Virtue is the panacea for both body and mind. The virtuous person can be both healthy and happy. How is virtue to be cultivated? How can it express itself in daily practice? Through service to living beings, through seva (voluntary selfless service). Virtue must flow through the triple channel of love, mercy and detachment, in order to feed the roots of seva. In order to urge humans into the path of mutual sympathy, continuous compassion and concrete service, they have been endowed with the instinct of gregariousness. Man is a social animal. Humans find solitary living, unnatural and miserable. (SSS Vol.14, p. 335)

It is said; ‘Sadguna’, or virtue is the sign of the educated person, the thing that makes education worthwhile. (DV, p. 34)

Compassion towards all creatures is the greatest virtue; wilful injury to any creature is the worst vice. (SSS Vol.9, p. 143)

If one loses wealth, he may regain it, by some ruse or other. If he loses health, some doctor might prescribe a tonic to win it back. If one loses status and authority, he may by sheer luck gain them back. If virtue is lost, it is lost forever; nothing can restore the pristine purity. So one has to be ever vigilant and never slacken. The greatest of the virtues is Love. Love is the basis of character. You may have all other desirable things in plenty, but if you have no character, that is to say, virtue, which is all strung on love, you can have no genuine peace. Money comes and goes! But morality? It comes and grows! (SSS Vol.8, p. 80)

Virtue is the real treasure chest; sterling character is the universally accepted ‘sterling’. The realisation that you are a wave of the ocean of bliss is the richest possession. (SSS Vol.8, p. 95)

Gratitude to parents is a basic virtue; reverence to the parents is reverence to the past, to the traditions of the past, to the great treasure of wisdom that the past has garnered and preserved.

(SSS Vol.8, p. 101)

Love, equanimity, rectitude, non-violence – these are the attendant virtues of the servant of the Lord. (DV, p. 16)

Of all the virtues, love is the foremost. If love is fostered, all other qualifies flow from it. In every form of sadhana love has the first place. Love is the supreme mark of Humanness. Love is God. Live in Love. Start the day with Love. Fill the day with Love. End the day with Love. You have to engage yourselves in Seva, eschewing every trace of Ahamkara (conceit). Our degradation is the result of forgetting God. When we remember God, our life will be filled with peace and happiness. (SSS Vol.22)

Virtue is Dharma; vice is Adharma. These are products of the mind, strings that bind the heart. When man experiences this higher truth, he becomes free from both and achieves the vision of Reality. (UV, p. 78)

Virtue is the life-breath; character is the backbone. Without that, no meritorious act will fructify. A characterless man is like a pot with holes, useless for carrying water, or storing it. Renounce and win peace; attach and win troubles. (SSS Vol.6, p. 87)

amanitvam adambhitvam
ahimsa ksantir arjavam
acaryopasanam saucam
sthairyam atma-vinigrahah
indriyarthesu vairagyam
anahankara eva ca
janma-mrtyu-jara-vyadhi-
duhkha-dosanudarsanam
asaktir anabhisvangah
putra-dara-grhadisu
nityam ca sama-cittatvam
istanistopapattisu
mayi cananya-yogena
bhaktir avyabhicarini
vivikta-desa-sevitvam
aratir jana-samsadi
adhyatma-jnana-nityatvam
tattva-jnanartha-darsanam
etaj jnanam iti proktam

ajnanam yad ato nyatha

(Bhagavad Gita, 13:8-12)

Twenty virtues are necessary for self-realisation:

