Righteousness – Purity of Heart and Purpose – Selflessness

What is sacrifice? Sacrifice involves examining your conscience and doing your duties without hesitation, without waiting for others to perform your deeds for you, without expectation of rewards, and without consideration of hardship and effort. When you work selflessly for your country, help to relieve suffering in the world, give your share of family resources to help your siblings and relatives, this is sacrifice. When you uphold your virtues, help orphans and widows, give to the poor, this is also sacrifice. However, if you steal, rob, gamble, engage in unscrupulous actions, lead young people into bad habits, cheat in your business dealings, and do things only for money or other personal gains, you have abandoned the virtue of sacrifice. The practice of sacrifice also involves giving up personal gains to uphold the virtues of dedication, trustworthiness, and honour. We need to sacrifice self-interest, and even our lives, to fulfill promises we have made to others and to ensure that our actions are honourable and honest. Sacrifice also means helping others regardless of what they have done for you. This means that you must first show appreciation of good deeds rendered to you by others. If you do not appreciate help given to you and return a good deed with an evil one, you have forgotten what it means to return good for good. If you cannot even return a good deed with a good one, then how can you perform actions selflessly without any expectation of rewards? If you are unwilling to sacrifice you will not come to a good end.