Duty Is Worship
Ben repeat the word ‘duty’ day after day and during all hours of the day, without any clear conception of what that word means. Duty arises when there are two people, you and another. Education has lost its meaning when it does not instruct what an individual should render to society, how he has to control his ego for ensuring the common good. An individual has the right to exercise freedom, only so long as he does not obstruct the freedom which is equally the right of another. Honoring the right of the other man to freedom is your duty. The right and the duty are both fundamental. Nevertheless, we find everyone fostering and insisting on his own rights and paying no consideration to the rights of others. We find in society, around us, millions of brothers and sisters subjected to harm by this callousness.
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. XIV, p. 130
Man has to recognize his indebtedness to society and his duty towards it. This is the best way to solve the troubles of the day. Attention is paid only to arguments and counter-arguments, propositions and oppositions, plans and programs; the aim of the ego-centered is more to win a verbal victory than achieve a valid solution. No attempt is made to foster the social virtues of honesty, tolerance, and cordiality. Society is the expression of divinity into manifold phases, with its love, its ardor, its eagerness to comfort and console. A chance conglomeration of humans does not become a society. It has to be welded into a unit by the consciousness of kinship in God, by the sharing of each other’s joys and sorrows, and the cultivation of equality. The individual has to manifest, through word and deed, the bliss inherent in him and in society.
Digest, pp. 274-275
You have it in your power to make your days on earth a path of flowers, instead of a path of thorns. Recognize the Sai resident in every heart and all will be smoothness, softness, and sweetness for you. Sai will be the fountain of love in your heart and in the hearts of all with whom you come in contact. Know that Sai is omnipresent and, so, He is present in every living thing and you. Adore everyone as you adore Sai. Allow the other man as much freedom as you like to enjoy; do unto him just as you would like to be done unto you. Don’t do unto him anything you don’t like to be done unto you. That is the sum and substance of sadhana (spiritual effort).
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. XIII, p. 66
