Name:dattaswami •
Title: Social service Vs Service to Lord •
Date posted: 05/20/07 12:25
Q: Social service Vs Service to Lord
When the service to your self is considered as selfishness, how can the service to the group of souls (Society) cannot be selfishness? Whether it is a single zero or hundred zeros, it is immaterial. God is like the number one which is greater than a single zero or hundred zeros. Sankara condemned the social service with reference to the service to God (refer to Loka Sevaka Mata Nirasa of Sankara Digvijayam). This entire society is the kingdom of God and is running under the divine administration of God. If there is a beggar, he is under the punishment of sins as decided by the judgment of God. No injustice can happen in His kingdom. Therefore, converting a beggar in to a devotee is primary work.
Helping him in materialistic way is only a secondary activity since the punishment is only for the change of soul. Your effort to transform that soul to become devotee is appreciated by God because that is the very purpose of punishment also. Unless the soul is transformed, you cannot help the soul in anyway. If you are doing some service to a beggar, remember that you are doing it by the will of God only. Therefore, you cannot interfere in the divine administration in any way if you are saving a life of a beggar by giving food to a dying person, it is emergency-service. If the life is gone, there is no possibility for the soul to transform by devotion here. Therefore, this emergency- service should be done by every body because the life is the basis for the transformation. However, remember that you are doing such service also by the will of God only.
Otherwise the beggar may die even after eating your food. Providing the basic needs for the human beings is the emergency-service by which God is always pleased. If the fellow died after your service, it means that there is no possibility of transformation of that soul on earth. Only the special methods of torture in the hell can transform the soul. Therefore, the soul was sent to hell by the Lord. If there is possibility of transformation on the earth, God will give him food through some body to save the life. Therefore, you should not get even a trace of egoism even in the social service because you are driven by God only everywhere. The social service is not greater than the personal service to God because God is above the society. When Jesus indicated the crossing of I by crucification, it means that every soul is to be crossed in the same way. The society is not above the God and in fact it is not above even your family. The family is grateful to you and so the business is fair. The society is not grateful to you after receiving help from you.
The society is just thanking you by words after receiving your service, where as the family is reciprocating your service through the service. Your self and your family are certainly better than the society. Of course, in the case of emergency-service, you can rise above your self and family to help in the basic needs of the poor people because the life should be saved and the life should be settled for any spiritual effort.
Since we do not know the back ground of any soul, our impressions about any soul cannot be real. Suppose you are seeing the scene of hanging a prisoner you will sympathise the prisoner and criticize the jailer. If you have seen the past scene of the prisoner in which he murdered several innocent people you will kill him immediately on the spot. The judiciary system has taken so much time of enquiry to arrive at such punishment. Abhimanyu was brought up by Krishna and he was the only nephew of the Lord. Krishna diverted Arjuna from the war and saw that Abhimanyu got killed. Anyone will scold Krishna on this aspect as the most cruel person. However, Krishna knows the entire background of Abhimanyu. Abhimanyu was a demon who killed several innocent people.
Therefore the actions of Lord cannot be understood because they are based on the total background. Your actions are based on the present scene only. Even in the present you cannot know the internal nature. However, the Lord knows the internal structure of the soul. Ravana came as a saint begging for food. Sita sympathized him and tried to give food. Therefore the human being cannot understand the internal quality of a beggar. Therefore the social service should be done only based on the command from the Lord as told by Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. The Lord has a small human body and at the same time has simultaneously the infinite body which is the cosmos (Viswarupam). Therefore the personal service to His human body or to His macrocosmic body is one and the same. However, the will of the Lord is very important.
The Lord is pleased if you act according to His will. After all, the final goal of the entire spiritual effort is only to please the Lord. Therefore you should simply act according to the will of the God without any analysis. Your analysis is limited to the present and is also apparent. His will is the result of the total analysis done even at the deepest level. His will is not a blind will at random. It appears as if it is a bind will due to the lack of knowledge of total background. Krishna desired the personal service to His limited form from Gopikas. The same Krishna wanted the service to be done to His close devotees that is Pandavas. Rama wanted the total help from Hanuman etc limited to only Sita who is His closest devotee being Maha Lakshmi. You misunderstand that the Lord is interested in His close relatives. However, you don’t know that some of His close relatives are the liberated souls.
If you are in His place you will be interested in all the relatives. Krishna got the Yadavas killed by war and by drinking wine at the end. He has given ten thousand Yadavas to Duryodhana to help him in the war. All of them were killed. In the end all His close relatives including His sons and grandsons killed each other and He was a silent spectator. You think that Rama was fond of His wife and exploited Hanuman to save her. In fact the whole war took place only due to the foolish desire of Sita for the golden deer. However, you do not know the background of Sita. She is the possessor of the entire wealth of this universe. Was she attracted by the petty golden deer? The drama was written like that by Rama. Sankara wandered all over the country to uplift the humanity.
Here the Lord liked the social service at the cosmic level. Therefore sometimes the Lord may be pleased with your service at the level of His human body. Sometimes He may be pleased with your service done to His devotees, who are in disguise as His relatives to test you. Sometimes he may require your service at the level of the entire society. The will of the Lord is important. The will of the Lord is always justified if the entire background is known. Jesus was pleased with the service of a woman who applied scent on His feet. It is purely personal service at the level of His body. A devotee commented that instead of doing such personal waste service for the enjoyment of Jesus, it is better to do the social service by feeding beggars. However, Jesus objected to that remark and supported the personal service of that woman. Jesus told that beggars will be always there but the human incarnation is very rare. The background of this is to be analyzed. The devotee became jealous with the service of that woman. If he was in the place of Jesus he would not have passed the same comment.
The society is not above the God. This is the concept of Jesus and Sankara. There cannot be uniform service to the souls because each soul has its own level of nature. The service should be multy leveled and such capability lies with God only. The woman who served Jesus was a liberated soul that accompanied the Lord and was far superior to any other soul in the world. Rama was very fond of Sita by blindly following Her wish for the golden deer. His blind love was not on His wife but on Goddess Maha Lakshmi who was a liberated soul.
At the Lotus Feet of His Holiness Sri Dattaswami
Anil Antony
www.universal-spirituality.org
Universal Spirituality for World Peace [email protected]
Name:Anchorite •
Date: 05/22/07 1:32
A: SHE LEFT
She met a guy she didn't know
With him she left I guess
She never bothered to explain
She grabbed her stuff and self-expressed
Some time ago she rang my bell
Perhaps she found her way
She didn't have a word to say
She fried the eggs and bacon well
Now little he's and little she's
Abound our silent premise
They come they go you never know
They seldom stamp or self-address
