Self-sacrifice
By Taru Bahl

A mother sacrifices her food to feed her starving infant; a brother sacrifices his youth to honour his commitment and duty towards his mother and four sisters after the passing away of his father; a friend sacrifices his job in favour of a friend who is more needy than him; a mother sacrifices her job, talent and qualification in order to look after her family.

Giving up something that is precious is not easy. We all want to cling possessively to animate and inanimate things, to people, to our attitudes and beliefs. This rigidity may limit us as human beings, but since we are dictated by strong self interests we rarely make losing decisions or at least ensure that our in-tray is always more loaded than our out-tray. And even if we do go out of the way for someone, by forsaking something that is valuable to us, as enumerated in the above instances, most of us wouldn’t let the people concerned forget this in a hurry. We wouldn’t lose an opportunity to remind them, making them acknowledge it, express gratitude and reciprocate. Often we make ‘sacrifices’ only so that the ‘receiver’ is indebted to us; we can have an upper hand and demand a return favour at an opportune moment. So even if we have sacrificed our position, money, time or resources, the entire spirit of doing a good deed gets tarnished and adulterated by the ingredients of selfishness, pettiness, lack of compassion and humility.

Ayn Rand in her pathbreaking book, Virtue of Selfishness, says, "Any action that a man undertakes for the benefit of those he loves is not a sacrifice if in the hierarchy of his values, in the total context of the choices open to him, it achieves that which is of greatest personal and rational importance to him." Thus, in the above examples, all the so-called sacrifices contribute to the individual’s own happiness and, therefore, disqualify them from being sacrifices in the real sense of the term. The mother who starves is doing so to feed her own child. This act would have been a sacrifice if she had given that food to another child, a virtual stranger, one who she is not even likely to meet again, and allowing her own child to go hungry. The same principle holds true for the young man who gives up his job for a loved one and the mother who forsakes a career for her family. In these instances they have renounced to gain an end. J. Krishnamurthi may appear a little harsh but he says that it tantamounts to a ‘barter’ or an exchange and not a sacrifice.

According to him, "Self-sacrifice is the extension of the self. The sacrifice of the self is a refinement of the self and however subtle the self may make itself, it is still enclosed, petty and limited. Conscious sacrifice, therefore, has to be an expansion of the self, giving up in order to gather again. To give up is another form of acquisition. You renounce this in order to gain that, this is put at a lower level, that at a higher level and to gain the higher you give up the lower. In this process there is no giving up but only a gaining of greater satisfaction and the search for greater satisfaction has no element of sacrifice."

Ayn Rand terms self-sacrifice as ‘mind sacrifice’. A sacrifice, therefore, means the surrender of a higher value in favour of a lower value or of a non-value. If one gives up that which one does not value in order to obtain that which one does value or if one gives up a lesser value in order to obtain a greater one — this is not a sacrifice but a gain as in the examples listed in the beginning. She argues by saying that to sacrifice one’s happiness is to sacrifice one’s own desires; to sacrifice one’s desires is to sacrifice one’s values; to sacrifice one’s values is to sacrifice one’s judgement; to sacrifice one’s judgement is to sacrifice one’s mind and it is nothing less than this that the creed of self-sacrifice aims and demands.

Sacrifice, according to the dictionary, is the surrender or destruction of something of value for the sake of greater gain or to dispose of something regardless of profit. Self-sacrifice is a means for promoting the end of maximum happiness and well-being for the entire community. It is a duty that most of us are called upon to exercise only on rare occasions of crisis. It is self-subordination which is a duty and one which most of us are called upon to exercise almost every day. We subordinate our own ego or our own immediate interests to wider interests, like whenever we refrain from starting to eat until everybody at the table has been served, or whenever as part of an audience we hear a speaker out without heckling or rushing up to the platform ourselves, or whenever we restrain a cough at some inconvenient time during a play or concert. So every family member must habitually practice self-subordination if there has to be harmonious social cooperation, which eventually would go into promoting his own long-term interests.

Sacrifice has to be devoid of self-interest. It must be done without having any expectation. It must stem from a passionate outburst of feeling-- one which outweighs all considerations of personal gain, benefit and aggrandisement. The action must be backed by a sentiment which translates into thought and spirit. Without the spirit of sacrifice, a worshipper may become active in a church, temple or mosque but may remain inactive in its gospel. For, it takes sacrifice to serve the needs of other people — the sacrifice of their own pride and prejudice, among other things. One needs to have a sense of service, devotion and inner worship.

According to the Holy Scriptures, sacrifice performed out of duty and scriptural rules without expectation of reward is of the nature of goodness. "When we lose ourselves in giving, we find our reason for living." In training his disciples, Jesus focused on inculcating in them a culture of selfless love and service. But, to his great disappointment, the disciples continued to be self-centered till the end. So important was the issue to him that he addressed it just before he was being crucified. He washed feet to teach them to serve one another. He turned the Last Supper, the fellowship meal, into a sacrament of self-sacrifice.

Bread has to be broken in order that people may partake of it. Jesus turned the loaf of bread into a symbol of his body. Just as the loaf, though being broken and distributed, fulfils its purpose, so also we are to fulfil our spiritual destiny by breaking the prison of our self-centeredness. It is not the loaf but the loaf in its brokenness that symbolises the body of Christ. The broken loaf does not become the flesh of Christ but a symbol of spirituality. The same is true of the wine that symbolises the blood of Christ. Wine, in this context, is neither a fetish nor an intoxicant. It is a symbol of life. The sharing of the cup of wine symbolised as holding the blood of life was the ultimate symbol of sacrificial self-giving.

Ultimately, a sacrifice has to be the result of a rational thinking mind which has clearly worked out and prioritised its needs. Once the decision is taken to sacrifice X thing for Y, it must be done with the complete spirit of service and without any expectation of reward or a reciprocal gesture. Whether one makes a sacrifice for a loved one or for a stranger, it must be an individual decision which one has made for one’s own self. It must be a response, a reflex action to one’s inherent value system which has dictated the action/gesture spontaneously, honestly and truthfully. Once made there should be no regret and misgivings.