A Service Project

The following article describes a service project that has special meaning for the Sathya Sai Baba Center of Manhattan, New York. In 1995 Sai Center meetings were held in Sanders Hall at the Madison Avenue Baptist Church. Several members took an interest in the luncheon that was served there for the senior citizens of the neighborhood. Even though the Center changed meeting locations in the years that followed, this service continued without interruption. Center members also helped in various ways with the shelter services for the homeless that are provided at the Church, and with repairs to the Hall itself. 

If asked what a Sai seva [service] project is, the answer probably would be that it is a group of Sai Baba devotees providing a service for others. But it is much more.

In 1995, the Manhattan Center adopted a once-a-month luncheon for senior citizens from the neighborhood. The project had been started by another group in the 1950’s and was and still is an institution in the neighborhood. When we took over, we did little to change the service, but we did add a simple fresh salad of lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers with a bottled dressing. The rest of the meal, due to convenience and money, consisted of canned food, vegetables and stew, and canned fruit for dessert.

We began with ten devotees who were committed to the service. Other devotees helped when they could, and the core group would show up every month to cook, serve and clean up. Only with this discipline and devotion could we perform the seva. After nine months, some of the core group needed to leave, but there were enough others to fill in.

Once we were established in this project, we decided to switch the meals from canned goods to a completely vegetarian one. This meant that our guests would be changing their eating habits after a 40 year history of this service, and in many cases there were individuals who had lived through the American Great Depression. For them, vegetarian food meant deprivation and was a difficult reminder of a time when many people went hungry. In theory, a Sai food project that was vegetarian sounded great to us, but how would these guests feel when we served them something they regarded as second-class food? This was our challenge.

The question of what was seva now included a new dimension: quality of service from the point of view of those being served. If we were trying to love all and serve all, we could not just impose our own values on others.  We needed to honor them and respect their wishes. We had many discussions about whether serving non-vegetarian food was appropriate, and if we were to change the menu, we could not just impose our diet, no matter how delicious it seemed to us. Since half of our devotee volunteers were familiar with a south Asian diet and the spicing that goes into these types of foods, or American pasta with bottled sauce and processed cheese topping, these discussions with the Western devotees proved to be quite spirited. In addition to these challenging menu discussions, the only devotee in our group who had cooked for large groups of people was leaving.

Thank you, Swami. At this time, the Moosewood Collective in Ithaca, New York, published a new book—Moosewood Restaurant Cooks for a Crowd, a collection of mainly vegetarian food seasoned for the North American palate. Best of all, the recipes are affordable. Each of the recipes is sized for twenty-four to fifty servings, so this book proved a real treasure. Problem solved!

Then, adding a sweet ending, a very willing devotee who loves to bake, joined the team. Our new main cook, who grew up as an Indian daughter in Europe, was willing to test her seasoning skills in fusion cuisines. With all of this help, it still took us four to five months to understand how much seasoning was truly enjoyed by our guests. At this point our guests started to comment to us how healthy the food we served was, and most exciting, how delicious it was. They had never realized how good healthy food could be. Most rewarding for us were the comments we received from our guests as what the special ingredient we used in our food was. We would smile and know that ingredient was love.

Over the years since we began this project, different challenges have, do and will present themselves, some not so obvious. The sense of duty and the discipline needed for a quality monthly service is not always as exciting as starting a new project. And then there is the challenge of keeping our menus creative and fresh, not just in good ideas but also in the quality of produce.

Not every meal we make has enough devotees who show up early to prep the food for cooking or devotees who stay late to clean up. Sometimes we do not have experienced cooks available. Then keeping in mind Swami’s sense of humor, there may be too many volunteers who show up and there is not enough to keep everyone as busy as they would like to be. Then even when the kitchen work may not be a challenge, some of our senior guests show up in a cranky mood and nothing we can do will change this. And sometimes we volunteers are just plain tired and things slow down.

So what is seva? Swami says love all and serve all. He says WATCH: watch our words, actions, thoughts, characters, and hearts. He also says duty, discipline, and devotion are necessary. The Bhagavad Gita teaches to do our duty and leave the results to God. All of these teachings provide the base notes, the rhythm, and the melody of our service. The key, as Swami teaches, is to follow one of His teachings and make it our own.

This seva project is not just service. It is sadhana [spiritual effort], a way to follow one or more of Sai Baba’s teachings and see and/or feel the results in a tangible way, manifesting externally and sometimes just internally. It is a way to be in a community of devotees who are all trying to do their best on their spiritual journeys. It is a way to love each other and ourselves in spite of and also because we are human. It is to search for the divine in each other as we uncover the divine in ourselves.

Thank you, Swami. The obvious and subtler aspects of seva are easier with Your teachings and especially when You are here to be an example for us. To think like God, act like God, and be like God with a group of other people striving for this common goal is so much easier as a sadhana than on our own. Not everyone is called to the same kind of project. Sometimes our personalities rub each other the wrong way. Sometimes we feel unappreciated for our work. But if we can understand and remember that we are all doing our best, that a seva project is not just about the obvious and if we can strive for unconditional love by trying first to give it, then the answer to the question of what is seva will become part of our very being and we will have found our inner Swami, our own divinity; and that, He teaches, is the point of seva.

~Stephanie
New York, USA