Do Good Rather than Ask for Blessings Choose to do only the good.

Do Good Rather than Ask for Blessings
Choose to do only the good. 

A warning to prepare yourself for the future conduct of your life is the best substitute for a blessing and the most reasonable. If you do good, then even if you don’t receive blessings, you’ll have to do well. If you do evil, then no matter what blessings can be contrived, they can’t make you do well. 

To do evil is like tossing a rock in the water: It will have to sink immediately. No one, no matter how charismatic, can come and charm or plead with the rock to float back up to the surface. If you do evil, you will have to sink, spoiling your dignity, your character, and your reputation, like a heavy rock sunk down into the mud. 

To do good is like light oil: When you pour it on water, it is bound to float as an iridescence over the surface. To do good adds to your dignity and to your reputation. People will be sure to praise and respect you, to exalt you like the oil that floats over water. Even if you should have enemies intent on hating you, reviling you to make you sink, they won’t have any effect and will simply fall victim to their own efforts. 

So make up your mind to be courageous in doing only the good, without fear or apprehension for any obstacle whatsoever. The person who trusts in the Triple Gem, the person with true happiness, the person who prospers, achieving his or her desired goals, is the person who does only the good.

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From "An Iridescence on the Water", by Chao Khun Nararatana Rajamanit (Tryk Dhammavitakko), translated from the Thai by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 2 November 2013, 

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/nararatana/iridescence.html

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Chao Khun Nararatana Rajamanit (Tryk Dhammavitakko), better known as Chao Khun Nor, was born on 5 February, 1897. Prior to his ordination, he was a member of King Rama VI's personal staff, and was so trusted by the king that he was given the rank of chao phraya — the highest Thai rank of conferred nobility — when he was only 25. 

After the king's death in 1926, he ordained at Wat Thepsirin in Bangkok and never left the wat compound from 1936. 

Even though the wat was one of the most lavishly endowed temples in Bangkok, Chao Khun Nararatana lived a life of exemplary austerity and was well known for his meditative powers.

 Towards the end of his life, despite developing a large cancerous lesion on his neck, he maintained impeccable poise and continued to receive lay visitors without the slightest hint of being oppressed by the pain of the disease. 

Instead of concealing the lesion, he wanted his illness to become a salient lesson in Dhamma for the people and had pictures taken of the gaping lesion for people to contemplate on the impermanent and degenerative nature of the body.

He adhered strictly to the monastic routine of going to the main hall to chant daily in spite of the debilitating nature of the cancer,  and was quoted as saying that the time he does skip it would be the time he would die. Thus, he continued to lead the congregation for morning and evening chanting daily until he passed away on 8 January, 1971 at the age of 73.