Charity Without Expectations🔗

17.11 Sacrifice without expectation of results, as stipulated in the scriptures, with a firm belief and conviction that it is a duty, is in the mode of goodness.

17.12 O Arjuna, that sacrifice that is performed with expectation of result or for show out of pride, is of the nature of aggression.

17.13 Sacrifice that is performed without following the scripture, in which no food is distributed, which is devoid of mantra, sincerity, and gift, is said to be in the mode of ignorance.

Krishna talks about how to give, how to sacrifice and how to serve others.

In the vedic tradition, sacrifices such as fire rituals (yajña and homa) were not mere rituals to worship celestial beings. They had a far deeper meaning of benefiting the living and the poor.

Every ritualistic offering had a major element of gifting the deserving poor. Whoever came to such a ritual never went away empty-handed. When the great ṛṣis, the masters, performed rituals, they had nothing to seek. They performed these in line with the truth of their experiences, which were the scriptural understandings. They expected nothing. They performed rituals as a day-to-day living expression. These rituals were conducted so that the celestial beings and nature were pleased and humanity benefited. These were selfless offerings of satva guṇa (good nature).

Great kings also practiced these rituals. Kings performed fire rituals to display power and to show that they controlled other kings. These were a display of ego. Kings such as Yudhishtira performed the horse sacrifice, Aṣvamedha Yaga, and the Rājasūya Yāga to announce their supremacy over other kings. However, these were required of kings and were also occasions to give their wealth away generously. These were performed in the mode of aggression, rajas.

Other extreme sacrifices were also performed by demonic creatures with no concern except brute strength. These did not involve charity or generosity. These did not follow the scriptural guidelines. These were carried out purely for selfish reasons.

When young Nachiketa’s father gave away as fire offerings useless old cows that no longer produced milk, the young lad protested. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked his father. ‘Why are you giving away useless things in a sacrifice that is meant for giving away valuable material? If you want to give nothing else, give me away,’ Nachiketa said. In deep ignorance and anger, his father offered his son to Yama, god of death, as a result.

Please understand that a sacrifice is not measured by how much we give. It is measured by how much we give that we cannot afford to give. It is measured by how much we give when it hurts us to give and that too without any expectation in return. Such a sacrifice straightaway leads to liberation.

Many people give with wonderful intent. It is not charity if they give part of their wealth without it affecting their lifestyle. It is no sacrifice. Many people tell me, ‘Swamiji, I am writing a legal will leaving all my possessions to this ashram, temple or your mission.’ What is the big deal in giving away after death? You cannot carry it with you anyway.

A sacrifice must hurt to be genuine. It must cause you discomfort and yet be given with total pleasure and without expectations. That is the spirit of genuine surrender. That is the spirit of doing things without expectation of the fruits of action.

I am not denouncing the wonderful charity that many wealthy people do without posing for photographs. They do it with good intentions of helping the disadvantaged. That mental attitude of giving and sharing what they have with the needy, benefits them. That vāsanā of generosity stays with their spirit. There is no doubt in this.

However, that charity will be in the mode of rajas, not satva. When people move from this rajas state of giving to the satva state of giving, wealth seeks them out. Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth comes to them without being asked! She knows these people will be the route for benefiting mankind.

There is nothing degrading about wealth and power. They are great energies. Like all great energies, the problem is handling them without letting them go to one's head. As an example, look at the difference between Ravana and Janaka. Janaka was a rāja ṛṣi, the king who was also a sage. He ruled a kingdom, but treated the power and wealth as if they belonged to someone else. He was a mere keeper, a mere witness. On the other hand, although highly gifted and a great tapasvi - who undertook many severe penances - Ravana was ruled by his ego and senses. That brought about his ruin.

The universe operates on the principle of abundance. There is no shortage of anything in the universe. What we need, we get. The trouble is that we are dissatisfied with what we need. Our wants are immeasurable. Great masters have said that it is possible for the universe to fulfill the needs of all the people on planet earth, but not the wants of one single person. Our greed has no limits.

May your desire to give away be limitless. May your desire to acquire become zero. You will be amazed at how wealth seeks you.

