Gratitude

The ocean of his generosity has no shore.
The tongue is powerless to thank,
the heart too bewildered to understand.
Though my sins are many
his compassion is greater still –
I swim in the seas of disobedience
but I do not drown.
_Sarmad³⁶⁴

A sevadar at Dera was feeling frustrated and unhappy with seva. He had a difficult relationship with his head sevadar, and working with him day after day, year after year, had begun to take its toll. One day he decided he’d had enough; he was ready to leave seva, leave Beas, and move back to his hometown. With a heavy heart he wrote his resignation letter and walked over to the appropriate department to hand it in. As he waited outside the office, he noticed a lady sitting in a corner, crying as if her heart would break. Concerned, he asked her if everything was okay. “Oh, yes,” she replied through her tears. “More than okay. I just got seva!”

When the sevadar heard this he was deeply touched. Her joy reminded him of the gratitude he had felt when he first started seva at the Dera. He realized that after years of doing seva he had begun to treat it like just another job. The frustration he felt towards his seva tasks, fellow sevadars, and department head were the frustrations of a person in a regular job. Somewhere along the way he had forgotten that he was serving a true master. He had become bogged down in personalities, processes, and his own feelings and had started to take seva for granted.

The sevadar felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He returned to his department without handing in his resignation and resumed his seva. In the months and years that followed, nothing changed in his circumstances, but his own attitude towards them changed completely. The things that used to upset him earlier didn’t bother him much anymore. He had a new appreciation for the gift he had been given and had very nearly lost.

The nightmare of every sevadar is the very real possibility that we might start taking our seva for granted. When we think that seva cannot carry on without us, or we become arrogant, or approach a seva task as a chore or a hardship, or treat seva as we would a worldly job – this is when we know that we’ve started to take our seva for granted. This is when we risk losing our seva, or, at the very least, we risk losing some of its benefits and joy.

Seva is not a right – it is a privilege, an honour, and a responsibility. It is a precious gift from the master. If we appreciate the gift and use it correctly it can take our discipleship to the next level. But we are human; there may be times when we feel tired and burnt-out in seva. When such times come it may be worth revisiting what seva means to us, as well as all we have to be grateful for.

Gratitude towards the sangat
When we first come to seva we may hold the commonly accepted view that those who are served should be grateful to those who serve. But the master creates a shift in our thinking; he teaches that it is those who serve who should be grateful.

During the Dera eye camps, sevadars would selflessly serve thousands of people, helping to bring sight to those who had lost all hope of ever seeing again. Most of the people they served were not disciples. Hazur would tell these sevadars that the opportunity to serve was something for which to be very grateful:

We feel fortunate that these patients give us the opportunity to serve them. It is a very rare opportunity to serve anybody, so we are grateful to the patients that we get this opportunity to serve them.
_{Maharaj Charan Singh}³⁶⁵

We love our seva, and we are aware that without the sangat we would not have seva. So when we are confronted by a particularly challenging member of the sangat and we risk losing our patience, we can remind ourselves that this is exactly what we are here for. It is the sangat’s ever-changing needs, demands, and difficulties that create seva for us. We owe them our gratitude for giving us the opportunity to serve.

Gratitude towards our fellow sevadars
The very meaning of seva is to work together in loving harmony to get a job done for the master. Even when our seva requires us to spend large amounts of time working alone, we still need to interact and collaborate with other sevadars, and we have a tremendous influence on each other.

The love and dedication of the sevadars we work with is a great source of inspiration. We watch doctors and architects sweep streets, factory owners clean toilets, carpenters and plumbers guide traffic in the heat and dust, and elderly women who aren’t computer savvy figure out how to create spreadsheets. No task seems too big or too complicated for them, and no task seems impossible. It’s not that they don’t face challenges and difficulties, but somehow they are able to push through them.

These sevadars don’t volunteer to serve because the master is around. In fact, some of them have not seen the master for years. Yet if there is an opportunity to do something for him, they are there, and they do it without expecting anything in return. Some are uniquely gifted and capable, yet they are completely unassuming in their behaviour – simply witnessing their attitude towards seva humbles us. Others have no unique skill, but they do their seva with such a big heart that we are in awe of their spirit of selfless giving. Some of these sevadars have become our mentors – guiding, supporting, and inspiring us. We learn how to love and serve not just from the master but also from each other.

