Power of Selflessness
In today’s world finding selfless people is very difficult and rare.
Reason is obvious - one person is in a competition with the entire
world and interested in enjoying all the world's luxuries. Anything
comes in TV/Social media, people jump to buy or acquire
them. That is the reason no one is able to declare that I’m rich. All are
born rich, most of them die as poor. Reason; not because of poverty; Poverty is
a state of mind.
I have not seen real rich people. Everyone is struggling under the
shortage of something. I witnessed many people around the world, most of them
are living life with lots of fear, dissatisfaction, and insecurity. Fact is
most of the educated and highly paid people are living in a more insecure way
when compared with daily laborers and uneducated people.
If we look at the daily laborers and other street salespeople, they don’t have monthly salary, no health
insurance, no good living environments, but I witnessed great confidence, great
joy, and great peace in them.
Why are most educated people suffering?
There is a proverb in Kannada, ಹಾಸಿಗೆ ಇದ್ದಷ್ಟು ಕಾಲು ಚಾಚು means; Spread your legs as much as the bed. One
should not go and have the commitments more than his capacity. In my
observation most of the educated are opted for EMI’s which are at neck level to their
salaries.
Due to expensive lifestyle and financial commitments, most of them are
living as poor. I’m working in Information Technology (IT) field, salaries in
IT are much higher when compared with any other sectors in India. But I
witnessed more poverty and insecurity with IT people then other non-IT people.
After 10 - 20 years of going to America or Europe, people come back to
India. I have
observed more fear, more insecurity, and less confidence in their life. What
for your earnings when there is no satisfaction or peace in life?
Observed that people who are increasing their earnings are becoming
poorer than earlier. Why do you need more money to become poorer? If you examine your life 10 years
back your earning is very less, but you had great confidence and peace in life, now your earnings are 200% times or
300% more but, you become more insecure, poor and restless.
Please teach your children: greatness in giving, greatness in helping,
greatness in service and sacrifice. It helps them to stop running races on carrots like a donkey. In
that way their life will be more satisfied, happy and peaceful.
How selfishness or greediness affects your health?
There is a world-famous book: You Can Heal Your Life written by Louise hay.
In that she has mentioned most of the chronic health issues are mostly related
to mind or thoughts.
Here are the different health issues you would invite, if you started
living restless:
- HEART ATTACK, Reason: Squeezing all the joy out of life, in favour
of money or position.
- HEART PROBLEMS, Reason: Lack of joy, dealing with issues from
anger, not love.
- BLOOD PRESSURE, Reason: HIGH (hypertension): Longstanding emotional
problems not solved.
- COLDS, Reason: Too much going on at once. Mental confusion and
disorder.
- DIABETES, Reason: Longing for what might have been. No sweetness
left in life.
- ULCERS Reason: Fear, a strong belief that you are not good enough. "What is eating away at you?"
Power of Renunciation and Sacrifice:
Why did Rama, Buddha and
Jesus become great? Not because of property or assets they had, they become great because they just treated the entire empire or world as nothing and lived life
with a lot of Love,
Abandonment and Sacrifice.
Gandhi became great because he just worked for the nation in a selfless way and never asked for any position or
power.
If you examine most of the great people, they become great by Service
and Sacrifice, and their one of the great qualities is selflessness. That is the power of Selflessness.
When you are most appreciated?
Just go and check your own social media posts, most views, likes you get
for things which are related to helping others or doing something without any
selfishness or great hard work that helps many people directly or indirectly.
It's a circle. more you
come out of your selfishness; more you reach to the outside world.
If I die today, I leave this earth in
the most
satisfactory way, because; I served few other people during my journey. I feel
worth lived! Here are my small contributions:
- Tamil Nadu Floods Rice Donated and worked as CSR. [ClickHere]
- Uttarakhand Floods salary donation. [No Reference to Link]
- Canada Blood Cancer donation. [ClickHere]
- Sri Durga Devi Temple Donation. [ClickHere]
- Anjaneya Swami Temple Hundi Donation. [ClickHere]
- Statue of liberty donation. [ClickHere]
- Go Seva donation. [To promote A2 Milk and Indigenous cows] [ClickHere]
- Annapoorneshwari Temple Food Donations. [To feed mass crowds] [ClickHere]
- Corona Virus prevention donation. [ClickHere]
- Cauvery Call River Side Plantation. [ClickHere]
- Given Free Motivational sessions at Orphanage and School/Colleges.
