By nature people strive to help one another, but often expect something in return. What true service is, selfless action out of love, and why it is the dharma of a human being.
By nature, people strive to help one another. But they often expect something in return. As in the fairy tale: you helped the squirrel, and the squirrel will not stay in your debt and will help you.
But look: the hero of the fairy tale, Ivan the Fool, actually expects nothing in return. He is a fool precisely because he does things not for himself and cannot do otherwise. That is what service is: an action done selflessly, purely out of love. And the reward is love itself.
The idea of service
There are the notions of the "missionary" and the "legionnaire." A missionary is someone who has a mission in life and does everything for its sake. A legionnaire is a hired soldier who carries out a task as long as he is paid. In the same way, there are two types of people in life: the passionate ones (burning with the fire of their mission) and the mercenaries.
When a person sees what must be done, hears an inner call and carries out what they have conceived, they become an instrument of the supreme Consciousness. For this one does not have to be a believer, religious, or even spiritual.
Some secular people consider themselves materialists, yet they feel their calling. Perhaps they do not believe in anything subtler, but they believe in humanity and a bright future. They act selflessly; their reward is the smiles on people's faces. Such people, who feel others' pain and joy as their own, find success on the path of spirituality.
Consciousness expands, a person begins to identify with a wider circle, and a desire for universal well-being arises in them. An action performed with a selfless feeling of benevolence will never be forgotten and will never crumble away on the pages of history. Even if people never learn of it, in cosmic Consciousness the action will be associated with the bliss of supreme existence. It will remain there forever.
"Everything you have done for dharma, for the spiritual current, for expanding people's consciousness, for coming to know one's purpose and spirituality... Everything you have done to relieve people's suffering, to draw them away from physical struggle so as to raise them to a subtler intellectual level, and then to the spiritual... Everything you have done for this will never be forgotten. That is what service is."
Levels of service
Service has many levels. One can serve with physical labor, with courage, with the ability to manage. One can serve with the intellect, with material resources, with money, with the ability to create material well-being.
To serve and to do something worthy is the nature of a human being, or dharma. For example, the dharma of fire is to burn; this is its property and characteristic. And the dharma of a human being is to grow and expand spiritually, to evolve; to love and experience ecstasy; to leave an eternal record on the pages of history; to become limitless, to throw off all fetters. Dharma is present in everything; even in a blade of grass, in the simplest creature with an undeveloped nervous system, there is a thirst for spiritual expansion and evolution. It is constantly present and moves imperfection toward perfection.
The thirst to help is a fundamental human quality; everyone has it. To do something for the world and not expect gratitude in return: that is true service.
