Selfless Service

What is Selfless Service?

After non-violence, the main root of all spiritual practice within the Dattatreya Tradition is selfless service. What is selfless service? It is carrying out action for the benefit of others without any sense of expectation or ownership. Selfless service is not so much an action as it is an attitude.

To understand what selfless service is, we can take a few examples:

If we feed a million people, but we do it only so that we can be seen, noticed or honoured for being a generous person, then are we truly practising selfless service?

If we work in a shop to pay our bills, and yet we naturally use the opportunity of working in the public to generally help, benefit and maybe bring a smile to the faces of the customers that we interact with, then are we practising selfless service?

In the first example, though we are technically benefiting a tremendous amount of people, our focus is still on benefiting our own reputation through using the means of apparently charitable behaviour. However, in the second example, even though we might only assist a few people over the course of a day or a week, our focus is directed outside towards the welfare of other beings. This is selfless service: temporarily forgetting our own sense of self to become deeply absorbed into an action that will, on some level, bring benefit to others.

Thus, in order to practise selfless service we do not need to immediately start conducting mass feedings, we just need to see, right now, within the sphere of our ordinary daily lives, where can we start giving more of ourselves to others simply by changing our attitude towards action.

Service Within the Dattatreya Tradition

Some people may find it strange that a tradition whose key scripture, Avadhuta Gita, constantly points away from the externally perceived world to the perfect primordial unity of the supreme consciousness – some may find it strange that the very root of such a tradition lies in the simplicity of serving others.

However, the point is that the practice of real unity is always, and can only ever be, unconditional love and benevolent selfless action. And this point can easily be seen if we look at the lives of masters, who are those that have completely and irrevocably established themselves in the non-dual essence of existence, and thus have become avadhutas. Their lives are totally dedicated to benefiting other beings. So thus, if we wish to become masters ourselves, then we should begin the practice of the masters right now – we should serve others.

If we only aim towards realising non-dual truth for the benefit ourselves, as a kind of hedonistic method for experiencing bliss, then we can never reach the end of path, we can never become spiritually perfect in the way that Lord Dattatreya and his avataric representatives like and Sripada Srivallabha and Shirdi Sai Baba were and still are.

When we experience deepening levels of peace and contentment, we have to practise it. When we get a glimpse of the unitive essence of reality itself, we have to practise it. The practice of all of these things lies in affirming unity by loving, blessing and serving other beings without any sense of expectation or ownership.

In the Dattatreya Tradition, selfless service is that which functions as our root and foundation to keep us stable in times where we may feel either more contracted or more expanded. When we feel more contracted, whether we feel anxious, depressed or lonely, then serving others actually brings an immediate sense of relief because the joy that we are able to bring to others naturally returns to us a thousand fold. When we are in a more expanded mode, having selfless service as a key part of our lifestyle acts like an anchor that helps us to ground our deepening spiritual realisations in the world. The more we pour our spiritual wealth back into the world through sharing with others, the more this wealth begins to accumulate at an increasingly exponential rate.

As long as we see ourselves, honestly, as humble servants, then we are safe. As soon as we develop the pride of thinking that we are now knowledgeable, advanced or even a master ourselves, then we step out of that safety into the wilderness of pride where we may, at any moment, fall and be crushed under the weight of our own ego.

Therefore, without service there is no Datta Tradition, and there is no Datta Tradition without service. The name ‘Datta’ actually means ‘Giver’. So thus, this is the tradition of giving, of accumulating spiritual wealth and then sharing and pouring that wealth out through consistent benevolent action.

How to Practise Selfless Service?

The best way to start practising selfless service is to notice and recognise our present opportunities for selfless service. Already, if we do anything for anyone, whether within the context of work, family or intimate relationship, then we can start seeing how we can change our attitudes so that we expect less and start to give more freely.

We should put our hearts into everything that we do. If we cook food that other people are going to eat, then we should make that food as delicious as possible. Then those people will be uplifted by eating such food that has been charged with love and care. If we clean a room that others are going to stay in, then we should do it in such a way where people feel immediately welcomed and comfortable when they arrive.

Once we master the opportunities for selfless service that are already present within our lives today, then we will naturally begin to tune into the creative, benevolent and nurturing energy that is already naturally present within all of life. From this point, we may may receive inspiration about how we can use our own talents to start benefiting other people. Instead of seeing service as some kind of rigid chore-like duty, we should see it as something that is a completely natural and creative extension of our own individuality.

Often, within the Dattatreya Tradition, master’s create service opportunities for those who have the pull to selflessly give something of themselves. Such service is incredibly beneficial because it serves many different purposes simultaneously. Not only do we get the benefit of lightening our karmic load by transferring the energy of self-obsession into activities that nurture others, but we also contribute to the broader spiritual work of the tradition.

Also, if such work is specifically assigned us by a master, then we are incredibly lucky because within the Datta Tradition, the instructions of the masters are literally seen as keys that we are to use liberate ourselves and also to reach our higher spiritual potential and destiny in life. The real spiritual master for each of us is verily the one who holds these keys, both to our individual liberation and to our positioning in the world as humble yet powerful servants of all of life.

May the principle of selfless service prevail in these times, when ignorant self-obsession and the destructive action that it engenders prosper. May all sincere beings who come into the sphere of Lord Dattatreya see the principle and attitude of selfless service as the very first step to take on this exquisite journey to the heart of perfection, to absolute freedom itself.

Written by Jack Barratt