The good serve their families, the saintly serve the world

-


In a companion blog, I described the story of a friend from college – Alok Sagar – who after a great education, a doctorate in Engineering from Rice University in USA and a faculty job suddenly dropped it all, to take to the forests as a hermit and began service to forest Tribals, wild life and forests of Central India. He is now known as Maharishi Alok a title of great respect for the spiritual and the educated. In the comments to that post a family friend expressed disappointment and said the family had tried to convince him not to take that road.

Good men and women of the world strive to succeed in their worldly careers and serve their families through that success while reserving a portion of their time, effort and money to serve the world, others in need, quietly, anonymously whenever possible for a deed of compassion does not emerge from a desire for worldly rewards.

However, the saintly serve the world instead. Buddha and Jesus abandoned their families (although after ensuring that they are provided for) as do many other lesser humans, still encumbered with human weaknesses, but who take to the spiritual path seeking purification. In a few cases, the wives of some spiritual persons such as Gandhi and Kabir became their companions on the spiritual path, giving up the worldly and material wealth along with them. The world needs them, for they serve many families of the world not just their own. The world needs the likes of Alok Maharishi who has helped restore some of the forests of Central India.
There are a variety of other situations, where good humans may find themselves trapped in where, despite their best intentions, they are unable to be of much service to their families. Such persons, rather than viewing this as an adversity, must view it as an opportunity to serve the world at large, for while selfish persons are born to feather their own nest and fatten their behinds before they may be pushed into the bottomless pit by circumstance and Universe, good humans are born to sing the song of a joyous universe in which all life is parts of a single whole. Through this they shall attain unto sainthood even if they did not start of as that. 

The demonic on the other hand seek profit from the world without caring for the harm they may bring to others in their pursuits. The foulest of them wear the garb of hypocrisy, that they are performing a public service. They do carry out some charitable acts but they announce it to the world, shout about it from roof tops and ask the world to place them on a throne of honor, a throne broad enough to fit their generous behinds, for while compassion dwells in the upper cavities of a human, greed dwells in its lower ones. They may share the profit with their families, they often do, but in reality they only harm themselves, their families and the world. These demonic persons are born for the destruction of the world.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

You are what you eat, and drink

-
Image
C onsume an ounce of whiskey and you will notice the change in mood and behavior immediately. However, it is not just whiskey everything we drink, even the quality of water, or anything we eat has some subtle or significant influence on our behavior. Consumed over a period, not just the weekend binge, the type of food we consume literally shapes our personality prompting ancient thinkers like Hippocrates to remark, “You are what you eat”. Some question this by saying that it is our experiences and habits that shape our personality but the two are linked because it is our habits that shape our tastes and food choices. In another post in this blog it was  mentioned that a human personality is shaped by memory and experiences and one might ask which of the two is more significant - food or experiences?. My understanding is that humans gravitate towards the foods and actions that agree with their inner inclinations and personality and so in the end both causes are two sides of th...
Read more

From Birds to Telepathy

-
Image
  Sparrow by  Laitche T he house that I live in presently was built in stages  beginning in 1991 during  vacations and sabbaticals in my career. By 1995, the ground floor of the house was more or less complete except for some finishing that continued later. In the center of the roof of the living room was a hole meant for a center light. To hide the protruding wires a small round plastic sheet covered it with another circular hole in the center of it for the light. A similar one existed in the front porch of the house. I lived in the house through most of 1995 with frequent visits of three or four days to Delhi. At this time a pair of house sparrows occupied the porch roof cavity and made it their home. There were no complaints about that since it was not intended to fix a light there in a hurry. Sparrows are cute little birds anyway and I often leave seeds out for them in the garden. Sometime later the female of the pair moved into the living roo...
Read more

Spirituality and Evil

-
Image
Albert Einstein   " A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.”   Albert Einstein I t is so much nicer to talk of beautiful things that exist on our lovely planet that it is really a pity that I had to write this post that touches on something that to me is evil. Nevertheless I have written it because if an evil is ignored it is difficult to eradicate it. The evil I am referring to is about the denial of freedom of belief and imposition of beliefs on people and that is something even the followers of the greatest of religions on earth have not been free of though they have done so mu...
Read more