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Archive of Feb 2009 News Letter
THE SPIRIT OF GIVING:
My grandson, aged 12, returned to the US from
India and began telling
me about his holiday. He said that before he left India he gave his
sports shoes to the maid's son. "He must be bragging about those shoes
now!" he added. The grandfather in me could not let this pass. I asked
him who was bragging about the shoes. He thought for the moment and
then gamely admitting that it was he who was doing the bragging. Then I
asked him, who he supposed had really given the shoes to the maid's
son. He thought some more and said it was god who was the giver! My
grandson had not entered the cynical teen years and evidently retained
the purity of childhood, to be able to make such an answer.
But
it made
me think of how we grown-ups unthinkingly behave, boasting about any
little sacrifice that we make. A little charity and we want the entire
world to know it. We do not realize that it is a person who accepts the
'charity' that is going the favour, by giving us the opportunity to be
of use.
I recall reading that the great writer
bankim Chandra
Chatterjee once told shri Ramakrishna Pramahamsa that he was giving
lots in charity and doing good to others. To this Ramakrishna
apparently retorted,"charity! Doing good! How dare you say YOU can do
good to others? Kindness belongs to God. How can a man lay claim to it?
If a householder gives in charity in with detachment, he is really
doing to good to himself and not to others. If he doesn't seek any
return from those he serves then he performs truly selfless work, work
without attachment and that becomes Karmayoga.
The
love you see in
parents is God's love.
The compassion you see in the
kind-hearted is
God's compassion:
He has given it to
them to protect those who need it.
Whether YOU are charitable or not, he will have his work done somehow
or the other. Nothing can stop His work.".
By
A.K.Bhargava
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