Ishwar Puri: “Sewa is service. When you do service it should be done without regard to reward. If you seek a reward it is not service anymore. It is labor of wages. You get your wages back whenever you expect a reward then it is not service at all. Service is when you do service for no reason except the reward that you got a chance to do Sewa, that you got a chance to do service.
Sewa is very important, Great Master used to say, Sewa is meditation in action. That means if you do Sewa without expecting reward you will find in due course the result was the same as you would get by meditation. So therefore, he said, in case somebody has difficulty in meditating like the mind makes excuses not to meditate; oh I am too tired today; maybe I will start tomorrow; maybe this is enough, five minutes is enough now. When the mind makes excuses it will be more readily available to do Sewa. Sewa is easier done by the mind than meditation and therefore if the mind is trying to be clever with you and makes excuses, jump on to Sewa.
Now Sewa of the master is a great possibility but if master is not available, Sewa of the other sangat or the disciples is equally good and you can serve the community. If no satsangis are available, no cotravelers are available; service of anybody is good so long as the service is done without regard to reward that it should not be done to get something back. If you expect something back you don’t get it but if you don’t you get it. So this is a little bit of a dilemma of how to do Sewa without expecting something and the mind says now you 19 have done Sewa without expecting a reward, now you will get a reward. Now that destroys the effect of Sewa. So at that time when we do service we should not think of reward.
And why is it as good as meditation? Because service without thinking of reward helps the mind to remove itself from the thoughts of what it is going to get which is the same thing we want to achieve in meditation.
And that is why Sewa works and also as you have rightly pointed out the food cooked with love and devotion always tastes better and has a spiritual value in it. That is why there is an advice to all cooks, all housewives who cook in their kitchen , please do not cook when you are angry, do not cook when you had a fight , cook when you are in a great mood and especially after mediation you feel so light, good time to cook. Also if you have any nice chanting to do of nice Gurbani of a spiritual song, that is the time to sing it even in your head. You don’t have to sing it aloud but chant it in your mind. If you have a Simran given to you to repeat, any mantra by a master, repeat the mantra at that time, it changes the quality of the food you are cooking and helps everybody. So you will notice, call a spiritually enlightened person to your house and give him food cooked with anger and give him food cooked without. He will know immediately the difference. Because the food will not taste the same, he will not like to eat the food cooked with anger but he will gladly eat it food cooked with love and devotion.
So therefore love and devotion being the basis of the spiritual path, anything done with love and devotion, any Sewa done with love and devotion always pays on the long run, on the meditational side also and you make progress with that. Remember, Sewa is a very important factor in the spiritual path.”
See the full Transcript and Video Below.
https://www.ishanews.org/media/transcripts/eng/Surat_Shabd-Sound_Current_Pulls_us_Up.pdf