You know, when you exchange a thing for a thing, when it is mutual, it is known as business. But when you give but do not take in return, it is termed as service. This is the fundamental difference between service and business. In many newspapers you will notice advertisements stating that a particular company has been rendering service to the people from a such and such a year. This is a wrong statement – it is not service, it is business.
When the entire Cosmos is of God, is His offspring, serving them means serving the Supreme. Wherever you are, as a householder or as a renunciate, you must render service to all created beings with the ideation of the Supreme on all the individual entities. Guarding yourself against egoism you must think in your mind that taking a particular shape the Supreme has given you this chance to serve Him. It is to His credit that in the form of a diseased, a helpless person, or a beggar, He is accepting service and making you grateful. Had He not come in this form, you would not have been blessed with this good fortune.
(“Bhágavata Dharma”)
In meditation there must always be the feeling that you want to serve Him. If this is the feeling, immediately the mind gets concentrated. If in meditation there is the culmination of service, everything will be achieved. Even through the preliminary lessons of meditation (Náma Mantra), a spiritual aspirant can get salvation, but even one practicing higher meditation (Vishesh Yoga) cannot attain it if there is no feeling for service, and meditation is done just for the sake of exhibition of one’s heroism. When internal service is not done properly, the external one also is not done properly; therefore it is said, “Liberation of self and service to humanity.” In “liberation of self” there is internal service; and in “service to humanity” there is external service. Both are needed. By external service the mind is purified and with the purified mind, internal service can be done by everyone.
(“Bhágavata Dharma”)
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