“O son of Kunti, all that you do, all that you eat, all that you offer and give away, as well as all austerities that you may perform, should be done as an offering unto Me.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 9.27)

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यत् करोषि यद् अश्नासि
यज् जुहोषि ददासि यत्
यत् तपस्यसि कौन्तेय
तत् कुरुष्व मद्-अर्पणम्

yat karoṣi yad aśnāsi
yaj juhoṣi dadāsi yat
yat tapasyasi kaunteya
tat kuruṣva mad-arpaṇam

1. Feeding the hungry

“I like to be in the line with the servers. I know that I am well-off, in the financial sense. I could easily hire someone to take my place. I don’t really need to leave the house and follow manual labor.

“I do it, anyway. It makes me feel good to connect with others. I want them to feel a human connection. I want to try to lift others up, in whatever way I can. They are no different than me. They are just down on their luck, at the moment. They have fallen on hard times, but let me try to make life a little easier for them.”

2. Giving rides to the elderly

“Just between you and me, these people should not be allowed behind the wheel of a car. I am doing this more as a service to the rest of us. I am making the roads safer. The government should really think about mandating another driving test once you reach a certain age, to maintain your license.

“All joking aside, I like helping people. I can’t believe we have descended so far as a society that we treat the elderly like they are as fit and strong as the young. They need to be helped. We should be jumping at the opportunity. It is the right thing to do.”

3. Teaching children

“I know that I would not have gotten anywhere in life if not for the wonderful teachers I had growing up. Sure, some of them were horrible, but I always remember the ones that were kind, tolerant, and also a little tough. They pushed me to reach new heights, to believe in myself to do better.

“I want to give back. I want to help the next generation. The enthusiasm in their eyes is a welcome sight. I love watching their faces when they find a solution to a tough problem. It makes me feel so good to help them in that regard.”

4. Running a business

“The customer is always right. We try to live by that motto. Sure, we don’t want them to take advantage of us. There should be fair, open, and honest dealings. They should always feel that we are trying to serve them to the best of our ability.

“I could have made a living anywhere else. I could have gone to work for a large corporation, getting lost in the mix, and getting by with average performance. But I would rather plug the gaps myself. The things that other businesses are doing wrong, I want to do right. I want to improve the customer experience, so that they will feel like they have a voice.”

5. Dedicating everything to the Supreme Personality of Godhead

His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada makes the comparison to the mercantile shop that has the slogan, “Service is our business.” This is to let customers know the motivation for the business being there in the first place.

A person might be skeptical of the claim. The business will not serve at a loss to the bottom line, for instance. They are providing something of value, but they insist on proper payment in return. This is how economic development works. In Sanskrit it is known as artha, which is one of the four rewards of a material existence.

Still, we see that the business which strives to serve tends to stand out from others. If they have a genuine interest in the satisfaction of the customer, that interest could help to distinguish from the competition. Customers might be more apt to patronize that business, since they feel some sort of connection.

The slogan has relevance to spiritual life, in general, as the service mentality is the very essence of an existence. More than a type of faith that you accept today and reject tomorrow, dharma is something that never changes. Dharma is eternal, or sanatana.

In the unpolluted sense, religion is actually dharma. There can only be one dharma for the entire world. It is not dependent on time or circumstance. The country of origin, the language of the locals, the timeline of a particular savior appearing, the specific book chosen to revere and learn from – these are never the ultimate determining factor.

As the mercantile firm advertises that service is their business, so the living entity has the constitutional position of serving. Everyone is serving someone else. This is due to the essential characteristic within, which is dharma.

When that spirit of service gets misdirected, the resulting condition is known as material life. This entails birth and death. The paired events occur in a cycle, which is something like a spinning wheel. The living being gets taken for a ride, until they correct the mistake in their desire to serve.

Shri Krishna provides a simple solution. Direct everything towards Him. This is not limited to prayers on a Sunday. This is not only in the case of distress, where we look to the heavens for resolution. This is not only for when someone in our community has fallen, in a tragic way.

Rather, everything that we do should be for Krishna. All the food that we eat. All the activity we follow. All the interests we develop. Everything should be an offering for the all-attractive one. From start to finish, we lay everything at His lotus feet.

This is the proper direction of the service spirit. In this manner, the service realigns with dharma. Whether someone knows that object of service as Krishna or the more generic, abstract concept of God, the service is dharma all the same.

These offerings, repeated and steady in connection, will benefit the person following the service. The object of service already has everything. He is not in need. Dharma as an explicit set of activities, followed due to formal guidance in the discipline, is for the benefit of the living being otherwise in illusion.

Since God is never in illusion, He is known as Achyuta. He never falls down. He is never under the spell of illusion. He is still kind enough to appear on occasion, to reestablish the eternal principles of dharma and to show others the way towards transcendence.

In Closing:

Since getting more than I deserve,
Feeling good to serve.

Others from me to take,
A better society to make.

Dharma in this way shown,
As an eternal principle known.

When service to Supreme bound,
In proper alignment found.

Categories: the five

Tags: charity, god, hare krishna, poem, poems, poetry, service