Text of the meditation
Be strenuous in effort, patient in endurance, strong in resolution. By these four things the heart is defiled: the craving for pleasure, the clinging to temporal things, the love of self, the lust for personal continuance. From these four defilements spring all sins and sorrows.
Wash your heart; put away sensual cravings; detach your mind from the wish for possessions; abandon self-defence and self-importance. Thus, putting away all cravings, you will attain satisfaction; detaching your mind from the love of perishable things, you will acquire wisdom; abandoning the thought of self, you will come to peace.
One who is pure is free from desire; they do not crave sensual excitements; they set no value on perishable things; they are the same in riches and poverty, in success or failure, in victory or defeat, in life or death. Their happiness remains, their rest is sure.
Hold fast to love, and let it shape your doing.
James Allen (1864–1912), Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year (1913) – public-domain text, gently modernised.
The original 1913 text is in the public domain.
