful humility, Ahura Mazda.

This page was last updated on Friday, February 11, 2005.