[ClickHere]
- Books donation to village children. [During most of my
travels].
- Many of my small donations and other things are not recorded,
overall, I might have donated INR Rs.10,00,000 to Rs.15,00,000 Rupees to
others by this time. Still I consider these are very small contributions
from my end like the Squirrel contribution in Ramayana.
- When doing some of the donations I had NO
money in my pocket, But I used my Credit Cards and later paid
back
to the Bank.
You might wonder why some of my donations are given to Temples?! Yes, who knows, I may be
helping another Steve Jobs to remember my contributions [Indirectly]. Ref Story
Link: Steve Jobs says: "I went to Hare Krishna Temple every Sunday"
Donations must be disclosed. As per Gururaj Achar Guruji, by displaying or
publishing donations, we promote others to do the same. By noticing your
donations, your children and grandchildren will continue to do the same and do
the bigger donations. In early days Kings built temples and lakes and they
used to mention their names and
years of donations, by observing King’s children and grandchildren used to do
bigger than their parent’s contributions. This is the right way of promoting selflessness.
Rama said “Janani JanmaBhoomischa swargadapi gariyasi” which means; mother and mother land are greater
than heaven. One must take care of mother land by his service and donations. No
matter where you are born and which country you belong to, you must love your country and
contribute service and donations to your country.
No matter which country you are born, you must donate to your country in its
difficult times. Don't say I'm paying tax, you must be grateful to the country
it's provided you a job where you can pay tax, many do not have job. Don't say
I'm paying tax, look at the people who are not coming under tax pay category,
look at the people who don't have job or salary. Have minimum concerns to your
fellow beings, you must help your nation to bring prosperity in all the beings.
What do I have to do? Many things are pending in my life, how can I relax? Our life is meant
to be incomplete; no one ever completed his life. To know more; please read my other blog: Life is meant to be incomplete, don’t try to complete it..
Story of School Van Driver:
In the year 2014 I was travelling from Chitradurga to Bengaluru, it
happened one school van driver was sitting next to me in a
bus.
He started explaining his richness and satisfaction in life; he was earning Rs.4500 [INR] per
month, spending on house rent Rs.1500 and grocery and other expenses Rs.1000,
he has 2 children, for them he spends Rs.1000 per month on school fees.
Still he is saving Rs.1000 per month. Sometimes he gets Saturday and Sunday
Over time (OT) jobs from school, that day school pays Rs.300 extra, most of the
months he earns Rs. 600 or 900 from OT jobs.
He was expressing great joy, great satisfaction and celebrations of
life. That time I was an employee of Worlds #4 Ranked MNC! It was giving great
payments to all the employees. It's almost 10 to 20
times greater than the school van driver’s earnings. But unfortunately, I never
noticed a single confident and most satisfied face in that MNC?! In fact, I was
listening to a lot of dissatisfactions, insecurity and poverty stories
from my colleagues and co-workers.
Sacrifice requires richness in heart, and the mind never lets you feel
calm, because the mind's job is to make you live in fear, if you listen to your
heart, your mind loses its influence, so those who are always slaves to mind
will live in fear. But once you start listening to your heart, all your fears
disappear, peace and tranquillity dwell in you.
A story of street sales Lady:
When I was standing on a street in Bangalore, evening time an old man
and woman were beginning in a street. One of the street Banana sales lady given
a fruits (of 8 to 10) to the old begging pair. I was surprised for a moment, if
I had been asked by the same beggars, I would have paid for one banana.
Now tell me, who is rich? If you have the wealth to donate, you need to
have richness in heart. I was zero in front of that street sales lady. It is
said that mind does not allow you to donate/renunciation, but the heart allows.
Sacrifice requires richness in heart.
If we examine the above story and comparisons, we can confirm that this statement is true:
Poverty is a state of mind.
Don't be too selfish, when you die you are remembered as a selfish
person. Just give some donation to the country, your memories will be
registered differently in people's mind.
I know most of you are donating and helping others, please promote and
publish your donations, this is the only way to bring down the greediness and
selfishness and bring up the service and sacrifice in humanity.
Being selfless is
not dared to die, it's dared to help
other’s lives before you die.
Author: GCV (Vishnuvardhana GC)
Kereya neeranu Kerege chelli
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