Over the years we may develop deep friendships with people from different economic and cultural backgrounds – people we may not even have met but for seva. Some of these friendships last a lifetime. These are the people who are there for us in the middle of the night if there is a crisis – including people we may not get along with in seva – because there is a strong sense of unity and family that binds us. Through the years, the support of our fellow sevadars becomes a refuge for us. In their company we find a place where we belong and where we can find rest from the fires of the world.

Seva brings us together, and it is our love for the One that holds us together. Our sevadar brothers and sisters are our community, our support structure, our comrades. We have the same goal, face the same struggles, and share the same Beloved. Seva gives us an opportunity to share our love for the divine with each other, to share that journey with each other. Words of gratitude are not enough to thank the master for enveloping us in this blanket of unconditional love and support.

Gratitude for seva
Metamorphosis is the transformation of a creature into a completely different one, either through natural or supernatural means. The most common example of metamorphosis is the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Let us consider the butterfly’s process for a moment in the light of seva, which has a similar transformational effect in our life.

After it is born the caterpillar indulges in the pleasure of its little world – eating incessantly. Its movement and worldview are limited to the plant on which it is born. But at some mysterious point, something clicks in its little caterpillar ‘brain’ and it loses all interest in eating. It finds a suitable spot, builds itself a cocoon, and withdraws into it.

There it completely surrenders itself to a magical process. Biologists tell us that in the cocoon the caterpillar dissolves into a sort of chunky, protoplasmic soup – some of its parts remain intact, some completely dissolve. Over time it regenerates into a completely new form – that of a beautiful butterfly.

But the butterfly is not yet free. The stage of surrender is followed by a stage of intense effort to break free of the cocoon. This struggle to emerge strengthens the butterfly’s wings and deepens its instinct to fly. Ultimately it manages to break free and fly into the sky. Is this not a miracle? A limited, leaf-eating caterpillar transforms into a beautiful, ethereal creature that looks different, eats different food, and has the ability to fly. This seemingly miraculous, yet completely natural, transformation is the fruit of both surrender and effort.

Similarly, every disciple of a true master has the opportunity to undergo a process of spiritual metamorphosis. Initially we too are involved in incessant indulgence in the sense pleasures. But at some point, just like the caterpillar, we begin to lose interest. Seva – with body, wealth, mind, and soul – is the cocoon we voluntarily enter. Each time we meditate, or cook a meal for the sangat, or do a round of simran – we are entering our spiritual cocoon.

Creatures like butterflies and moths enter their cocoon once, remain in it for several days, and come out transformed. Our process is different: we enter our invisible cocoon every day for little bursts of time and then are forced out again into a world of temptations. Over and over again we make sacrifices to set aside these temptations and re-enter the cocoon. This requires countless efforts – big and small – that slowly deepen our faith and spiritual resolve.

Inside the cocoon we surrender to a process we have some faith in but don’t really comprehend. Each time we re-enter the cocoon – with each cycle of effort and surrender – we are transformed a little more. Our gratitude deepens as we begin to realize the nature of this transformation:

jaisa sevai taiso hoye.

They become just like the One they serve.
_{Guru Nanak Dev}³⁶⁶

The process of transformation can be painful. Real seva is not always easy. Seva is not a utopia with only nice people and no difficulties. Seva can be messy, seva can be difficult. But in the process it offers infinite learning, infinite growth. When things go well for us in seva we say it is master’s grace. But grace comes in many forms. When things don’t go so well, that is also grace. The master will only do what is in our best interest:

Our concept of love and kindness is that whatever we want, we should get. But sometimes the mother has to put bitter quinine in the mouth of the child. And the child has to swallow it, in his interest. But there can be no better love than the mother for the child.
_{Maharaj Charan Singh}³⁶⁷

We feel grateful that the master holds up a mirror before us in the form of the sangat and our fellow sevadars. Through them we begin to see our own faults and weaknesses, and then we try to improve ourselves. How do we learn compassion? When we make a mistake, and someone responds with kindness and love. How do we learn humility? When we get angry with someone, reflect on it, feel sorry, think about how the master would want us to respond, and then go back and apologize. The process is bound to be painful at times, but through that pain comes transformation. A Sufi mystic referred to this as the process of being ‘cooked’ by his master Tapduk:

We became servants at Tapduk’s door.
Poor Yunus, raw and tasteless,
Finally got cooked, glory be to God.
_{Yunus Emre}³⁶⁸

The process of transformation takes a lifetime to complete. It is so slow we can barely discern the shifts from day to day, yet when we look back at our lives we may be amazed at the change he has wrought in us. While the miracle of this transformation is the master’s work, the pace of transformation is largely in our hands; Great Master said that, depending on the amount of effort we put in, we can hasten or retard our own progress.³⁶⁹ The more often we enter our spiritual cocoon, and the longer we stay inside, the more rapid the metamorphosis.

