posted by Kamala on Jul 15
Dearest Friends and Family,
We have to offer our apologies to your eyes and sensibilities. Apparently some brilliant but mischief oriented mind filled this blog with pornographic links. We trust that the problem is now over. One wonders at how people are spending their time on this earth – seeking to hurt or damage others in sick ways…it’s a very strange world. Such a mind that did this is one that has not been exposed to his ethical instinct. I regret to say, I’m quite sure it was a male who thought like this to do such a thing. As such, we see a person in living in their animal instincts – aggression, animality…it just amazes me how many people talk and do things just to hurt or damage others. All of our lives are running out like sand in an egg timer…but we keep ourselves distracted from our great purpose. None of us belong here. Soon we will all leave. Better not to take the whole experience too seriously…
That said, I need to add a bit to the story on Sabari. We subscribe to the newspaper The Hindu. The most worthwhile regular feature in it, is its “Religion’ and ’50 years ago today’ section. I have found a lot of interesting points in these sections. Today’s (July 14, 2008 page 9) was a brief overview of Sabari’s life before she met Lord Rama.
“The manner in which Sabari attained liberation was a testament to the efficacy of service to the Guru. Sabari belonged to the tribal community and hence she had no inkling about the persuit of liberation from rebirth through scriptural study. But her greatest assets was her unalloyed service to Sage Matanga and his disciples who were engaged in austerities and performance of Vedic sacrifices. She took upon herself to keep their hermitage and its environs spotlessly clean. She grew old in this sefless service and when the sage was to cast off his body, she was unable to think of a life without serving them and beseeched him and his pupils to take her along. It was then that Matanga assured her that she must stay on in the hermitage, and that she should await the arrival of Rama who would grace her.
With total trust in the Sage’s word, , Sabari continued to tend the hermitage with great care and gathered fresh fruits and flowers every day to offer them to the Lord awaiting His arrival with great expectation. And her faith was answered when Rama and Lakshmana arrived at her abode directed by Kebandha. With Great joy she extended her hospitality and showed them around. Sabari’s reply when Rama questioned her whether her attendance on her preceptor had been rewarded is a pointer to her spiritual maturity. ‘Today my birth has borne fruit. My asceticism too has become fruitful today and heaven too will definitely fall to my lot, now that You, the foremost of Gods, have been worshipped by me.’”
Indian Kathas are so amazing in this regard, they are all like an onion. You can go on peeling and peeling, each one reveals more connections, more stories, a multi layered and textured fabric of folklore, unbeatable in cultural complexity interconnectedness and the elucidation of different aspects of dharma. Fantastic Stuff…all children deserve to have this moral imprint upon their minds when small.
About Shiva, he’s OK and not OK. The years on the street, living in bus stations, the glory feeling of crowd adulation and management through circus life are making it hard for him to be stable in Amar Seva Sangh. However, the people there are very patient and loving, but I regret to say, our Shiva is not putting his best foot forward. However, while he has balked at studying, he has learned how to stitch tailor work well. He has not yet learned how to cut the cloth. Please give your prayers for him. We hope he will settle down, become peaceful and respectful, and recognize the wonderful opportunity being given to him. The situation for the very poor is one of cultural poverty also. One has to be educated to be considerate to handicapped people, educated, if it doesn’t come naturally, not to make fun of mentally challenged people. Educated not to laugh at someone when they get hurt…its an education – that which draws out of us - into our ethical instinct…and once we go that way, it becomes natural, for it is. But the very poor, faced with the constant oppressions and yellings from those above them, compounded with nutritional deficiencies, often have the natural way educated out of them. Here, educated means conditioned.
I submit that those who have, or consider themselves better than, or ‘bigger’ than, are mostly unaware of how they hurt those who don’t have. To ‘not see’ others who are poor and disadvantaged, is oppressing. To shout at them as though their poverty or physical handcaps has also made them deaf and dumb is oppressing. I was with a friend who was, the other day, getting coconuts. I don’t think she was even aware of it, but she waited until the person who was cutting the coconuts had bent down, cut off one for her – and then said, ‘not that one’, and indicated another. It’s a very small thing, so it seems. But if it were us who was bending down in the heat, preparing the coconut, it is a denial of our effort….and is a demeaning reminder that we are to ‘keep quiet’.
