________________
attachment and aversion and convert them into friendship, affection, etc..
By engaging oneself in the service of others one forgets about one's own miseries. Own miseries deepen when we think more about them. When a person remembers his pains and miseries, actually he increases them and the one who forgets them reduces them. This applies to illness also. One of the ways to cure a disease is that the ill person serve those that have similar ailments.
It is a fact that a true servant, who is devoted to service, does not wish to get anything in return for the service rendered by him. However, the result of his service surely comes to him naturally, because it is the rule of nature that when a seed is sown it returns an yield that is millions of times more than what is sown. The bitter Margosa seed when sown yields millions upon million bitter Margosa fruits when the tree fructifies and when a mango seed is sown it, too, yields thousands upon thousand sweet mango fruits. Similarly, for the true servant the entire world is like an orchard for sowing the seeds of service and for harvesting the fruits of his service from the trees that grow from those seeds. Thus, the entire world is eager to reward the true servant for his services and yet the true servant does not want, form the world, anything more than his physical sustenance. In other words the true servant dedicates his entire life in the service of the world and his life belongs to those that he serves. This extension of his life to the entire world is the full development of his life. No life can be greater and more rewarding than that. Like this the true servant gets hundreds of times greater reward than fulfilling all his needs and never suffers from want or poverty. He always remains happy. Lack of wants and fulfilment of all needs is the true luxury. Therefore, it can be said that there is none wealthier than the true servant. What is meant there is that through service the material poverty gets converted into spiritual opulence.
The attachment and aversion that cannot be overcome with discretion and knowledge can be easily converted into affection through welfare activities aimed at general weal. For example, if anyone is
Positive Non-Violence
Jain Education International
For Personal & Private Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
