Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda repeatedly stressed renunciation to be the keynote of character-building and spiritual living. Swamiji used to warn his followers against the temptation of watering down the ideal and tailoring it to suit one's compromised present position of material living. Spirituality is not the progression of social life but is an outright rejection of it. Society is the shadow of Reality and intrinsically hollow. Therefore, those that run after the pleasures of life that society offers are in the kindergarten of human evolution and are yet to mature into spiritual adulthood. Many of the rich are content, nay, conceited enough to posit charity to the 'poor' as adequate spiritual practice, attempting thereby to appease an imaginary gluttonous God waiting to grant them a passport to heaven. But who do you do charity to and wherefrom do you do so? Charity of Ganga water to the Ganga? Are not all those who you do charity to, God? and is not the wealth that you give away anyway His and not yours? You are merely the trustees of God's wealth and not the owners of what you in your vanity think to be yours. Therefore, in all humility and with great reverence serve these living gods in a worshipful manner and stop practising your vaunted 'charity' which is the sole prerogative of the God of the universe who owns it all. Serve with all your might your brethren, your very selves suffering everywhere from hunger, squalor, destitution and sickness. This is your work, your worship, your mission in life. Awake, arise and redress the balance that all may have a fairer chance to utilize their life's experience as they wend their way Godward. Jai Ramakrishna!
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