On Faith
SWAMI BHASKARANANDA
Nearly five years ago a heartwarming story created a great sensation all over America. There was a fire in a garage in Brooklyn, N.Y. A firefighter noticed a stray cat carrying a kitten out of the flames. Endangering her own life, the cat went back four more times to bring all her kittens out of the burning building. Even though severely burned, she did not stop until she had saved her entire litter. Self-sacrifice can
transform the universeHad any human mother saved her children risking her own life, she would surely be admired but it would not necessarily make the news. Since the cat had done something that normally animals do not do, she made national news. What made the cat so special was not her instinctive urge to save her kittens but the fact that she saved them by overcoming a much stronger urge to stay away from fire.
Such an act is not anticipated feline behavior. It is more a display of a laudable human virtue. In human terms, we call it the spirit of self-sacrifice. At the human level, this spirit is generated by unselfishness, not by instinct.
The scriptures of Vedanta have greatly emphasized the importance of unselfishness and self-sacrifice. Every evil in the world is caused by selfishness. All conflicts between individuals, groups or nations are generated by selfishness. Countries suffer from civil war or even disintegrate as a result of group selfishness based on ethnicity, language, religion or disparity of privileges. Between individuals, selfishness causes jealousy or envy, kills friendship, destroys mutual love, breaks up marriages and generates animosity.
Being good and doing good to others is the very foundation of ethics and morality. But what is the criterion for judging goodness? The criterion is self-sacrifice. A good husband is he who willingly and lovingly makes self-sacrifice for his wife. The same is true for a good wife, a good parent, a good son or daughter, a good brother or sister, and a good friend. The common denominator of goodness for all of them is self-sacrifice.
Human behavior is unfortunately full of inconsistencies. While we condemn individual selfishness, we condone the selfishness of groups. Judged impartially, even nationalism is no other than group selfishness. To create a better world we often speak of the need for world peace, and at the same time we don't want to give up our group selfishness. Eliminating group selfishness is not easy.
Many do-gooders think that to create such a world all that they have to do is to change others. But can you or I really change others and make them perfect? As others are not under my control, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to change them.
But I can surely change one person, and that's me! If I can make myself perfect, the world will surely become perfect to that extent. The only way I can do that is through self-sacrifice.
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