Blessed are the souls who are gifted with this precious elixir of life. Sacrifices enable us to take the pains of life in sand stride and march on the road to success. The ability to enjoy making sacrifice to some extent is a natural gift by the grace of the Almighty. It is the instinct. It lightens the burden of life. It is that salt of life with which we are able to swallow the bitter liquid of life.
Albert Einstein ‘Only a life lived for others is worth living’ There are instances in life where you need to think beyond yourself think whether it would be better for you and at the same time the respective people related to you.Yes that happiness is of a different standard.You can always have things for yourself to be happy—but when you care for others and just sacrifice at certain times that happiness is far beyond the limits.
A very simple definition of sacrifice is to give up something for the sake of something else, whether it is for another human life for an idea or even for a belief.
Charity begins at home. Any act of goodness can have solid foundation only if it spreads goodness around. There is certainly a torch which burns within ourselves, a torch that guides us to differentiate between the right and the wrong. You have not to pay for this torch,you have not to feed it with fuel. This torch would continue to burn with vigour so long as we are mindful of it. It is the noble wisdom that leads to sacrifices. Pollute the wisdom and the entire behaviour of the man gets polluted. Wisdom is the driving force which gets manifested in the form of our actions. Nobility resides in our inner most care and from there it sprouts in our exterior. Take care of your interior and the exterior would respond to it spontaneously.
Life is great sacrifice , seated within this body, we are ever engaged in the performance of sacrifice. In the hoary traditions of this country, there is no sacrifice without sacrificial instinct. We are told in the sacred texts that
Man, verily, is a sacrificial fire, the open mouth, verily, is fuel; breath the smoke; speech the flame; the eye the coals; the ear the sparks. In this fire, the gods offer food from this oblation, the vital principle in man arises.
The organs of perceptions and actions are the gods engaged in this corporeal sacrifice. The fire is being fed by the nourishment brought by eyes, ears, nose, palate and the organs of touch, the nourishments are colours and appearances, sounds and tunes, fragrances and odours, sweets and savouries and soft and hard touches. Fed with these nourishments, the fire in man is always kept burning Our Lord Himself is engaged in a selfless action : He remains unattached with the fruits of His actions; and therefore, He would like His devotees to be always engaged in actions, and such actions as are selfless .He expects His adherents to remain unattached with fruit of actions. Lord Krishna also said the same thing , ‘Do your duty and don’t worry about the fruit of your action.’ Similarly mother is also an epitome of selfless love and sacrifice.
The sacrificer does not succumb to temptations. He very well knows that the obstacles would be put by antagonistic forces whilst a sacrifice is being performed. A good action is always opposed by a reaction. The allurements and the attachments are, as if, presented by the inherent opposing agencies to distract the sacrificer from the right path. That, in fact is no sacrifice which has not to face hindrances. A sacrificer is thus always put to a severe test. If he comes out victorious in the midst of the handicaps, the glory is his. If he succumbs to appeasemensts and temptation, his doom is assured. He would wake up only when it becomes too late. Tears of sorrow and remorse would be his share.
“Omelettes are not made without breaking eggs” This quotation implies that there are certain things which cannot be accomplished without taking some drastic steps. Nor is it possible to achieve anything significant without sacrificing certain comforts, rights etc. An athlete, who bagged a medal, will tell us how with a view to building stamina, he had to practise daily in the morning when one is more prone to relax in bed than to expose oneself to cold weather. Paul Gauguin had to leave property dealer’s lucrative business for painting. R.L. Stevenson had to incur the happiness of his parents when he preferred the Muse to engineering. Here how can we forget the names of freedom fighters of India like Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev and many others? We owe our freedom to the sacrificial instinct and the strong will power of our freedom fighters.
The Oxford dictionary defines sacrifice as an act of value for the sake of something that is of more importance. So the question is what should be more important——? Once we decide that the lesser important thing is to be sacrificed —-and the sacrificial instinct flows within us. It is not just that we sacrifice for the sake of others but more important is to do that without any expectations, regrets or grudges. A mother can sacrifice anything for her child as illustrated in a poem by Nisgin Ezetual where the selfless love of a mother for the children is shown, when the mother was bitten by a scorpion and later lost its sting after 20 hours, the only thing she quoted after becoming conscious was ,” Thank God, the scorpion picked on me and spared my children.”
The rewards sacrifice gives us are intangible and invisible. The pleasure and happiness it gives is beyond explanation.The feeling or the thought to serve others bere your self is in itself divine.
Some nations which today enjoy supreme status among other nations had to face odd situations for a long time before they rid their society of many social maladies. That was indeed achieved by discomfort to some and sacrifices of many.
How good it is to sacrifice ,to speak a cherry word ,to do kindness and to make others happy! But sorry to say that in this materialistic society money speaks, money talks & money broadcasts. In fact one can not deny the fact that to enjoy life & its bounties one must learn to sacrifice because such people have a good time up and pass with their life insured against penury- A passport to happiness, because Bible also says, “It is more blessed to give than to receive’.
