“Pride and egoism blind one to recognizing transcendent Reality, or even to taking an accurate measure of oneself. Because of pride, a person thinks he is independent and cannot recognize that his very existence is dependent upon Ultimate Reality. In Christianity, pride is often regarded as the first step to the fall and rebellion against God. In Buddhism, grasping after the self and the sense of ego is the chief of all cravings and the deepest root of ignorance. In the Indic religions pride, like ignorance, is a fetter that binds humans to the wheel of rebirth.”
Shun all pride and jealousy. Give up all idea of “me” and “mine.”
As long as there is consciousness of diversity and not of unity in the Self, a man ignorantly thinks of himself as a separate being, as the “doer” of actions and the “experiencer” of effects.
He remains subject to birth and death, knows happiness and misery,
is bound by his own deeds, good or bad. -Hinduism
Traveling powerless, like a bucket traveling in a well:
First with the thought “I,” misconceiving the self,
Then, arising attachment to things with the thought “mine.” -Buddhism
Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. -Judaism and Christianity
Have you seen him who makes his desire his god?
God sends him astray purposely, and seals up his hearing and his heart, and sets on his sight a covering.
Who, then, will lead him after God (has condemned him)?
Will you not then heed? -Islam
Not knowing the consequence of good and evil karmas, he is afflicted and hurt.
Nevertheless, he, due to his egotism,
piles up karmas and undergoes births and deaths again and again. -Jainism
We say that “Good” and “Harmony,” and “Evil” and “Disharmony,” are synonymous.
Further we maintain that all pain and suffering are results of want of Harmony,
and that the one terrible and only cause of the disturbance of Harmony is selfishness in some form or another. -Theosophy