Q: You say that God is love. Some cultures depict God in a state of anger and fury. Their monks are serious. They seem to have no humor. Can bliss arise out of anger and fury?

No. We mirror our emotions in God and our mythologies depict him as angry, furious or jealous. God is, in one sense, neutral, as Nature is. He does not care whether you are a sinner or saint. Moral conditions are of no consequence in spirituality.

In another sense, God is compassion. When you approach divinity, you see yourself in others and others in you. At the human level, we term it love. Actually, it is beyond our so-called love.

Love is the energy that can be transformed into joy. And love is the only energy that we have. There is no other energy available. It is the same energy on different planes.

Sex is the crudest form of love energy and God is the highest form of love energy. However, it is the same energy, crude, gross, subtle, hard, worldly, and spiritual. The same energy moves in all planes. It is like a ladder: one end of the ladder touches the lowest whereas the other end touches the highest.

Without love, life would be impossible. Without love, the universe itself would be impossible. Things would fall apart. Love keeps them glued together.

Throughout the ages one of the most basic insights of all the mystics has been that matter is glued together with love. An invisible force keeps atoms and molecules together. They do not fall apart. Science has yet to discover that ultimate energy. It has detected a few of its manifestations such as gravitation or electricity; however, these are gross manifestations. In spite of that, the day is not far off when science will find that the ultimate source of all energy is love. That will be a great day for humanity. On that day spirituality and science will commune with each other because their language will be the same, that of love.

Rejoice because love is possible. Be joyful because love is your inner potential. You can rise to the ultimate heights. Nothing is impossible for love because love can transform itself into God.

Love is divine. Lust is animal. Many confuse lust with love. That is one of the greatest calamities. The person who thinks lust is love remains confined to the world of lust and never rises higher than that. He has no idea that there is a higher plane. He remains in the basement of his house. Sex is the basement. It is not the place to live. You can use it for other purposes, but not as your home; your home is above it.

Man has three planes of being. Lust is animal nature. Remember it is the crudest form of love. It is not that love is not present; however, it is mixed, muddy, polluted by jealousy, possessiveness and anger. As it becomes more refined, it becomes human love. Human love is less possessive and jealous. Human love has greater understanding. It is more capable of not using the other person as a means. It is more capable of thinking of the other as an end unto itself.

When it is divine, love in its highest form is prayer. Then there is no possessiveness and there is nothing earthly in it. It becomes an absolutely invisible force. And when love becomes prayer we feel contentment for the first time. In contrast, lust always keeps us hankering and desiring for more sensation, for more thrill and for more adventure.

Human love gives us a little bit of satisfaction. But love as prayer is bliss. It is a cool breeze from the beyond. When it blows, it takes us from the mundane to the sacred. We can open our wings and float with the wind and it takes us to the ultimate goal of life.

Bliss is the way to God. Bliss is the means towards God and it is also the end. It is both the way and the goal. Be blissful so that you can be more blissful. Start by being blissful so that you can end by being totally blissful. Remember: the first step is the last step.

In India people consider the place where three rivers meet as sacred. It is a metaphor because man is a meeting place of three forces: physical, psychological and spiritual. And when these three forces really meet, there is great joy and bliss.

Ordinarily we live in compartments: our body lives in one compartment, our mind lives in another and our soul lives in yet another compartment. The body is unaware of the mind. The mind is unaware of the body. The soul is not known to the mind. The body is oblivious of the soul. They are together but have not even been introduced to each other.

The first step of meditation is to bring them closer: to introduce them to each other and link them in a deep friendship so that a merger becomes possible. And when all three dimensions merge into one point, the fourth dimension is born. Out of the meeting of the three, the fourth is born. That fourth is God. In India we simply call Him the fourth: turiya, the fourth. We don't give Him any name. The other three have names, but the fourth has no name. The fourth is transcendental.

The whole work of spirituality creates an alchemy in which your body melts into the mind, the mind melts into the soul, the soul melts into the mind, and the soul melts into the body. By and by, slowly, very slowly, they become one integrated phenomenon. Hence our work is three-dimensional: we work on the body through many techniques; we work on the mind through many therapies; we work on the soul through many meditations.