I am a spiritual teacher, and I’m not shy about advertising the fact that I can find no peers, no fellow living teachers with comparable understanding of how it all comes together in the field of mystic-philosophy. But, of course, I receive a great deal of flak from my critics for my hubris and my penchant for “telling it like it is.†To counter this flak, I’ve put together some quotes (see below) from legendary gurus and philosophers, who make it clear that humility is hardly a great virtue.
I first realized that humility was overrated when I came across the following quote while in high school: “As soon as you think you have humility, you’ve lost it.†The State, Church, and Media like to push the ideal of humility, because pseudo-humble, cattle-like people are easy to control. But because I have little regard for the State, Church, and Media, I felt moved to write this article.
Ayn Rand
I’ll start with a quote from Ayn Rand, who, unabashedly, billed herself as the “greatest philosopher since Aristotleâ€:
“There is no more despicable coward than the man who deserted the battle for his joy, fearing to assert his right to existence, lacking the courage and the loyalty to life of a bird or a flower reaching for the sun. Discard the protective rags of that vice which you call a virtue: humility—learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness—and when you learn that pride is the sum of all virtues, you will learn to live like a man.â€
Adi Da Samraj
Adi Da Samraj was a spiritual genius and one of the greatest gurus ever, but judging from his following statements, he wasn’t a big fan of humility:
“Humility is a small penis.â€
“I am the First, Last, and Only 7th-stage Avatar.â€
Alan Watts
Alan Watts was a brilliant spiritual philosopher, so naturally he had little regard for humility:
“Nothing is more ostentatious than deliberate humility, nor more egocentric than projects to get rid of egotism.â€
“But if you genuinely “know†this [radical spiritual truth], it is nothing to be proud of nor humble about,â€
Longchen Rabjam
Longchen Rabjam is generally considered the greatest Dzogchen  guru-philospher in history, and he was hardly shy about proclaiming his status:
“I have realized the meaning of the utmost profound essence and I have perfected (the insight of) the ocean-like utmost supreme yanas. Therefore, in my sky-like vast wisdom, from the great clouds of learning and analysis with lightning of benefits and happiness, accompanied by thunder of realizations and contemplations, the great rain of teaching has been showered. Because of the vastness of my intellectual learning and analysis, I have absorbed the meaning of all the yanas.â€
Gautama Buddha
Who would have thunk it? The Buddha blowing his own horn big time. Notice that he isn’t the least bit shy about using the pronoun “I.â€
“I am one who has transcended all, a knower of all,
Unsullied among all things, renouncing all,
By craving’s ceasing freed. Having known this all
For myself, to whom should I point as teacher?
I have no teacher, and one like me
Exists nowhere in all the world
With all its gods, because I have
No person for my counterpart.
I am the Accomplished One in the world
I am the Teacher Supreme.
I alone am a Fully Enlightened One
Whose fires are quenched and extinguished.
I go now to the city of Kasi.
“[Upaka] the victors are those like me Who have won to destruction of taints. I have vanquished all evil states,
Therefore, Upaka, I am a victor.â€
Summary
I’m sure I could find innumerable more similar quotes if I searched them out, but by now you should have the picture: Humility is a big, fat hoax.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
“True humility” is distinctly different from “false humility” which consists of deprecating one’s own sanctity, gifts, talents, and accomplishments for the sake of receiving praise or adulation from others.
– from the wikipedia article on humility.
Do you not feel you’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater by saying, categorically, “Humility is a big, fat hoax”? Is there a positive aspect of humility that you’ve left out here?
Clare, I think humility, even if pretentious, can be positive in certain situations, such as team sports. A superior athlete must downplay his own importance for the good of the team.
Humility is not a primary virtue, and is grossly overrated. But I think it has its place. My article is a bit of hyperbole.
Humility is more about behavior than speech, although speech can reflect one’s arrogance. Speech can be deceiving to the extent one is out of touch with Reality, the Way Things Are. Humility is about Being a Real Human Being. If someone has attained full Realization, like a Prophet, their self assessment cannot be considered as arrogance. If Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Light”, he is not being arrogant, just stating a fact. If Muhammad says, “I am the best amongst the children of Adam and I am not boasting”, its the same. I don’t know enough about the Buddha to quote him, but I’m sure he said he was Enlightened, and that was not boasting or being arrogant. However if I say I am enlightened when I’m not, I am boasting and not being humble. In terms of behavior, humility is also about treating others as equals, not inferior nor superior. Humility is about not insulting others to try and prove your superiority. Your superiority should manifest itself by itself, not in comparison to someone else. A spiritual teacher may need to make statements about their states in order to teach others about who they are and to fulfill their teaching function. If someone says something inaccurate, it is not wrong to point out their error, but it is very important how it is done, so as not to hurt feelings, because one should be sensitive to the hearts of people, the same hearts whose “knots” we are trying to cut. This is compassion. One cannot be truly compassionate without being humble. Thus all World Teachers (at the least- I won’t say anything about other teachers/gurus because I am using them as examples) were compassionate and humble in their behavior towards others, in spite of having made the above statements of Truth which sound arrogant.
The Buddha, like Jesus, didn’t write anything, or at least, nothing that we have, so the Buddha quote above, is misleading because we have no evidence that it came from him.
Zak, we can only go by what the early Buddhists “transcribed” of his talks. If you don’t trust the Pali Canon, there is no reason to trust anything the Buddha supposedly taught.
Krishnamurti, whom you say you ‘grok’, says, “Humility is that complete not-knowing which is dying.” This refers to mental not psychic humility. So when you go to ask a question internally, that is, to focus Light, or noetic clarity, and think, you must not bring your ego, your personal desire, your preferences and prejudices, with you. This is called ‘dying to self’ for objective vision cannot be had by means of the self, but only by the self seeking what the Light, which is truth, or real objectivity, shows. You treat humility, as does Rand, as if it only meant psychic humility, and even then, only as a jaundiced version of that…. i.e. as that which negates our being, rather than as a form of humility which relaxes and releases the cramp of ego. Socrates espoused the required realization and admission enforced at the doorway of knowledge, ‘I do not know’, as the means of divesting of all but the desire to know what is true. Not what one’s conditioning leads one to believe.
Daniel, it depends how one defines humility. I believe in honesty, and for me humility has no real significance. When I meditate, I empty myself, but this has nothing to do with conventional humility. It is simply creating an opening for Spirit.
I have no regard for the saying “I know nothing,” because every philosopher who says this continues to blabber on as if they know something. When one is in Communion, conventional knowing/grasping is suspended, but when one returns to ordinary consciousness, there is again knowing, on whatever level one knows.
Did I not tell you that you are as Gods…?
I am the most humble person who ever lived #humblebrag
“To the extent we behave with humility, to that extent there will result good.”
—Sri Ramana Maharshi