If not for your own sake, then work for others

If not your own suffering moves you, then look at other’s suffering.

Economic and technological development is a great wheel. It hides so much. Probably that’s the reason why most of the Saints happen to be in parts of the world where suffering was rampant, where suffering was something that you could see right on the streets, where suffering was an unavoidable fact.

It sometimes so happens that men of compassion become victims of their self-neglect. There are people who become victim of self-aggrandization or self-centeredness, equally, there are people who become victims of self-neglect. They just do not have the faculty to care too much about themselves.

Therefore if they are to go into their own suffering, and if they are to try to feel motivated by their own suffering, if they are to try for Liberation by using their own suffering as the reason, then they would fail. Because they just do not have the faculty to bother too much about themselves.

If it’s about themselves, they ignore it. It happens. This too is ego. Just as self-centeredness is ego, self-neglect too is ego. It’s a beautiful version of ego, it’s probably one of the better versions of ego. But nevertheless, still ego.