• The first virtue is Amanitvam, lack of pride, humility. So long as you have Manam, or ride, you cannot earn Jnanam.
• Now for the second: adambhitvam, lack of vanity. This is a very great virtue in man. It means the absence of pretence, pompousness, boasting that one is great when one is not, claiming that one has power when one has nothing, that one has authority when one has no such title.
• The third virtue is Ahimsa. Himsa, violence is not simply physical, it means even more, the mental pain that is inflicted, the anxiety and worry that are caused to others by your actions and words.
• Then we have Kshama as the fourth. This is called Kshanti , as well as Sahana.
• The fifth is arjavam, straight-forwardness, integrity, sincerity. It means the agreement of action, speech and thought; this applies to secular and spiritual activity. This is a fact of the second virtue adambhitvam.
• The sixth is acharyopasanam: the reverential service rendered to the spiritual teacher.
• The seventh virtue is Shaucham, or cleanliness, not merely outer cleanliness but inner cleanliness. And what is inner cleanliness? The absence of affectation and hatred, of desire and discontent, lust and anger, and the presence of daivi, good ie. Godly qualities.
• The eighth virtue is called sthairyam: steadfastness, fixity of faith, the absence of fickleness or waywardness. The sadhaka must hold fast to what he has once fixed his faith upon as conducive to his spiritual progress.
• The ninth is Indriyanigraha: the control of the senses. Be convinced that the senses have to subserve your best interests, you should not sub-serve the interests of the senses.
• The tenth virtue is, Vairagyam: detachment, renunciation, loss of appetite for sound, touch, form, taste, smell etc.
• The eleventh virtue is anahankarah, absence of egoism. Egoism is the breeding ground of all vices and faults. The egocentric individual pays no regard to right and wrong, good and bad, godly and wicked; he does not care for them nor does he know about them.
• The twelfth virtue is janma-mrtyu-jara-vyadhi-duhkha dosanudarsanam, which means only this: the awareness of the inevitable cycle of birth and death, of senility and disease, of grief and evil and other signs of the temporariness of this created world and life in it. Liberate yourself from janma (birth), mrityu (death), jara (senility), vyadhi (illness) and dukha (grief), exhorted Krishna. Krishna spoke of Asakthi, or Anasakti; the withdrawal of desire from objects, the absence of yearning. The greed to possess things that you see is caused by egoism. Love all things as expressions of His Glory, but do not delude yourself into the belief that possessing them will make you happy. Before one’s birth, one has no relationship with this world and its material objects. After death, they and all kith and kin disappear. This sojourn is just a game played in the interval.
• Attention has to be paid also to another virtue. sama-cittatvam: the state of equanimity, of undisturbed peace during joy and grief, prosperity and adversity, happiness and misery. This is the fifteenth virtue of a Jnani.
• Next is Bhakti, without any other thought or feeling, Ananya-bhakti. Whatever activity, or recreation, or talk, it must be saturated with the Love of God. That is Ananya Bhakti.
• Thereafter comes vivikta (solitary) or  Ekantavasam; dwelling in solitude.
• The eighteenth virtue which helps to promote Jnana is mentioned as aratir jana-samsadi, absence of interest in the company of men; that is to say, absence of the desire to mix with people engrossed in affairs that concern the objective world. One can attain equanimity even in the midst of wild animals; but it is difficult to win it while among worldly-minded men. Sadhana will be affected by the company one keeps. Good men keep you good; bad men drag you away into badness.
• The nineteenth virtue is adhyatma-jnana-nityatvam, the ‘awareness of the distinction between Atma and Anatman’. Fix your consciousness always on the Atmic Reality and discard the body and the senses as unreal and impermanent. Atma is the eternal; so establish yourself only in that and not in the transient non-Atmic illusions or objects.
• The twentieth and last qualification one has to earn is attva-jnanartha-darsanam, the vision of the true nature of ‘tat’, (that), the universal principle of which the particular is but a shadow. It means that the sadhaka should have a keen desire to visualise the universal. Equipped with these, one can realise the Self. (GV, p. 217-225)

From the tree of your life, if you pick out the flowers and fruits, which you have cultivated and nurtured, the virtues you have cultured in your heart, and you make an offering of them to the Lord that is indeed something distinctive and noble. To cultivate good qualities, it requires persevering effort. You will have to cross many hurdles. Through cultivation of virtues only, your mind gets purified and can acquire one-pointedness and become absorbed in divine contemplation and meditation. (TTFFW, p.4)

Virtues are the most effective means for purifying the inner consciousness of man, at all levels. For they prompt the person to discover what to do and how to do... The man of virtues has a place in the region of the liberated. The term Virtue is only another name for the ‘Intelligence’ that follows the promptings of the Atma, the Self which is our Reality. Only he who has such virtue can win the awareness of the Atma, the Truth. Once that awareness is gained he cannot be caught in delusion of desire; they cannot touch him any longer. (Sutra Vahini, pp. 16-17)

Kindness to all living beings is one of the most important virtues of a human being. (DBG, p. 188)

Virtue lends beauty to man. True education is always accompanied by virtue. Such education makes man shine resplendently. It can be considered to be a source of secret wealth and the basis for getting name, fame and prosperity. It is the preceptor of all preceptors. It serves as a relative when the educated go to an alien land. It acts as the third eye for man. It was education and not wealth which was honoured by kings. A man who does not have education may be considered as no more than a beast. This is what the scriptures say of good education. (Baba, BA, pp. 106-107)

All religions and scriptures agree that going to the aid of fellow-beings in times of need and saving them from distressing situations is the greatest virtue of a person. Every human being has equal rights in the world. All belong to one family. To enjoy peace of mind, it is essential to practiceforbearance and equanimity. There are persons good and bad, rich and poor, educated and uneducated in every country of the world. Though born in the same family and breathing the same air, some persons are narrow minded and have crooked ideas and indulge in selfish deeds, while others are good and selfless.

bhoktaram yajna-tapasam

sarva-loka-mahesvaram

suhrdam sarva-bhutanam

jnatva mam santim rcchati

(Bhagavad Gita, 5:29)

‘Suhrdam sarva-bhutanam,’ ‘Ekatma Sarvabhuta antaratma’ are well known aphorisms from the scriptures. To be friendly towards all beings is the duty of everyone, since the same atma is there in all beings. Comprehending this truth, it is the duty of everyone born as a human being to do good to others on the basis of Love. (SSS Vol.25)