13 November 2016 - QA 1

Tell us something about the importance of doing service.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

If you think, "I am doing a service", while you are serving, it is no good. Service should be part of your nature. When you do something for yourself, do you call it service? Do you say, "I'm serving myself?" No, because it's such a natural instinct. Any thing you do to your own children, do you call it service? You consider it your duty. So as a human being, our duty or our nature is to help others.
For a conscious person, helping is his nature. He's not doing it as an act or favour to someone. So all that we need to do is raise our own consciousness and the consciousness of the people, and service will happen automatically, because then you can't be without service. I feel that this way is better than asking someone to serve..

It is the same with compassion as well. When consciousness is elevated, it feels as though everyone is part of you. At that time compassion also loses its relevance as an act. It becomes quite natural for you to be compassionate. Not that compassion disappears, but it's not a conscious effort that one has to make.