Apr 18, 2010, 12.00am IST
TNN.
Acts of service are not uniform in the benefits they confer. When service is undertaken by power-hungry people, under compulsion or by imitative urges, it results in more harm than good.
Self-aggrandisement, competition or ostentation are motives that pollute the sacred spiritual practice of service. One who wishes to do spiritual service needs overcome ego, exhibitionism and favouritism.
Before embarking on a service project, ask yourself, is your heart full of selfless love, humility and compassion? In your head do you have an intelligent understanding and knowledge of the problem and its solution? Are your hands eager to offer the healing touch? And can you gladly spare and share time, energy and skill to help others in dire need?
These qualities take root and grow only when the idea of the ‘Reality of Unity’ is implanted in our consciousness. Think of it this way. All living beings are cells in the body of God. Their origin, continued existence, and progress are all in, by and for God. The individual is a unit in this unity. There are no other aliens. When one is ill, all suffer. When one is happy, all are partners of that happiness. Faith in this truth is the fundamental equipment the sevak or volunteer must acquire.
In order to deserve the sacred name Seva, the activity must be freed from all attachment to the individual self and based on firm faith in the Divine resident in every being. Seva has to be considered as worshipping the form that God has assumed to give volunteers the chance of worship.
When a hungry nara or man is served a hearty meal, what is being done is Narayana Seva -- serving the Supreme Lord, for nara is only ‘a form and a name’ projected by maya or human ignorance. Do not allow your service activities to turn into shops which concentrate on window dressing, in order to attract attention and patronage.
Before attempting to advise people who are less fortunate than you are, you must endeavour to advise yourself ; before venturing to reform them, reform yourself. Avoid boasting before them about your superiority; it will hurt them and keep them away. Do not indulge in lectures. Action alone can inspire action. Example alone can instruct. Tall talk is a barren exercise.
An illiterate person need not be an ignorant person. He might be well aware of the ideals propounded by scriptures, saints and sages perhaps through oral tradition.
Today, we are confronted everywhere with statistics parading quantities and reports in glowing terms. Do not bother about adding to the number or achieving a target; value quality, not quantity. Genuine and intensive devoted service offered in a few places is more fruitful than superficial service offered to a large number.
Life cannot continue for long without others serving you, and you serving others. Master-servant, ruler-ruled, guru-disciple, employer-employee, parents-children, all these are bound by mutual service. Every one is a sevak or servant.
Remember that the body, with its senses-mind-brain complex has been gifted to you to be used for helping the helpless. Seva is the highest path of devotion which wins the Grace of God. It promotes mental purity, diminishes egoism and enables one to experience, through sympathetic understanding, the unity of mankind.
November 21, 1986
(Discourse: Sri Sathya Sai Baba)
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