Living in Service

  During the Chan discussion group tonight, one of the themes we discussed was that of not being attached to material or personal comforts, as well as status. It's very easy for a person to become attached to these, being the result of previous efforts, but once one gets fixated on them, they define one's existence. I think that the remedy is to live 'in service' or to make one's life a serving to others, without getting attached to the body or its comforts. This is a practice that is true to Chan itself.
   In fact, I would go a step further than this and suggest that in order for it to happen, one must sense that they are not their bodies, pure and simple. If I am taking the sense of bodily comfort or physical comfort as 'myself', then any slightest thing which threatens that sense of comfort is seen as an existential threat. But there really isn't anything that one feels or senses that stays permanently with one's body anyway, so there is again a question of why get attached to comfort anyway?
    While all of this sounds great, I don't think it's possible to fully realize it unless a person devotes their energies to some community or some way of uplifting the spirits of other beings. Without that, it's easy to become fixated in every little ache and pain of the body. I think this is actually very simple to prove. If you have ever come home very tired or tense after work, you might be inclined at first to want to flop on the bed or easy chair, only to feel more stuck, because you get fixated on the pleasurable experiences of relaxation. But if instead you choose to invest that tiredness into helping others in some way, such as through a volunteer program or group meditation, you will find that your energy naturally increases, or at least stays steady. This is because you are not fixating on the feelings in the body, but instead are devoting yourself to things outside this tight sense of 'self''. For this reason, I think that serving others is an important aspect of therapy, and it should be the case that we are always finding ways to serve others when we are not working.