India
healthysoch
New Delhi, July 14, 2020 ;
Offering help is the best service to the humanity. As per Sikhism, Sewa (unconditional service), Simran (meditation) and Satsang (company of good people) constitute the trio to acquire happiness and spiritual health. In Sikhism, Sewa is the main path for acquiring spiritualism. In a Gurudwara, one even offers sewa by cleaning the shoes of others or by cleaning the entry paths to the Gurudwara.
Offering help covers all the paths of being a Satyugi, i.e., truthfulness, unconditional hard work, purity of mind and finally, Daya and Daan. When you offer help, you always do it in a positive state of mind and it involves hard work, mercy and charity.
The five pillars of Jainism are Ahimsa (non-violence in action, speech and thoughts), Satya (being synonymous in action, speech and thought), Brahmacharya (disciplined life), Asteya (non-stealing) and Aparigriha (not storing more than required).
Any offering therefore should be without any reward; the same applies to actions, thoughts and speech.
Jainism also prescribes not storing things which are not required and therefore anything more than required can be donated or offered to people in the form of sewa.
All professions which primarily do sewa are given special status in the society. For example, doctors are allowed to prefix ‘Dr.’ in front of their names and eminent people who offered help to the society are allowed to prefix names like Raja, Deewan, Rai Bahadur, Rotarian, Lion, etc.
As per Government policy, every PSU has to spend a 2% budget for charity in corporate social responsibility. Similarly, each one of us should spend 2% of our time, money or assets for charity or community service.
Author : Dr KK Aggarwal
(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this write up are author’s own).
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