The video emphasizes the importance of balancing self-care and helping others, drawing on the metaphor of a mother cow that must both feed herself and nurture her calf. It warns that excessive self-sacrifice in service to others leads to loss of identity, reduced health, and diminished effectiveness in helping. The Buddha’s teaching highlights that spiritual practice—like a monk’s life—requires internal focus alongside external duties. Without personal growth, one cannot sustainably or meaningfully support others. The message urges individuals to create regular "me time" for learning, self-reflection, and practice. This self-improvement strengthens one’s ability to serve others with wisdom, compassion, and resilience. Ultimately, true balance in life arises when self-care and service are integrated, not opposed. This balance fosters long-term well-being, emotional stability, and authentic fulfillment, allowing individuals to contribute to the world with greater strength and clarity.
Now over the higher.
Have you seen those people who are walking on slacklines?
Or cables?
They do these amazing stunts on these cables.
Now you may think that it is an easy task to do.
No, it is the most difficult thing to be balanced on that cable.
It is very easy to fall into either sides.
Same goes with our life.
It's the most difficult thing for us to be balanced.
To balance our inner self and the outer self.
So from this video, I would like to talk with you about an important place, an important
area of us to be balanced.
This is the area of we helping others.
I read this wonderful quote, that is why that is the reason that I wanted to make this
video, I read this wonderful quote and a place that says "to not lose yourself in the name
of helping others".
Right?
That is amazing.
Right?
For example, let's say there is an empty jar or an empty vessel, right?
Can you feel other cups with this empty jar?
No, you can't.
If you need to feel other cups, then you need to feel the jar first.
In the same way, the Buddha says that you need to feel yourself, you need to take care of
yourself, right?
You need to improve yourself in order to help others, right?
But it is very easy for us to be in an extreme.
Let's say, if you are someone who is committing the fullest in yourself on the happiness of
others, on the benefit of others, on the betterment of others, right?
If you are a parent, if you are someone, if you are in your relationships, let's say you
are committing your fullest self to maintain this relationship and to help others and to
make others happy, right?
This can be an extreme.
This can go to an extreme where you lose your character.
You lose your identity and you lose who you are in the name of helping that person, right?
From the other person's perspective, it is a good thing to do.
It is a great help for that person.
And when you are too much helping others without taking care of yourself and you forget to
take care of yourself, there are certain downsides that occur in your life.
One of them being the more you help without improving yourself, you reduce the quality of
your health, right?
You reduce the amount, the productivity of health that you are going to give to that person,
right?
Now with the time when the quality reduces, that person is not getting what they got
before and they will complain why you are not giving me, why you are not committing your
fullest self for this?
But in reality, you are doing it while losing who you are, okay?
So that is why the Buddha said it is really important to balance that, to be in balance
when you help others.
So the Buddha gave a wonderful semily or a metaphor to understand about this.
Buddha said, "Be like a cow, a mother cow who has a baby calf."
What do you mean by that?
That means the Buddha said, "There are two jobs for a mother cow to do."
One is that she should graze, she should first feed herself, okay?
She should eat grass and graze and feed herself.
And also the other job is to take care of the baby calf.
She should give milk to the baby calf, right?
What if this baby calf, what if this mother cow forget one job, okay?
One of these jobs.
Let's say the mother wanted only to graze and feed herself and not take care of the baby.
What happened?
The baby calf will die eventually.
What if the mother only gave milk, only be focused on giving milk to the baby calf?
Then the baby calf will survive but the mother will die eventually, right?
So in the same way, the Buddha said, "For monks, as monks, we live and we are committed
to a spiritual life," right?
That is the sole purpose of entering a monkhood, to live a spiritual life, to be more focused
on the spirituality.
Now when you do that, it doesn't mean you don't help others.
You don't help and you don't work on others' happiness, right?
But when you do that, one part of our monkhood is to help other people with dhamma, with
Buddha's teachings and helping with doing charity and helping them emotionally, right?
