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financial and verbal means.
They try to be helpful to these afflicted souls in overcoming their sorrows. They give food to relieve their sufferings from hunger, give financial aid for their basic necessities, heal their sorrows by soft, calming and sweet words and assist them to be free from physical ailments by distributing the required medical aids and arranging the necessary nursing care.
It is the very nature of worthy persons constantly to make efforts to remove the sorrows of human beings, animals and insects, being inspired by their inner compassion. Whereas dissipating the sorrows of the great and the noble is indeed the highest noble task, even helping ordinary living beings to get rid of their suffering is beneficial.
COMPASSION
One can help the poor, the helpless and the afflicted ones, when for example, they are trapped in a fire, drowning, suffering from starvation or are caught in some other form of acute distress. The greatest unique form of compassion (Karuna) reveals itself when one is prepared to help all living beings irrespective of caste or creed, religion or sect, or any other distinction. This compassion is very helpful to an aspirant (Sadhaka) in his spiritual advancement. This is the common form of compassion as known to the world.
NATURE OF SUPREME SPIRITUAL KARUNA
This supreme spiritual Karuna reveals itself only in enlightened saints and true monks. Average worldly people do not have self-knowledge and hence they indulge in various actions leading to bondage. Being subjected to the fruition of these actions, they, through sheer helplessness, suffer from mental, physical and spiritual ailments, birth, old-age and death, diseases, insults and cruelty.
With an utterly compassionate heart, the enlightened saints show these distressed people of the world the path of self-knowledge and self-restraint, so that they are permanently freed from these sufferings. The world rightly recognizes them titles such by noble the emancipators of world (Jagad-Uddharaka), elevators of the low (Adhama-Uddharaka), saviors of the drowning (Tarana- Tarana), and the like.
as
Likewise, these enlightened souls take to the grand heroic
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KARUNA
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