Guiding principles for those who serve

1. Treat service as the act, not the result

Your work is to give: time, labour, resources or compassion. When the result comes, how it comes and how much of it comes is not in your hands. Insisting on a result turns service into a burden.

2. Learn to recognise expectation

If the feeling keeps returning that "people should understand", "my word should be taken", "the system should improve", then know that expectation is attaching itself. The moment expectation arrives, service begins to lose its peace.

3. Watch the state of your mind after serving

Tiredness is natural, bitterness is not. If after serving your mind is turning hard, irritable or negative, stop at once and look inward.

4. Do not take every problem upon yourself

All the disorder of society, all the failings of institutions and all the mistakes of people are not your responsibility. Do as much as is within your power, and only that.

5. Setting limits is part of service too

Being available at all hours, carrying every burden, or enduring every wrong arrangement is not service. Healthy limits are what let service last.

6. Bind yourself to the feeling, not to the person

People can change and institutions can decay, but keep compassion steady. Be disappointed in a person if you must, never in the spirit of service.

7. Do service the way you would do sadhana

As sadhana holds peace, patience and continuity, so should service. Stay away from noise, from display and from ego.

8. Do not treat caring for yourself as a crime

To rest, to take distance, to steady your own mind is not running from service. A worn-out servant has less to give to society, not more.

9. Keep humility in service, not inferiority

You are not doing anyone a favour; you are fulfilling your own dharma. That feeling is what keeps service sacred.

10. Ask yourself this question from time to time

"Is my service making me calmer within?" If the answer is no, do not correct the service, correct the way you are looking at it.

A last reminder, for the one who serves

Service is that which fills you with a little more humanity every single day.