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Sri Humananda "The mind is a bundle of thoughts. The thoughts arise because there is the thinker. The thinker is the ego. The ego, if sought, will automatically vanish. The ego and the mind are the same. The ego is the root-thought from which all other thoughts arise."
The Art of Serving OM Shanti – Peace unto You. I have mentioned a number of times that Tantra is about energies inside of you, some negative and some positive, and I don't mean 'negative' in a bad way – more like the opposite sides of a magnet. Some energies attract, some repulse. The practice of Tantra aims to balance these energies. Now, we live in "two worlds" in a manner of speaking, the inner and the outer. In Tantra even these two seemingly opposite worlds are to be merged into a whole. It is no use only practicing the management of the energies inside of you. You also have to practice the management of the outside world, and in a Tantric way manage the interchange of energies between the inner and the outer worlds as well in some way. In the outer world such a way manifests itself fairly clearly in a form we call serving, and it can be a very, very tricky thing to do properly. So often we want to help, whether we are called to it or not – we feel a need to serve - and we serve by giving something to somebody else, whether that be of our possessions or money or energy in the form of helping them out. And some of that is fine, really we should be doing some of those things whether we are doing it properly or not. It is, however, much better for you and for those being helped or receiving, as well as for the whole universe if such service can be done properly. So, how can we serve properly? Tantra gives us a word: Seva – which means "selfless service". You serve or give without having any comeback from it in any form. And that is the tricky part. If you examine your giving, most likely you will find your ego somehow involved somewhere in the process – like it makes you "feel good" to do good, or better, to do "right". Ha! Yip, you have just duped yourself. You are not being "good" when you serve, if when you serve you think you are being good. Forget about being good and kind and generous and all of that, because when you stop thinking about these things you will be good and kind and generous - you will be natural. True service – serving or giving – is in and by itself holistic and natural and without effort of any kind. That may sound strange, since we think of "spending" energy or money or something in service, but think of the exchange of oxygen and carbon monoxide that trees manage when night changes into day. It is not as though they "think" about it (well, you get my point) – and every part of the whole benefits in a real and natural way. The entire service (if one should even call it that) is reciprocal. As given, so equally is received, like a to-and-fro flow or a Divine Dance between the so-called inner and outer worlds. It is this Dance that is experienced as pure Bliss – not the thrill of ego that accompanies our service or giving so often – but a pure unfolding of the Self in the world. And it is not as though this Bliss is the reward. No, it is your natural state of being when it is not being interfered with by your ego. So how do we do this serving properly? How do we remove ego from the process of serving? Well, first we have to understand that we have to serve – and that this service itself is as natural as our own being, and also that we can only serve in such a natural way when we are in our natural state of being. We are not in a natural state when we start relating the service to something else, which we do by analytics. In other words, we judge whether to give or not because of a host of other logical and reasonable considerations – how much to give, how to give, when to give, to whom we should give, and even if we should give or not. By then the art of true service has been lost, and so also the natural balance of the whole process. Analytics only become involved because of our ego. Even our belief that we are "rescuing" somebody contains an analytical element, so be careful with your rescuing of people. A good suggestion is to actually practice giving since most of us tend to do it only when we "want" to, which is ego again, and don't want to sometimes when we are asked to. So start giving randomly. To practice, give to one or two random people every day, without planning to do so in any orderly fashion, and try to keep your thoughts about it to a minimum. You don't have to go far or look far to find where or who to be in service of – everything and everyone is in "need" of our service – as we are in "need" of theirs. It is a natural and reciprocal interchange of natural and opposite energies. Such giving can take many forms – money, stuff, kind words, a compliment meant sincerely, and so on, but without thinking about it. Just feel it, and then do it. After a while it will become natural - just as natural as you are when you don't think about it. And it will then be good and kind and generous – all of those, and more – naturally. Namaste.
Sri Humananda © Dwapara 307 (2007) |