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Chapter 17
PROGRAMME FOR THE SEEKER
95. Triple Endeavour For This Purpose
4. Let us first see what yajna means. Everyday we make use of nature. If a hundred of us crowd together in one spot for a day, that will spoil the place, pollute the atmosphere, and thus harm nature. We should do something to recoup nature, to restore its balance. It is for this purpose that the institution of yajna was created. Yajna is intended to reimburse, to put back what we have taken from nature. We have been farming for thousands of years and eroding the fertility of the soil thereby. Yajna says, “Return to the soil its fertility. Plough it. Let it absorb heat from the sun. Manure it.” To make good the loss is one of the purposes of the yajna. Another purpose is to purify the things we use. We use a well and make the place all round it dirty and slushy. The harm thus caused should be undone; so we should clean the surroundings. Production of something new is also an aspect of yajna. We wear clothes; so we should spin regularly to produce them. Growing cotton or food grains, spinning—all these are forms of yajna. Whatever we do as yajna should not have any selfish motive behind it; it should rather be done with a sense of duty to compensate the loss we have caused. There is no altruism in it; it is the repayment of what we already owe. In fact, we are born with a debt. What we produce for repayment of that debt is a form of service; we are not obliging anybody thereby. We use so many things in the world around us. Yajna should be done for their replenishment and purification as well as for new production. 5. Human society is the second institution. Our parents, teachers, friends—all of them toil for us. Dana has been prescribed to discharge our debt to society. Dana too is no altruism. We are already highly obliged to society. We were totally defenceless and weak when we were born. It is the society that looked after us and brought us up. We should therefore serve it. When we serve others without taking anything in return, that is altruism; but we have already taken much from society. The service that is rendered to repay that debt is dana. Dana means contributing to the progress of mankind. While yajna means working for the replenishment of nature’s loss, repayment of the debt to society through exerting oneself physically or through money or some other means is dana.
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