When you do that, there is this part, we forget our main idea.
We forget our main goal, why we came to this monkhood.
When our job is going the other way, sometimes it's very easy for us to be engaged in charity
to help other people and be there for other people when they need.
But when you do that, sometimes we forget to improve ourselves.
So the Buddha said, "It is the monk's duty to maintain this balance in the spiritual
life, while doing all the works and the chores and the duties in the monastery, right?
While helping other monks and helping to the monastery, he must take care of his spiritual
practice as well.
He must be balanced in that as well."
So to do that, you have to be like a mother cow who is feeding her baby and taking care
of her as well.
So keep it in your mind that, "Yes, you need to help other people.
It is very good to help other people.
And if you need to give your fullest self, if you need to make others happy, that will
make you happy, what you have to do.
First we need to improve ourselves, okay?
So that is why it is really important to have some time during the day to take care of
yourself.
We always, I like to call this "me time."
I have this "me time" every single day.
No matter what duties that I have, I spend time for myself.
Learning something, maybe practicing something to myself, to my benefit, so that I can help
you people and people around the world in a more good way and a greater way, okay?
So it is really important for all of us to balance this help to others and also help
to ourselves.
So I wish that you got some idea about this balance in life.
So I wish may all of you be healthy, happy, and free from sufferings.
Namavut Daya.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Balancing self-care and helping others is essential, as neglecting oneself can lead to loss of identity and reduced capacity to support others.
The analogy of the mother cow illustrates that both self-nourishment and care for others are necessary—neither can be sacrificed without negative consequences.
Helping others without first improving oneself diminishes one’s health, energy, and ability to provide meaningful support.
Extreme self-sacrifice in service to others can result in emotional depletion, burnout, and a loss of personal values and character.
The Buddha teaches that spiritual practitioners must maintain balance between their inner development and external duties.
Self-improvement through personal practice, learning, and "me time" is vital before offering help to others.
Helping others should not come at the cost of one’s own well-being or spiritual growth.
True balance in life comes from integrating self-care and service, enabling sustainable and authentic support.
Summary:
The video emphasizes the importance of balancing self-care and helping others, drawing on the metaphor of a mother cow that must both feed herself and nurture her calf. It warns that excessive self-sacrifice in service to others leads to loss of identity, reduced health, and diminished effectiveness in helping. The Buddha’s teaching highlights that spiritual practice—like a monk’s life—requires internal focus alongside external duties.
Without personal growth, one cannot sustainably or meaningfully support others. The message urges individuals to create regular "me time" for learning, self-reflection, and practice. This self-improvement strengthens one’s ability to serve others with wisdom, compassion, and resilience.
Ultimately, true balance in life arises when self-care and service are integrated, not opposed. This balance fosters long-term well-being, emotional stability, and authentic fulfillment, allowing individuals to contribute to the world with greater strength and clarity.
FAQs
Balancing help for others with self-care ensures you maintain your health, energy, and identity. Without self-care, your ability to help others diminishes over time, leading to burnout and reduced quality of support.
The mother cow must feed herself to have energy to care for her calf. Similarly, you must nurture yourself first to effectively and sustainably help others without losing your own well-being.
Ignoring self-care leads to loss of personal identity, reduced health, lower productivity, and eventually, frustration from others who feel unsupported.
The Buddha teaches that spiritual growth and self-improvement are essential foundations for truly helping others, ensuring both personal and collective well-being.
Me time is intentional time spent on self-improvement, learning, or practice. It helps maintain balance, strengthens personal energy, and enables better, more effective support for others.
Helping others is valuable, but doing so without self-care ultimately harms both the helper and the person being helped, as the quality of support declines.
Chat with AI
Loading...
Pro features
Go deeper with this episode
Unlock creator-grade tools that turn any transcript into show notes and subtitle files.
PodcastTranscript AI