How to Cultivate Selfless Actions and thoughts
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• Parenting requires putting the needs of others first. Parents often go without sleep to tend to a newborn child. They work to earn for their children and for their children’s education, health, and happiness.
• Teaching also requires putting others first. Teachers, like parents, teach children to think of others first. They teach them to be ethical, virtuous, honest, compassionate people and citizens of the community and the world.
• Working for or conducting business with socially responsible companies is yet another way to achieve these goals. Companies can exact a fair fee from others for their products and services; they can produce or use renewable energy products; they can also ensure the health and welfare of their workers and their families, including their retirement benefits, and make contributions to the community.
• Silent sadhana (seated with eyes closed) is another important way to know the Self as eternal Divine love (sat chit ananda).
• Reading scriptures and having spiritual conversations (satsang) and singing songs to God (bhajans) are other important forms of sadhana that cultivate a whole, spiritual person.
• Seeing the sacred in all acts (eg, cooking, cleaning) are also forms of sadhana.
Know that the person who has neither longing nor desire for rewards of action is ever renouncing (sannyas);
Those steady-minded people who carry out dutiful action without desire for rewards re- alize uninterrupted peace. The unsteady-minded, having a desire for rewards, becomes enslaved by their obsession.
