Charity by Alok Mohan
Be generous to your family & community, before helping others. “Charity should begin at himself.” This means that family & community members are more important than anyone else, and should be the focus of a person’s efforts.Charity, Donations, Contributions, gifts, is something offered as a sacrifice to a human being. It’s a satisfaction, happiness, pleasure of our mind feeling or showing pleasure, contentment, or joy. When we hear the word “charity” we think of love towards fellow human beings, love made visible as in service. We hear the word everyday; we use it and we may also practise it in different forms. But what does charity really mean? we need to find out first what loving means to us at this very moment. We are not interested in ideas about love or wish to repeat what we have heard or read about it. The word is so loaded and corrupted that we often don’t feel comfortable using it. So let us wash away all the definitions and concepts that have been imposed on us by the outer world. The answer lies deep within us. Love is the essence of what and who we are. This strange flower blooms in the stillness of the mind, but we run around searching for it in the outer world. The nature of love is always to reach beyond self. It is not satisfied with loving self, but it strives to love others and be united to others. Love acknowledges the differences between people, but is also the integrating force that overcomes separation. You feel another person’s joy as joy in yourself. It does not mean feeling one’s own joy in someone else. That is selfishness, loving one self. We see therefore how what people often take for love is in fact only using the other to compensate for one’s own lack of inner security, whether expressed as dependency, vanity, or desire for personal aggrandizement. “To truly give charity, you must be free of selfishness!” It is pure joy of giving, which includes much more than material things. This giving ness can have many faces, like in a warm smile to strangers, a personal thank-you-letter, an encouraging hug, an unexpected phone call, a thoughtful word of appreciation, a bonding with a person in grief, a prayer for the healing of others, a heartfelt forgiving when you are wronged. All this is done not out of duty or responsibility but out of the abundance of warmth and love you feel welling up inside you. And the more you give out, the more flows back in; that is the joy of love in action, the manifestation of charity. As long as you feel compelled to do something because it is your duty or because you want something in return, there is no love. When one truly loves there must be freedom, not only from the other person but from oneself. Charity can come into being only when there is total self-abandonment. It does not come as the result of any effort. Like a flower that spreads its perfume, it blooms for everybody. Whether one is near or far away, it is all the same to the flower because it is full of that fragrance and shares it with everybody.
The challenge remains for all of us: May our life become a spark in the flame of charity, so that the warmth and light of this loving fire may shine ever more brightly and sustain hope in the hearts of mankind. You live in this world as a common person with love, humanity, peace, forgiveness, helping to all irrespective of cast, religion, and doing your worldly work with sincerity and devotion. You focus yourself only on positive energy present in this world and forgo negative energy.Charity has nothing to do to gain a place in heaven. Heaven depends on our karma. Karma is synonymous, with the action in our life. Karma is an activity, which all the human beings have to perform, until death releases them from this body prison. Man cannot live for a moment without doing Karma. Even while he is sleeping, the breathing process becomes his Karma. Karma is the cause of man’s bondage to the cycle of birth and death. The life has been given to man to sort out the consequences of the previous Karma deliberately done, in many past lives, as well as in present life. Man cannot be liberated, until and unless he has sorted out and neutralized all effects of past and present Karma, and bringing the Karmic balance to nil. You can’t buy your way into Heaven. You can give with a good heart, helping others in need, but you don’t do this with the intention of getting a reserved spot because of this particular good act. Keeping yourself free of sin that kills the life of your soul, confession and reconciliation clear your path towards Heaven When you realize, feel, experience the whole visible world as God’s visible creation and form, and also realize, feel, experience his invisible form present everywhere, you are in resonance with the almighty, then you loose your authority and ego and merge the same with almighty
Alok Mohan
www.mqc.co.in
http://ancientindia.co.in/?p=1085
