– Dignity of character comes through meditation. You are not practicing anything as far as your character is concerned, but your insight grows. You start seeing things as they are, and your whole life is transformed in this new light, in this new vision. You cannot behave in the old way. You cannot deceive anybody because now through meditation you know that we are not separate. You cannot be violent; you cannot enjoy hurting anybody because now you know that the other is part of you. We are part of the organic universe. We are not separate entities at all.
Then of course you will have a dignity of character, and that dignity will come through integrity. You will not be divided, you will be one. Your vision will be one, your lifestyle will simply be a consequence of it, not against it, nothing imposed. It is like healthy lips – the redness comes from the blood circulating inside. It is a totally different phenomenon to lipstick. So remember, meditation has to be the source of real character. One can forget all about character – just put your whole energy into meditation and character arises out of it. It is not something put together by you, it comes spontaneously. And when character is spontaneous, it has a beauty of its own, it is a joy. It is not a means to an end; it is an end unto itself.
