(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Untitled Lecture)

The quality of humility and the quality of being able to develop love of God come together. It is not possible to develop love of God if there is no humility in our hearts. A person who is proud, how can he hear!? His ears are blocked because he is overwhelmed by his own ideas that he cannot even hear what everyone else says. But if one is humble, then one can think, ‘Yes, I need mercy.’

So a humble personality is eager to hear and being eager to hear from superior personalities also brings about special dynamics. When people are eager to hear then the mature vaisnava who speaks opens up his heart. He will automatically, by the eagerness of the audience, become very enthusiastic and he will find that there are so many realizations in his heart that he did not even know he had! Because in the relationship between vaisnavas, the mood is very intimate and close and one of deep friendship; a mood of acceptance. An envious person cannot accept.

An envious person will always find some reason not to accept others, he will always find some quality that is not allowed, something wrong, ‘You can’t sit like that, you can’t look like that, you can’t speak like that…’ and so on and so on. Just on some external feature, an envious person will reject. Basically anyone who is not supporting them, adoring them, recognizing their greatness – such persons are undesirable.

So humility is the quality where one is ready to see good in others and recognizes that everyone can make a contribution which can be appreciated. So amongst vaisnavas there is an atmosphere of appreciation.