If we are open and receptive to the process, seva – in all its forms – has the power to transform us, from a mere drop into the divine ocean:

The effect is truly a miracle! We turn from the world, and with the same intensity that we once ran towards it, we now run towards the Father. We experience that bliss and joy of real love and real devotion, as we ultimately merge with our master to be transformed from the drop into the divine ocean itself.
_{Maharaj Charan Singh}³⁷⁰

While we may not be able to discern the degree of inner transformation, we can experience the peace and bliss that come from meditation, and we can feel the tangible effects of physical seva on our day-to-day life.

We have much to be thankful for. In seva we get the opportunity to do a variety of new things. This increases our confidence and self-esteem yet diminishes our ego at the same time, because we begin to realize how little we really know.

We feel grateful that seva is a safe place, even when it brings challenges. Sometimes we may have to take risks we wouldn’t normally take, and in the process we find opportunities to grow. We may learn not just new skills, but also new attitudes and new ways of dealing with situations and people. Many sevadars have said that when they first came to seva, they believed they could use their worldly skills to ‘improve’ seva. But now, looking back, they feel they have learned so much in seva that they have much to bring back with them to enrich their worldly and spiritual lives.

Sweeping the floor of the monastery, the benefits of understanding are realized.
_{Chinese poem, quoted by Thich Nhat Hanh}³⁷¹

Seva makes us more humble. When we look back we can see that we are not quite the same self-centred, self-absorbed person who started seva forty years ago, or even four years ago. Seva gives us an opportunity to practise losing our identity. It gives us the opportunity to step out of ourselves and do something for someone else – to do something not for personal gain but for the joy of serving another. In the process we begin to learn that we are not the centre of the universe. We begin to realize that the master’s work is much greater than we are. We learn to put aside our ego and allow the master to function through us. We begin to become a vessel – a channel for the master’s work. We begin to see the miracle of how the master gets things done, and we are humbled and filled with gratitude.

Seva also deeply influences our life in the world. The spiritual path is about becoming better human beings. The qualities we learn in seva spill over into our worldly life and make us better family members, friends, and citizens. As we open ourselves to the lessons of seva we become more aware of our own weaknesses and more tolerant of the weaknesses of others. We learn that we are not always right – and that even when we believe we are right, maintaining harmony is more important than winning our way. We begin to avoid negativity and unnecessary arguments, to rise above our preconceived notions and expectations, to become more open to others’ points of view. We become more compassionate, peaceful, patient, and flexible. Slowly, the effects of seva seep into our worldly life, lending the fragrance of spirituality and positivity to everything we do. The master says we are all miracles if we consider where we have come from and where we are today.

Kabir baadal prem ko, ham par barsyo aaye,
antar bheenji aatma, haro bhayo banraaye.

Kabir, clouds laden with love
in abundance poured down on me;
Within, my soul was drenched,
and around me everything turned green.
_Kabir³⁷²

Seva distracts us from our distractions. If we were not doing seva, what would we be doing with our time? Hanging out at the mall? Watching a movie? Surfing the internet? Obsessing over family or work or the world? Seva saves us. It keeps us from getting sucked into the whirlpool of worldly work and personal problems that constantly distract us from our true goal. When we serve others, we are occupied with something greater than ourselves; the mind moves away from petty issues and we are instantly uplifted. As our attachment to seva grows, the worldly things we once loved so much begin to lose their sweetness, and we are drawn towards a deeper love.

Seva can be our oasis of joy and peace. Often, when we leave our hectic work week behind and enter the seva centre, our soul breathes a sigh of relief and joy. How grateful we feel to find a place to rest! When our seva is done, we may sit together and talk about the master. We are free to leave and go home, but we may want to linger in that atmosphere a little while longer. The master is full of joy and he brings this joy with him, like a refreshing breeze that wafts through the centre and touches everyone. Once we taste the sweetness of seva we keep returning for more.

man tan seetal saant sahaj
laaga prabh ki sev.

