Acceptance
To accept yourself wherever you are and don’t think in terms of competition. You need not be anywhere else. Wherever you are, if you can be happy there, you have become religious, you have become spiritual. Spirituality knows no competition, spirituality knows no greed, spirituality knows no ambition – because spirituality means desirelessness.
But people go on changing from one side to another side, from one extreme to the other. That’s why Buddha insists so much on being in the middle. You can drop all your money, you can dispense with your bank balance, you can renounce the world, but then you will start hoarding some subtle money, some subtle currency of virtue, punya. You will start collecting: “How many fasts have I done, and how many good deeds have I done?” You will keep an account to show to God: “These good things I have done: now what is my award?”
To think in terms of award and result is to think in terms of greed. To think in terms of joy, to be joyful herenow whatsoever you are doing and never be bothered about the result of it, is to be out of greed. Then you can live in a palace and you can be surrounded with all the riches possible and still you will not be greedy. Or you can renounce the world and live in a cave in the Himalayas, but if you are still ambitious, desirous, then you are greedy and you are worldly.
To be desireless is to be other-worldly.
