Sai Re­flec­tions

?Love is equal­ly present in all. You make use of this love for self­ish­ness, self-in­ter­est and for ser­vice.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, in the present day world, self­ish­ness and self-in­ter­est pre­dom­i­nate. Every­thing is done now with an at­ti­tude of "my peo­ple and for me." If there is no so­ci­ety, where do you and your peo­ple stand? You get ed­u­ca­tion out of so­ci­ety and earn mon­ey from it. Even the po­si­tion and rep­u­ta­tion you hold come from the so­ci­ety. Hav­ing re­ceived so much from so­ci­ety, what help are you ren­der­ing in re­turn? While re­ceiv­ing the ben­e­fits from it you still keep harm­ing the so­ci­ety! Over the years, Sri Sathya Sai Ba­ba has placed great em­pha­sis on the val­ue of self­less ser­vice by say­ing, "Hands that serve are holi­er than lips that pray." When we are en­gaged in any kind of ac­tiv­i­ty, our mind is fo­cused on the task at hand. The mind has a free run and takes us along its whim­si­cal path on­ly when the body is not en­gaged in any ac­tiv­i­ty. The adage, "an idle mind is a dev­il's work­shop" is so true. In these times of fast com­mu­ni­ca­tion and bom­bard­ment by the me­dia, our lives are made stress­ful and peace of mind seems so far off. An idle mind can al­so trig­ger by it­self all pent up neg­a­tive feel­ings and imag­i­nary fears.That is why Sai Ba­ba al­so de­fines rest thus: "Change of work is rest... oth­er­wise it be­comes rust!" The mind, which is a bun­dle of de­sires, is con­stant­ly fed by fleet­ing thoughts and hence it is vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble to still the mind. We are mere ex­pres­sions of our thoughts. Even prayers, med­i­ta­tion or singing the prais­es of the Lord can­not give quick re­sults.

How­ev­er, when the body is en­gaged in ac­tiv­i­ty, the mind has a bet­ter chance to be fo­cused away from use­less and neg­a­tive thoughts. Sri Sathya Sai Ba­ba says, "Bend the body, mend the sens­es and end the mind." There­fore, when­ev­er we are en­gaged in good deeds, like self­less­ly serv­ing oth­ers, we are not on­ly pu­ri­fy­ing our sens­es but al­so fill­ing our minds with pos­i­tive and God­ly thoughts. Bend­ing the body sig­ni­fies hu­mil­i­ty, an es­sen­tial qual­i­ty for a true spir­i­tu­al seek­er. To please God, to please our con­science, we have an in­escapable du­ty to per­form–ie, to give some­thing back to the world that has and still is sus­tain­ing us. What is ser­vice? Every ac­tiv­i­ty is ser­vice, as long as there is no self­ish­ness or ego. We of­fer the fruits of our labour to the Lord with­out any re­ward. It is up to Him if He gives us some­thing in re­turn–greater than our in­put, less­er than our in­put or even noth­ing at all. The man­i­fest world is God's king­dom, our Fa­ther's king­dom and we, as His chil­dren, have right­ful­ly in­her­it­ed every­thing in the world to en­joy, but not ex­ploit and de­stroy.

We can­not en­joy any­thing un­less we do our part to care and share. Af­ter all, no one en­joys a great meal with­out shar­ing it with an­oth­er! All the re­sources of the world and the ben­e­fits which so­ci­ety has to of­fer for our hap­pi­ness are not just for our­selves alone. There are oth­ers around us who are less for­tu­nate. We have an oblig­a­tion to make the world a bet­ter place for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to in­her­it. Ser­vice is not con­fined to help­ing the sick and the dis­ad­van­taged alone. It al­so in­volves avoid­ing un­nec­es­sary waste and de­struc­tion of re­sources. De­sires have a vo­ra­cious ap­petite to con­sume far be­yond our needs and breed self­ish­ness. By learn­ing to man­age well all the God giv­en re­sources–mon­ey, food, time and en­er­gy–we im­prove not on­ly the qual­i­ty of our own life, but al­so be­come priv­i­leged to share the sur­plus re­sources with those who are less for­tu­nate. This is true spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and ex­pan­sion of love in a prac­ti­cal way. When we wake up every morn­ing, our prayers need not be in quan­ti­ty, but im­proved in qual­i­ty. We can ask our­selves: "What can I do to­day that will please God?" What is Sai Ba­ba's clar­i­on call? Love! Love!! Love!!! And, what is love in ac­tion? Ser­vice! Ser­vice!! Ser­vice!!! Re­mem­ber: "Love All Serve All".