My body and mind are cooled
and are in equipoise;
I’ve dedicated myself to the service of God.
_{Guru Arjan Dev}³⁷³

When we do seva our faith deepens, because we get to witness the real ‘miracles’ of the master. We watch tough, proud sevadars soften over time and become gentle and humble. We watch huge projects get done by sevadars with little prior experience or skills. Slowly we become aware of the divine hand behind all of it. We realize we are literally witnessing the Lord’s work being done, and we marvel at the fact that we have the privilege to participate in it. As our awareness deepens, our faith deepens.

We are full of gratitude because a life of seva is a life filled with love: we serve because we love the master, and the master serves us because he has infinite love for us. And seva gives us an excuse to be with each other – if not always in person, then in spirit. A sevadar who had served both Sardar Bahadur Ji and Hazur Maharaj Ji reminisces about her last meeting with Hazur in 1989. Hazur called a group of sevadars to his room at the Delhi satsang centre to discuss pending seva matters. But when they sat down, he looked over at the seva lists they were holding in their hands and said sweetly, Let’s not discuss anything, let’s just be together. And that’s what they did! Only after he passed away six months later did they realize that he was just wanting to be together with them – that love was all that mattered. The content of the seva didn’t matter. It was just an excuse to be together.

We can never do anything to deserve his love. He just gives it and gives it…. If the master won’t come with his grace, then who will?
_{Maharaj Charan Singh}³⁷⁴

Finally, it is through seva that we learn to surrender to the beloved. One sevadar says: “Our separate self is gradually diminished, but it is not an unpleasant process to lose ourselves and become another Being. The One working through the many and the many working as one can be a most blissful experience. He pulls the strings and we dance the dance of the sevadar. We dance in joy because we can feel we are being moved by the will of the One.” This is the joyful submission of a sevadar.

Thus we find that when we do it with the right attitude, physical seva connects us to the master and creates an environment that supports our meditation; and when we are done with meditation, physical seva keeps us connected with the master. What a perfect system we have been given to grow as spiritual beings!

What would our life be without seva in all its forms? An emptiness? We would survive, of course, but would there be the same joy? As someone said so beautifully: For a sevadar, life without seva would be like a day without sunshine, a day without colour.

Seva is not just a gift, it is a limitless gift. A beautiful passage by the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore illumines this idea:

I had gone begging from door to door in the village path, when your golden chariot appeared in the distance like a gorgeous dream, and I wondered who was this king of kings!

My hopes rose high and I thought my evil days were at an end, and I stood waiting for alms to be given unasked and for wealth scattered on all sides in the dust. Your chariot stopped where I stood. Your glance fell on me and you came down with a smile. I felt that the luck of my life had come at last. Then all of a sudden you held out your right hand and said, “What have you to give me?”

Ah, what kingly jest was it to open your palm to a beggar to beg! I was confused and stood undecided, and then from my wallet I slowly took out the least little grain of corn and gave it to you. But how great my surprise when at the day’s end I emptied my bag on the floor to find the least little gram of gold among the poor heap. I bitterly wept and wished that I had had the heart to give you my all.
_{Rabindranath Tagore}³⁷⁵

This story illustrates that we, the sevadars, are the greatest beneficiaries of seva. When the master first comes into our lives, our hopes rise; we expect all kinds of grace to be showered upon us; we expect him to make our worldly problems disappear and make our every wish come true. But the master doesn’t do any of this. Instead, he puts out his hand and asks us to give to him. “Give me your time; give me your attention; give me your ego,” he says. Hesitantly, very hesitantly – through inner and outer seva, through the way we live our lives – we give him a little something. And we begin to discover that whatever little crumb of our time and attention we give to him, whatever little bit of ego we surrender to him, he transforms it into gold and gives it back to us!

This story also tells us something about our master. We think when we do seva that we are giving something to the master. But the reality is that the master is the greatest giver of all. Mystics do not take from us in meditation and seva; they give to us. Seva is just an excuse for them to shower grace on us.

He does much more for us than the human mind can comprehend.
_{Maharaj Charan Singh}³⁷⁶

However, the rewards of seva are not immediately visible. The beggar in this story found that crumb of gold at the end of the day and wept bitterly; he wished he’d given his king everything he had. We don’t want to look back with regret at a lost opportunity, so we should treasure the gift of seva. Because, as we see from this story, the fruit of seva is pure gold.

Gratitude to the master
As we begin to feel the extent of the master’s love for us and the enormous scope of his service to us, we long to express our gratitude. But the master needs nothing, and words cannot express our gratitude. Besides, while we can thank the giver for the gifts, what words are there to thank the giver for himself?

