Selfishness
Swami Vivekananda says: The degree of Unselfishness marks the degree of Success everywhere. Now that statement is ‘very heavy’. As human beings we tend to be selfish, we work towards our families, our community, our race, our country. We probably cannot be perfectly unselfish; the goal however is to tend towards unselfishness. Only Godly people and incarnations like Jesus Christ, Buddha, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa were perfectly unselfish. They were the leaders of Mankind.
Food for thought: Think about the following statements by the great saint:
“However we may try, there cannot be any action which is perfectly pure or any which is perfectly impure, taking purity or impurity in the sense of injury or non-injury. We cannot breathe or live without injuring others, and every morsel of food we eat is taken from another’s mouth; our very lives are crowding out some other lives. It may be those of men, or animals, or small fungi, but someone somewhere we have to crowd out. That being the case, it naturally follows that perfection can never be attained by work. We may work through all eternity, but there will be no way out of this intricate maze: we may work on and on and on, but there will be no end”.
We usually expect something in return for our work
We work for a pay; A speaker expects applause; We all love praise – that’s our nature. There is always some motivation. All work we do with a particular motivation has some form of misery attached to it, that is the truth. Work/duty done with the least amount of motivation brings the greatest happiness and bliss. Work/duty done to spread the message of God without the motivation to gain name/fame will bring you more happiness than expecting praise/fame for what you do.
To judge a person
There is no particular standard to judge a man. Each man has to be judged on his own, we cannot compare and judge people/ countries/ races. Every person and country have their own reasons for their conditions. Judge them by their own standard. We probably shouldn’t compare because the person/country is a cumulative result of many events/ environments. We have to respect every person for what he is. Naturally it follows that: we shouldn’t criticize or devalue anybody/ race/ community or country.
