By Moin Qazi
When asked to express in one word the key to happiness, Confucius replied, It is altruism. And what is altruism? It is a total orientation away from self to the good of others, to the sharing of joys and sorrows of the whole world. Deep in our hearts, most of us yearn for our lives to be useful. Faces that smile as a result of a helpful gesture we have extended provide an inner joy of an intensity that is far greater than any material reward can provide. Despite all the wealth and the health in the world, unless one caters to the poor, real happiness can not be achieved.
A simple act of service
In serving others, we feel how similar we are as human beings, bound and interconnected as we are by a shared feelingan emotion or an understanding of something that is often inexplicable. It is a feeling that cleanses away the dross of everyday material life from the soul. To use the words of Albert Schweitzer, I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live.
All great men and women of history have been great practitioners of the S-factorS for service to society. Albert Einstein emphasised that it is a higher destiny to serve than to rule. In the words of Marcus Aurelius, We are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to Nature.
Looking beyond the ‘Me’ generation
If our world is to become a beautiful place, we have to get rid of the selfishness that pervades society, presides over office tables and infests our universities. Instead of the me generation, we have to become the we generation so that each one of us shares in the fellowship of both pain and pleasure. We are all children of Mother Earth and thus siblings in many ways. If one concentrates on selfless service to others, this duty can become a deity and keep our hearts and minds pure and clean. In whatever station of life we are placed, we can fulfil this obligation. It is class-less and creed-less.
Working for the poor gives human beings inner strength. It energises the ‘feel good’ hormones so that we feel love and joy pulsing through our veins. When we reach out to others, we learn of a universal human hungerto be needed. It makes us become more accepting, less judgmental and kinder to ourselves and others.
A parable of service
There is a very interesting parable that beautifully sums up the reward of service. A man died and was transported to hell. He was surprised to find hell a beautiful place, except that people there were very skinny. So he went to the dining hall and saw that, even though the food was plentiful, everyones health was bad. His curiosity piqued and he wracked his brain for a clue to this riddle. He then found that the inhabitants were given long-handled ladles to use while eating.
This was extremely difficult and awkward to do as very little food reached their mouths. As a result, they were starving. After several meals in hell, the man was suddenly transported to heaven. At first, he was overjoyed. He then went to the dining hall and was dismayed to find that the same ladles were employed there. However, everyone looked happy, healthy and well fed. Over time, he noticed that instead of trying to feed themselves, the inhabitants were serving each other conveniently with the ladles. It showed how the smallness of the hearts of those in hell had warped their thinking and sensibilities, and the generosity of those in heaven had enlarged their ability to think in the welfare of fellowmen.
When opportunity knocks
Mankin’s faith in God and human beings is revealed in small acts of kindness, brotherhood or sisterhood in our day-to-day lives. We do not have to go out and look for an opportunity. It stands before us all the time, and we need only to do (well) the work we have been given. If we are mothers, we should be great mothers; if we are civil servants, we should serve people with great energy, honesty and courtesy. William Penn puts it beautifully: I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do, let me do it now, let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
Sadly we are becoming an increasingly self-centred, narrow-minded and bigoted race. We have achieved tremendous progress, but the modern process of development has de-humanised us and erected barriers between individuals. The great seers and savants have emphasised time and again that even the most extraordinary attempts to serve God would remain fruitless if men are indifferent to the pain and misery of their fellow beings. The practice of spiritualism guides us to this supreme vision. If we lack this great virtue of selfless service, our prayers will remain empty words, rituals will become robotic and the soul will become a slave of a habit. Where the poor are taken care of, there is Thy grace seen, says Guru Nanak. He fills pitchers and empties pitchers that are full.
The spirit of altruism
Though our contributions may be small, we can perform our tasks with dignity and do it with a spirit of altruism. Our talents may not be great, but we can use them to bless the lives of others. The goodness of the world in which we live is the accumulated goodness of many small and seemingly inconsequential acts of selfless individuals who have (mostly) been guided by noble impulses. When we are able to shift our inner awareness to see how we can serve others and make this the central focus of our life, we find ourselves in a position to understand how the work of so many insignificant and invisible people has brought prosperity to our world.
We forget that despite the diversity of race, religion and ideology, people share a basic desire for peace and happiness. Each individual has to rise above his own petty goals and think of the larger humanity upon which his own individual prosperity depends. The key is to revive the compassionate values that are the DNA of our true nature, and cast off the mental filters nurtured by our malignant egos that have blinkered our moral vision.
A unique social bond
A unique feature of our social bond is that most of those who give will probably never meet those whom they give to. The motivation isnt because of kinship rooted in socially constructed value, a shared culture or common heritage. People are not solely motivated by a desire to share within the direct kinship circle; rather, they give without condition or qualification. We give simply because it is the right thing to do. And when we do it in an organized way, our individual gifts have much more of an impact. The first step in the process is recognising that we as individuals have something to offer. The second step is actually offering it.
Most of those who have been influenced by the philosophy of materialism have an erroneous belief that people are fundamentally selfish. The truth is that people have a natural longing to do good. It is our institutions and culture that discourage the use of moral lens and emphasise utilitarian values. They make people use the economic lens which blinds them to the moral objective of life. This is the reason why friendships are no longer built on emotional bonds but have a transactional foundation.
The birth of a new cultural paradigm
The new cultural paradigm assumes that people are primarily driven by material self-interest. If this had been the case, our society would have withered long back. The fact that our world still remains a beautiful place is evidence of the richness of altruism in the moral fibre of our society.
This worldview of the world being built on foundations of selfishness is clearly wrong. In real life, the drive towards selfishness is matched by the equally powerful pull of empathy and altruism. We, however, need to nurture and preserve the flavour of altruism in our lives, or else humankind will wind up with a society that trusts less, cooperate less, is less lovely and less effective.
By assuming that people are selfish, by further incentivising this selfishness, we are actually patronising selfish frames of mind. To restore sanity and infuse moral values in our deteriorating spiritual environment, we need to reinvigorate those institutions and groups that promote and practice selfless service and put a premium on moral values.
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