Doing service is my duty

This is what happens when you neglect your swadharma (your required duty as per your role in life) and do rituals like Maha Rudra Yaagam.

http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=33467 

Someone once asked this question in my Hinduism Teacher Training class. Why offer so many valuable things and food in the sacrificial fire of a yajna (a sacrifice ritual), when many in the world around us are suffering without food or water? 

The answer is this. One of your prime duties is to do daana (meaning service to others). You have to do it everyday. This can be anything from helping a old lady in the street to donating millions of dollars to an orphanage; volunteer work to organizing benefits, etc. If you do it everyday, you will be guilt-free. When you are guilt-free, you can peacefully conduct a sacrificial ritual or yajna. Only a guilty mind will ask the above question. Moreover, rituals you do only once in a while. Whereas, service is to be done everyday. So one can be assured of a guilt-free life if service/charity is done everyday...

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Quarter life crisis?

For the first time in my life, I've come in touch with my inner most fears. It is a relief after I've confronted them. I've realized that my worst fear in life is to end up being a useless, pathetic person being hated by everyone in life. Depression and fear of rejection are the others. And of course, small crawling and flying insects, no matter what size they are! 

Another fear I have to encounter is the fear of ending up with a wrong life partner, with whom I have to tolerate and at the end divorce and move away from. I used to have a great time in secondary school, JC and even Uni. Now I feel that maybe I've peaked too early in life and there is nothing more to expect from life anymore. Am I having a quarter life crisis??? 

Will I find the job I want? Will I be successful in getting that job? Will I ever find a good-looking guy with a gorgeous character? Will I get to have him as my life partner? Will I be happy? Will I be able to achieve my goals in life? So many questions in my mind, actually made me have my headache today. Not the normal headache that everyone gets, but a high blood pressure headache!! :(

I guess I'm normal because I'm sure everybody else has these same questions in mind. Unless that person already has a job and a girlfriend/boyfriend. I am fearful also of falling into this routine of going after one object after another. Just keep on chasing one thing after another until I find something that gives me permanent happiness, while I already know what will give me the permanent happiness I seek for. 

No matter what I achieve in life, be it a great career, a great husband, a great family, a great-anything, I know I will still have to face some downside to it because I will still be fearful of retaining all these great things. The fear of losing them will always lurk in the corner of my mind, not allowing me to enjoy all these fully. Everything good and bad has a beginning and an end. This is life. I have to now live intelligently with it so that I don't get caught up in this great cycle of happiness and sorrow. 

I felt like voicing out all these personal concerns I have in my blog because I will come back and read it one day in the future. It is for my own reference. Although, of course, you get to read it. I don't care. There is no such thing as privacy nowadays, I've stopped believing in such things. I don't want to be the person who pretends to be like everything is fine/great in my life, while inside I keep thinking of everything negative about myself. By voicing them out, I feel much relieved. More than what I felt after I myself confronted these fears in me. Knowing is the first step in every problem-solving.

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