Living Fuller Lives In Service – Swami
Sunirmalananda - Appeared in Speaking Tree on 25th January 2013
In order to live well, we need to be fit. Is fitness physical? Throughout,
amongst plants and trees, animals and birds, individuals and groups,
institutions and nations—the physically weak have made place for the strong.
The underlying philosophy seems to be: Elbow out others to live. Medicine, too,
says that if you are strong you can avoid ailments and infections. Yet, are
supermen living well?
Swami Vivekananda says: ‘They talk a great deal of the new theories about
the survival of the fittest, and they think that it is the strength of the
muscles which is the fittest to survive. If that were true, any one of the
aggressively known old world nations would have lived in glory today, and we,
the weak ones ought to have died out; yet we live…!’ And wasn’t Gandhiji a frail
man? The body, with all its perfected muscles, is not automatic, and needs
something more to keep it going. It needs a sane mind.
Next, is fitness financial? If you have money, you could have all you want.
However, not all rich are ‘surviving’, despite their fitness. Not all rich are
sleeping well. Coming to nations, the financially fit nations do not appear to
be happier than the so-called unfit ones—you need peace.
At least for two reasons physical and financial fitness aren’t everything:
a microbe or bacteria may destroy a strong body, and a stock-market crash can
turn a mountain of cash into pieces of mere paper. So the two well-known
instruments, health and wealth, could fail us.
We need some other form of fitness; some way of life, of true living. And
that eternal way was revived by Vivekananda. He wrote to a prince, who knew
fully well what physical and financial fitness meant: ‘My noble Prince, this
life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who
live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.’ This is the secret of
life. Swamiji would say, ‘Anxiety is worse than the disease. If in this hell
of a world one can bring a little joy and peace even for a day into the heart of
a single person, that much alone is true; this I have learnt after suffering all
my life; all else is mere moonshine.’ To be healthy under unhealthy living
conditions, we need a peaceful mind and this is achieved through living for
others. A chaotic mind leads to all sorts of physical and other disorders.
Vivekananda declared: “Self-sacrifice, not self-assertion is the law of the
highest universe. Religion comes with intense self-sacrifice. Desire nothing for
yourself. Do all for others. This is to live and move and have your being in
God.”
Those who lived for others alone have attained the goal of true survival;
they have lived the fullest lives. The greatest contribution of Vivekananda is
that he presented the ideal of karma yoga to the modern world in a scientific
way. Karma is not fatalism but opportunity to improve the quality of our lives.
This is the ideal way to live every moment of our lives fully, in peace.
Service and self-sacrifice have been Indic ideals since ages. To live in
peace is to let others too live “fit” and peaceful lives. To do that, we must
dedicate some time for serving others selflessly. This not only helps others but
helps us also physically and mentally. And this is true religion.
