Why we should help others

I was giving a thought over this point. Why we should help others?

    We are born in this world with our individual fate based on our karma. Some are born rich, some poor. Some are born healthy, some with birth defects. Likewise there are so many opposites. We carry on with our lives with little or no concern about others. Rarely do we think about helping others. Even if such thoughts come they are almost surely over shadowed again by our own worldly problems. While walking on the road we come across poor persons and seeing them or any one of them we feel compassion and think about helping them. The best we can muster at that time is five or ten rupees maybe. Again during natural/ man-made calamities which are widely publicized through media, we feel sorry for the affected persons and feel like helping them mostly monetarily. Such thoughts are far and few. Mostly we are busy with our day to day work and problems.

    Social service is done by two types of people. One group are those who have a lot of money and for them it is more of a showcasing to the world than genuine concern. Exceptions are always there. Another group are those who have a genuine feeling to help. They may not be financially strong but still they have a passion. The vast majority of population is simply not bothered. They will feel sorry for them but will not do anything for them. I don’t blame them also as they are mostly our middle class people with pressing individual and family commitment and problems. Also there are some who help financially and those who give their time and energy to help others.

     The common man’s mentality is like this. We have our problems and the poor and needy have there’s. It is there battle. We site examples of people born poor who have worked hard and become rich and famous. We find solace in it. Not only that, we curse them often for not trying hard enough to come over there pitiable situation. It seems they have resigned to their fate and are in some way happy the way they are. Poverty makes them take short cuts in life like stealing and other crimes. Then we loathe them. We conclude that – they get what they deserve or the other way around. ‘I am me and you are you’ – why should I entangle myself in your problems.

    The concept of karma says that whatever action (action includes both acts and thoughts) you do goes into your balance sheet of good and bad karma. The deposits on both the sides determine how you will fare later – in this life and also in your next life. As long as you are concerned with yourself only or your immediate near and dear ones, you are having a positive effect only on a limited group of people. So your deposits on the positive side are few. In your daily routine when you are seeing so many needy people and not doing anything, the act of not doing is creating deposits on the negative side. So obviously we are heavier on the negative side. But then the question arises – how can I help all the needy people we see around? Then I will get deviated from my primary objective that is having a decent living for me and my family. We cannot help all but we can at least help some.

    Now, we can accumulate more positive deposits by helping others in even small ways so that the negative deposits cannot catch up. Or we can prevent accumulation of negative deposits which can be achieved by helping others or not harming others, both through our thoughts and actions. Either way, if we want a positive balance in the karmic balance sheet, helping the needy to the maximum is the only way. For that we have to come out of our individualistic needs. Helping the poor and needy gives us satisfaction and the help rendered will mitigate his problems to some extent. Our positive balance in karmic record increases and the poor persons situation improves somewhat. Thus both are enriched. It’s a win-win situation.

    Our thoughts have an effect on the overall humanity. We all are like mobile transmission towers and our thoughts are like signals which we are originating from us and spreading it in all directions. As we cannot see the signal waves but a receiver catches it and understands the signal, so our thoughts which we are spreading in all directions are received at the sub conscious level by other life forms and has an effect in changing others thought process. It’s like negativity breeds’ negativity and positivity breeds’ positivity. As we don’t have any scientific equipment to measure and catch these signals we do not accept it. As the majority of the population emanate negative thoughts, we are witnessing so much negativity in this world. It’s like a domino's effect.

    From the spiritual point of view, Samadhi enlightens us about equality and commonality of all life forms. But having separate bodies we tend to identify ourselves separate. When everything is equal and same then if you are helping others then basically you are helping yourself. At the core level the root is the same but the branches are different. Whatever action we take as branches has an effect on the root.

        Positivity will come through positive thoughts and actions. And positive thoughts and actions come through good work done without feeling pride and a sense of doing favor. Both for individual gain and collective betterment, it is imperative that we have a feeling of empathy and a sense of duty to help the down trodden. This is the only solution for everlasting peace and prosperity. Being individualistic will neither help the individual nor the society.

I wrote this about 5 years back and it stayed in one of the old folders of my computer, fogrot about it also, now posting it first time for others to read.

Do spare your time and comment about it.