In order to train the ego it is necessary that one should distinguish what is the right of the ego and what is not its right. The ego has a tendency to want what it needs and also what it does not need. The first is its natural appetite and the second is greed. This is like the nature of the dog, that after eating the flesh off a bone still guards the bone against another dog. Besides this the ego has a tendency to want more and more of what it likes, regardless of right and justice, also regardless of the after-effect.

For instance a person may eat and drink more and more until this makes him ill. Every kind of gratification of desires or appetite gives a tendency to want more and more. Then there is the desire for change of experience, and when a person gives in to it, it never ends. Excess of desire in appetites or passions always produces an intoxication in man. It increases to such an extent that the limited means that man has become insufficient to gratify his desires. Therefore, naturally, to satisfy his desires he wants more than what is his own, and he wants what belongs to other people. When this begins, naturally injustice begins. Then he cannot get what he wants, then there is pain and disappointment. When one person gratifies his desires more than other people, the others who see this want to take away the gratification he has. One naturally expects a thinker to understand this and to relieve his ego of all that is unnecessary.

The training of the ego is this, to eat to live and not to live to eat, and so with all things one desires.

The nature of desire is such that nothing will satisfy it forever, and sometimes the pleasure of a moment costs more than it is worth. And when one's eyes are closed to this one takes the momentary pleasure regardless of what will come after.

The training of the ego is not necessarily a sad life of renunciation, nor is it necessarily the life of a hermit.

The training is to be wise in life,
and to understand what we desire and why we desire it
and what effect will follow,
what we can afford and what we cannot afford.
It is also to understand desire from the point of view of justice, to know whether it is right and just.

If the ego is given way to in the very least in the excess of its desires, it becomes master of one's self. Therefore in training the ego even the slightest thing must be avoided which may in time master us.

The ideal life is the life of balance, not necessarily the life of renunciation. Renunciation must not be practiced for the sake of renunciation, but it must be practiced if it is necessary for balance.

Verily, balance is the ideal life.