Once a disciple said to Hazur Maharaj Ji, “I have no specific question to ask you. I just want to thank you for your love.”, Hazur replied:

It is all his grace that he gives us his love, he gives us his devotion, and our words are too inadequate to express that feeling, that depth, that gratefulness to the Father. It is impossible.³⁷⁷

Seva is not a choice for the masters. Their love for and obedience to their own master, their infinite love for us, and the needs of the ever-growing sangat – all these compel them to dedicate their lives to serving us. And in this spirit of service they do not spare themselves. They have no motivation other than the liberation of souls, no thought of personal gain, no personal agenda. In the way they live, in what they do, they serve as the ultimate example of selflessness. They do so much for us, yet they always say they do nothing. The moment they get credit for anything they pass it on, saying it was only through the grace of their own master that it got done.

na kachhu kiya na kari saka, na karne jog sareer;
jo kachhu kiya saahib kiya, ta tein bhaya Kabir.

I have neither achieved
nor could have achieved anything,
nor had I the power to do so.
Whatever is done, is done by my Lord,
and that is how poor Kabir
has become Kabir [the Great].
_Kabir³⁷⁸

Perhaps we can never truly understand what a gift it is to serve a mystic, to participate in his divine work. To begin with, we think we sign up for seva, but Great Master tells us it is not in our power to do so:

Only such a one is in a position to serve the master as has abundant grace of the Lord, because this service is imprinted on the individual’s forehead and was preordained as the result of his actions or karmas in previous lives. He is fortunate indeed who devotes himself to the service of his master, because the Lord himself is manifest in him.³⁷⁹

Not only have we been given the gift of seva, we have also been blessed with an environment that enables us to do that seva:

It is entirely by his grace that we get an opportunity to do seva and that we are capable. Everybody doesn’t get the opportunity. Many people may be wanting it, may be anxious to do it, but they never get an opportunity. Their circumstances don’t permit them, their environment doesn’t permit them, their family commitments don’t permit them. It’s by his grace that we get this opportunity….
_{Maharaj Charan Singh}³⁸⁰

Then, when we come to seva, we walk in the door utterly full of ourselves – full of weaknesses, expectations, and demands. We make mistake after mistake, but the master forgives each one. He cloaks our faults and says there is no one in the world like his sevadars.

sevak tein bigrai sau baara,
satguru saaheb lev ubaara.
augun sevak saaheb jaanai,
saaheb man mein na gilyaanai.

A disciple may err a hundred times;
the benevolent master saves him every time.
The master is aware of the disciple’s faults,
yet the master does not take them to heart.
_Dharamdas³⁸¹

The master sees only our potential. He doesn’t look at our skills and determine what seva to give to us; he looks at our need and gives us the appropriate seva. Then he gives us the skills, intellect, strength, and energy to do that seva. And when the seva is complete – although he has done everything – he stamps our name on it and gives us all the credit.

karat karaavat aapu hai,
Paltu Paltu sor.

He is the doer and he himself gets everything done,
yet Paltu is the one who receives all the praise!
_{Paltu Sahib}³⁸²

Then, after doing everything, the master thanks us! Sevadars’ parshad is one of the ways in which the master does this. It is a short, simple, beautiful event during which the master wordlessly expresses his gratitude for our seva and leaves our hearts overflowing with love. But in the depths of our heart we know that more important than sevadars’ parshad is the seva itself. Seva is the parshad.

As a sevadar once said so beautifully in satsang: “The master’s love and grace flows through the hands and hearts of many sevadars on its way to the people of the world. When it flows through his sevadars on its way to where it is going, it also washes away their cares and concerns, their sorrows and separateness. Just as after a flute is played, the song still vibrates in every atom of it, there are always a few frequencies of his grace left in us after our seva. And if we turn within in meditation, we absorb them. That bliss is our sevadar parshad.”

The master is an enigma – unfathomable, unpredictable, with myriad facets. We may be able to understand his teachings, but we cannot understand him. Instead of attempting to do so, we simply try to love and obey.

As we grow in love, we begin to see that it is not just seva that is a blessing – the whole of our life is an outpouring of divine grace, the whole of our life is parshad. A lifetime of seva and meditation is not enough to express our gratitude to him for all that he does for us.

He has raised me to his own status.
He has put me to rest in the ultimate reality.
_Tukaram³⁸³