Category: selflessness

On a recent podcast of the Happiness Lab by Laurie Santos, she quizzed none other than the so-called founder of happiness studies – Prof. Martin Seligman himself.

The question was simple.

“If someone is suffering from depression, then what is an immediate fix?”

Seems impossible at first. Can there really be a fix that works in such a short span of time? Can there be a fix that works at all?

But the professor’s answer came like lightning, and with zero hesitation.

“Just get up and go and help someone in need”

There you have it. The immediate quick fix solution for depression. What do you think?

Who says that animals do not have emotions or feelings? That they are mere animals?

The second instance of animal sacrifice is of a baboon that is ostracised by its tribe.

When a leopard attacks one female baboon which has a new born baby, our man-baboon jumps into action. He literally drives the leopard away from atop a tree, single handedly. Leopard versus baboon, and the baboon emerging victorious? Wow I’d have never bet on that outcome!

As fate would have it though, the female baboon is unfortunately caught by a large python and crushed and swallowed in seconds.

The ostracised male baboon does not even bat an eyelid, before adopting the new born baby.

Soon, the leader of the baboon pack comes by and harasses and humiliates our hero, including urinating on him. But our guy doesn’t even flinch, else he risks the pack leader fighting him and harming the baby. But nope, not a flicker.

What a lovely series of sacrifices!

No this is not about sacrifice of animals at the altar as some blood ritual. Rather, it is about true sacrifice, in the animal kingdom.

In a BBC documentary called Serengeti, there are two outstanding sequences of sacrifice.

The first is about a hyena family. The queen hyena of the pack is also their chief hunter. She is not just a mother, but also a grandmother.

In order for her daughter-hyena to take her place as the new queen, the daughter will have to earn her status, including completing a successful hunt.

Given her lack of experience, the youngster chases the prey from behind, kills it, but also breaks one of her hind legs in the process. A pride of vicious black-maned lions smells blood and looks to attack and kill the daughter-hyena.

In one swift move, the queen hyena steps in, gives herself up, and is instantly mauled and killed by the lions. What an unbelievable sacrifice.

The second story, tomorrow…

Was sitting through a CSR-activities presentation recently. You know, Corporate Social Responsibility, that most companies try to do.

Apparently in many cases, they just donate money to funds, and then hope that their donation takes care of bad things in society. It’s not a bad approach, but this presentation I was sitting in was unique.

They were not bothered about overall money donated. Rather, they were focused solely on true impact, even if it meant improving the life of just 1 person.

And what was even better was how they were going about it. While they were donating a large sum, the actual projects to which the money would go were being crowd-sourced or maybe villager-sourced. Why? Because only the villagers knew what their real problems were, and so this was a lovely case of paying attention to the details and listening to the problems faced by those in need. Such a nice way to think about this!

Some people are very practical renunciates. What did they renounce? Karela, or bitter gourd ?

Most people don’t like it anyway, so it’s amongst the easiest things to renounce. Like a shortcut on the spiritual path almost. But is it so?

Nope.

My Guru in chapter 18 verse 7 of the Gita clearly states that renouncing in ignorance is tamasik.

He follows up with verse 8, where he says that renouncing for fear of physical strain is rajasik. Like if I hate going to work, and have Monday morning blues, and decide to just sit and home and not work at all, that is rajasik renunciation.

The only correct way to renounce, is the sattvik way. More tomorrow.

Lord Krishna once got a headache (yes apparently God’s can get them too!).

The cure? To simply sprinkle some dust from under the feet of any of his devotees.

He asked sage Narada to go looking for any devotee that would give him the dust from under their feet. Narada thought it would be easy-peasy.

But to his surprise and dismay, not a single devotee agreed. Everyone was worried, that if the dust from their feet would fall on the Lord’s head, then they would be sent to hell!

Finally sage Narada reached the gopis (cowherds) of Vrindavan. The gopis immediately collected some dust from under their feet and asked Narada to take it back to Krishna at the earliest. Narada was perplexed, and asked the gopis, “Aren’t you worried about going to hell like all the other devotees were?”

“Who cares about hell?”, they said. “All we care about is that Krishna should be healthy and happy again. Kindly go and give the dust to him as soon as you can please.”