Sadhana of Service

With most film or book adverts these days they all seem to say, 'must watch!' or 'must see!' Sadhana of Service by Eknath Ranade is most definitely one of those MUST read books!!

Sadhana can be translated as devotion. A simple example to illustrare devotion is the unconditional love that a mother gives to her child. When serving others, sadhana is the stage that we should all aspire to be at - we serve unconditionally.

The book covers many topics such as the urge to serve, bravery & cowardice, India as a nation, faith, organisation & individual freedom. The issues that intrigued me the most in the book, however, were the chapters on living a purposeful life and the mission of life.

Throughout the book, Eknath states that we must live a purposeful life. To do this, we all must ask ourselves, 'what is the goal of my life?' and 'what is the meaning of my life?' Until this question is recognised, we are 'like a boy who believes that it is the tap that gives water.'

As a student, these are the types of questions that we often avoid. The daily questions that we are posed with are often those like, 'we sessioning on bacardi or vodka tonight??' We are absorbed in our own little world, thinking of only going out and having fun - I admit, I've fallen into this trap to a certain degree but after reading this book, asking myself 'what is the purpose of my life?' is something that I've tried to address.

In Hinduism, the purpose of life is to become self realised - realise the divinity that is within every individual. Our scriptures clearly tell us that it is up to us as to which avenue we should follow to reach our goal. Finding my avenue is something that I've been pondering deeply. One way to live a purposeful life is to serve God by serving humanity to the best of our ability. But this begs the question, 'how can we serve others whilst living in an affluent country such as the UK?' Does it require us to move to India & do work there?

This is a question that I am still grappling with. What I've concluded so far is that if we live our lives abiding by our morals, use our conscience and faculties to discriminate between what we feel is right and wrong and always think how we can contribute to the betterment of the world then we can live a purposeful life. This can be something as small as smiling at someone who walks by; being a friend who people can fully trust & never speak ill of anyone.

The book has posed many questions and those which I will continue to probe. The last chapter finished quite beautifully with:

'You can safely rely at all times on your own self for the fulfilment of your mission. There is a power within you which will never let you down. It is your own Self. Depend on it and march ahead with unceasing prayer to God to give you strength to fulfil his will.'