Expressing Mindful Love Through Service
by Ronald Alexander
Last month I discovered an obscure holiday called Random Acts of Kindness Week that starts around February 14th. Now this seems appropriate since St. Valentine’s Day is supposedly based on the martyred saints who around 200 AD performed marriages for soldiers ordered by the Roman Emperor to remain single. Their acts weren’t necessarily random but they were based on kindness and service.
Today service, or Seva, as we say in Sanskrit, is essential for one’s transformation, personal growth and tapping into their creativity. At every step of the way in your journey you need to be sharing in some shape or form, whether it’s to somebody in need of comfort or financial help. I think it’s important to see that we are all in this together, it’s not about acquiring more stuff or taking care of what you have, but it’s about actively, in a social, political, spiritual way, contributing to the whole thing.
Buddha teach that all beings including the animals, plants and even the mother (Gaia) earth are all inter-related and co-dependent upon each other. When we take time to give, to contribute, to listen, to love, to heal, to teach, to be compassionate in daily action for all life we are expressing mindful love through Seva. As we take time each and every day to become more mindful of our thoughts, words,
actions and deeds we begin to take a breath using what I call mindstrength. This allows us to slow down, wait, listen and not react by staying in the present in order to improve the quality of our loving relationships. Through mindfulness we have a most unique power and ability to begin to reshape and restructure the quality of our actions.
When we act in mindful love we bring the best out of those we interact with. In Zen we say beings are like tomato plants, those that get the most mindful attention yield the larger fruit. Action and reaction also known as the Law of Karma begins and ends with how we mindfully care and love after our own gardens first and then learning that through Seva we can bring forth the best in all the beings we co-exist with.
In my book Wise Mind, Open Mind I share a personal story of when I was on a retreat in India. While there I searched for a famous Indian female saint who is the devotee of the great sage and guru Neem Karoli Baba. After an exhausting month of travel I finally found her in the city of Lucknow and tried many times to meet her. Eventually I was granted a personal audience in which we just sat in meditation. During this time all my questions and spiritual hunger for seeking wisdom and enlightenment fell way into this blissful
