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I Say Unto You

Volume 2 / Chapter 4

Nov 3, 1977 Buddha Hall

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815

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excerpt

"I want so serve people. Isn't that right?"

"I want so serve people. Isn't that right?"
00:00 / 07:39

Lecture series on sayings of Jesus & answers to questions.
➜ The sixth question:

I want so serve people. Isn't that right?

It depends. It depends on you. If you have come home, if you have become that which is your destiny, if your own problems have disappeared, if you don't have any more anxiety, any more desires, any more unconsciousness, then there is no need to ask the question; service will flow from you, it will overflow.

It will be a constant sharing– not deliberate; it will be very natural, spontaneous. Wherever the need will arise you will be in service. If somebody is drowning in the river, you will jump. If somebody's house is on fire, you will rush with water. If somebody has fallen on the road, you will help him to get back up.

But all these things will not be deliberate. Not that you will plan, not that you will seek for these situations, not that you will go out of your house thinking 'Where to serve? How to serve people?' You will live your life, and if some situation arises you will respond to it, with no plan. You will never become a servant. You will always be of service, but you will never become a servant.

These public servants are mischievous people. Never become a public servant. These are the people who have been creating trouble for man. And sometimes when you are a public servant, you go on serving whether the other person likes it or not.

I have heard...

One school in Manchester had a canal running alongside the playground. One day, two little boys came running into the headmaster's office in a state of great agitation.
'Sir, sir' said the first one, 'Bobby Armstrong fell in the canal!'
'Good heavens!' said the headmaster. 'Did you get him out?'
'Yes. sir.'
'Did you give him artificial respiration?'
'We tried to, sir, but he kept getting up and running away!'

I have heard about a missionary who told his children in the Sunday School to help people.
One child asked 'How? What should we do?'
So just as an example he said 'If some old woman wants to cross the street, help her.'
After seven days, he asked next Sunday 'Did you help somebody?'
Three hands were raised. He asked the first 'What did you do?'
He said 'I helped one old woman cross the street.'
The priest was very happy and said 'God will bless you. This is very good.' He asked the other 'What did you do?'
He said 'I also helped an old woman cross the street.'
A little suspicion arose in the priest's mind whether they both got two old women. But old women are there, they can get them– it is not such a big thing. He asked the third, and the third also said 'I helped an old woman to cross the street.' Then it was too much. He said 'You all three got three old women?'
They said 'Who is saying three? It was only one woman.'
The priest was more puzzled, he said 'Then...? Three boys were needed to help the woman to cross?'
He said 'Even with three it was difficult because she didn't want to cross. It was so difficult, sir, but we did it anyhow! We carried her to the other side.'

Never become a deliberate public servant. Service should come as a natural growth of your meditation, otherwise you can be dangerous.

One man asked Buddha 'I would like to serve people.' Buddha looked at him and became very sad.
He said 'But why are you looking so sad? Why did you suddenly become so sad?'
Buddha said 'You are not. How can you serve people? First be; otherwise, in the name of service, you will do some harm. You are not yet beyond harm, you are carrying much poison in you. If you start serving people your poison will spread.'

It happened...

The chaplain of a large London hospital was doing his rounds of the wards when he came across a Chinese, desperately ill, in a side ward. He was in an oxygen mask, and looked close to death's door. The chaplain leaned over him and said 'How are you feeling, old chap?'
The reply was necessarily muffled; however, it sounded so frantic and urgent that the chaplain asked him to repeat it. But he could not understand what the unfortunate man was trying to tell him. And then to his distress the Chinese, obviously suffering acutely, expired before his very eyes.

He was haunted by this last word from a poor, lonely man in a foreign land, friendless and unable to communicate, so he sought out a professor of Oriental languages and repeated the man's last phrase as exactly as he could remember it. 'Now' pleaded the chaplain what was he trying to tell me? What did he say?'
'He said' the professor answered "'You are standing on my oxygen pipe"!'

— — —
The last question:
They say that when drunk the Englishman tends to boast, the Irishman to fight, and the Scotsman to go to sleep in case he's asked to buy a round of drinks. Now I want to know what do you say about an Indian?


There is no difficulty. The question is very simple. When an Indian is drunk, he delivers a little spiritual discourse– minimum time limit ninety minutes.

Enough for today.

Truth is always simple

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