Selflessness and charity play important roles in helping to bring happiness into a person’s life. Selflessness emphasizes actions that primarily benefit others. These are actions performed without expectation of reward. Charity is a type of selflessness. Selfless and charitable actions are also fundamental to all truly spiritual practices. Yoga, Taoism, Buddhism, and devotional practices all stress their importance.
Selfless Desires and Actions
Selfless acts and desires reduce the focus on personal desires and weaken attachment to these desires. Absent strong attachment to personal desires, you are free of the dissatisfaction that comes with those desires. Even though you want the world to be other than as it is, if your aim is mainly to benefit others, such desire does not spawn the dissatisfaction that prevents happiness.
Engaging in selfless actions is one of yoga’s four great paths to lasting happiness. If you desire to be a beneficent presence in the world, that desire cannot destroy your happiness. As long as you do not attach personal benefit to the fulfillment of the desire, and as long as your personal happiness is not primary, you can work towards your goal of helping others while staying happy.
Selfless Thoughts and Desires
Swami Satchidananda says, “Any desire without any personal or selfish motive will never bind you.” [123] Certain kinds of thoughts and desires are painful and bind us, while others do not. Those that bind us and cause pain are selfish thoughts, but selfless thoughts leave us in peace. Swami Satchidananda encourages us to “cultivate selfless thoughts.” He says, “That is our first duty.” [124]
What is a selfless thought? A thought of love for someone is selfless. However, this must be love with no expectation of love in return. Such a selfless love can never lead to pain.
Compassion for the suffering of another is also selfless. Such compassion can bring temporary pain to you, but will ultimately give you both understanding and peace.
Joy at the success and fulfillment of another is also an unmistakable expression of selflessness. As previously discussed, the human mind has a negative bias, and it is easier to commiserate and assist in hard times than it is to rejoice in the good fortune of another. In this sense, joy for the success of another is a truly selfless act.
The Bhagavad Gita says:
When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union. [125]
What is a selfish thought? It can be a thought about something you want, with the expectation that having it will make you happy. The happiness of others does not factor in to the selfish thought. A wish to keep something you have, if losing it will make you unhappy, is also selfish.
A thought of conditional love for someone that demands love in return is a selfish thought. Such “love” can lead to immediate pain, or pain in the future. Loving someone who does not love you can bring suffering if you are desperate for that person’s love. Loving someone whom you need, and who loves you in return, can be wonderful for a while, but what happens when that person stops loving you? If you need that person’s love, loss and jealousy will cause great suffering.
What is it about selfish thoughts that makes them so painful? Selfish thoughts dominate the mind. All of the attention is riveted on what you want, what you need, and what you want to avoid. The nature of selfish thoughts is that they will simply not let your mind be at peace. It is only when your mind is at peace that you can experience happiness. Selfish thoughts also involve very particular conditions under which you will permit yourself to be happy. Because your happiness is conditional and temporal, you cannot experience true and lasting happiness.
Selfless Actions
Selfless action is one of the great paths in yoga. The life of Mahatma Gandhi is a shining example of this path. When you renounce the fruits of whatever action you take, you reveal the value of selfless action. You may be passionately committed to a particular action or goal, but if you are not attached to the outcome of the action, your actions cannot bind you. If your happiness does not depend on whether you succeed or fail, the result of what you do cannot disturb your equanimity.
In his book on the Bhagavad Gita, Gandhi says you must renounce the fruits of your actions to be on this path. He makes it clear, however, that to renounce the fruits of your action does not mean giving up the reward for action. “Again, let no one consider renunciation to mean want of fruit for the renouncer.” Renunciation instead means only the absence of attachment to a reward. Gandhi says that you can pursue your personal ends, and still be on the path of selfless action, as long as you are unattached to the results of your actions. He says, “He who renounces reaps a thousandfold.”[126]
Selfless action and nonattachment go hand in hand, with one complementing the other. Swami Satchidananda says:
Once you are unattached in your personal life, you can serve others, and by doing so, you will find more and more joy. That’s why sometimes I say that the selfless person is the most selfish one. Why? Because a selfless person doesn’t want to lose his or her peace and happiness.[127]
What Is Charity?
To offer true charity, you must give without expecting anything in return.[128] Giving to others and expecting something in return is not charity, even if you expect only their appreciation. Giving without expecting or even desiring anything in return is hard to do, but this is the nature of true charity.
Suppose a person is charitable to all people, but does so mainly to receive blessings. Perhaps this person is counting on his good deeds to attract the favorable notice of God, and ensure a place in heaven. This kind of charity is obviously not selfless. Giving in this way is bargaining, not charity.
Let us relate this to your life. Perhaps you have someone in your life to whom you always give things — your time, your money, or your love. You give because this person needs what you have to give. Do you expect something in return, such as love or gratitude? If you do, maybe you are bargaining, not giving. If this person never gives anything in return, how does it make you feel? Do you feel resentful? If so, then you are not practicing selfless charity.
Try to imagine giving to someone without expecting or wanting anything in return, not even gratitude. The reason you expect nothing is not that you believe the person to be ungrateful. You give because that person is in need, and it never occurs to you to expect or want anything in return. You give from compassion, without needing anything in return, not even a thank-you. Does this seem an odd way to be? Those who are truly selfless might say that such compassion is the way of the universe.
What happens when you give and expect something in return, even if only a thank-you note? If you expect something, you cannot be happy unless you receive your reward. You feel slighted or resentful, or you feel like a fool, especially if the seeming ingratitude persists over time. Yes, you are a fool, but not for the reason you think. You have attached your happiness to what another person does or does not do. Your happiness is a hostage to another’s actions, and if that person does not respond appropriately, you cannot be happy.
You might ask, should I not be happy if I help someone, and why shouldn’t happiness be my reward for doing so? Some would answer this question by saying that the world is synonymous with oneself, so if you help someone else, you are really helping yourself. Why should you be happy just because you are helping yourself?
However, my answer is this: you should be happy when you selflessly help someone. However, happiness is not your reward for doing so. Instead, selfless and charitable actions are expressions of the happiness that already lives within you. As it is your true nature to be happy, it is also your true nature to be selfless.
On the other hand, if you help someone, and in doing so expect to be happy as your reward, real happiness may elude you. You may experience conditional happiness as a reward for helping someone, but when you focus your attention on the reward, you move away from lasting happiness.