Like our darling angel Satybhama here. She has some spinal deformity, and as I said earlier, may have some form of autism, at any rate, it seems to be difficult for her to speak. Her voice is a whisper. While she doesn’t hold conversations, or make trivial speech, she is totally in the present moment…ask her anything practical, and if it concerns her, she will say the needful and no more. She has excellent control over the gift of speech. I have never heard her say anything unkind about anyone. She has great understanding, and from my close experiences with her, I can testify that she knows exactly what is going on. Yet, some people here feel free to shout at her, and shoo her away, as through she is an unwanted dog. It makes my blood boil. I don’t like it when I see it happening to dogs either. I really wish there were ethical emergency centers throughout the planet, and whenever we see someone abusing someone, we could go there, they would immediately send someone out in a uniform, to speak to the offender, to make them aware of the stupidity of their actions, and how it debases themselves their own soul, when they degrade someone so innocent.
My Satyabhama has no adult ego. She has the heart of a child. Yet, increasingly, I am finding that she is fearful of certain people who feel they are doing God’s work by shouting at her…She trembles when she sees them, and tries to hide behind me…..as her friends, when we stand up for her, immediately the sneering lordsmanship of those who yell at her and put her down is directed to us.
Yet these same people caught at another moment appear sane, balanced, pleasant, communicable…but somewhere along the line, in their educated conditioning, they got this other warp….not that we don’t have our own, but, we are saying this in the hope that it will be of some help.
Perhaps it is seeing this all over India, not just in Shiva, or the ‘educated people’, or children of the better off – I do feel India could benefit greatly from the study of sociology and anthropology. Such studies enable us to see ourselves objectively in our cultural, social and environmental experience. Once we can begin that intellectual separation from total identity with the behavioral patterns around us, we can begin our education into who and what we really are. If it were to happen, the imperialistically dominant stance of theses spheres of study would have to be examined also…studies of people who are the ‘natives being studies’, tend to be from rich, white countries. There are some studies that go the other way also.
I remember as a youth, I took an Anthro course called, ‘Monkeys, Apes and Humans’, with Dr. Jane Goodall. The course and Dr. Goodall, with her simple and modest bearing gave me much food for thought. During that semester, I used to spend a part of each day, sitting at a café, called ‘Peanuts Cafe’ observing human beings in light of the things I was learning and musing as to what Truth is.
One thing I learned in that course was how female monkeys present their bottoms to males when they are in estrus, or able to be impregnated. Prmates do numerous things to draw male primate attention to their bottoms. Not only is there the swaggle walk, but tail movements, lots of little cues to the male primate. They do this only when they want to be impregnated. Dr. Goodalls course was based upon her detailed research in the quiet forests of Africa on primate behaviors.
Sitting in the Café, watching the busy streets of San Jose California, it slowly dawned on me that I was seeing some humans acting like primates. Some ladies were wearing tight pants or jeans, high heels which cause the body to stick the bottom out more in order to gain postural balance, and swaggle walks… and some men with the corresponding aggressive walks of the male primates – arms out slightly from the sides, head down and forward a little…there is an undeniable connection between a lot of human behavior and primate behavior. This connection was my own mental association, I don’t recall if it came up in the course…I think not…as the study was so clinically oriented that it didn’t allow a lot of common sense connections….
India doesn’t realize how refined and civilized her culture was. Everything in India is geared to awaken the ethical man, to deny the animal man…the indigenous clothing for both males and females down plays the gross accentuation of bottoms and breasts… Men and Indian men don’t realize how ridiculous they look in their western pants when they could be in flowing robes which always look dignified, graceful and to an extent, princely. The Sari and Munda or Lungi or dhoti, even the Punjabis of yore, ensured that people minds, though their eyes were potentially lifted out of their animal instincts… – of course, I have seen people manage to stress their primate natures through whatever clothes they are wearing…And people who look dignified wearing practically nothing…its all in the mind. We often see photos of indigenous peoples who were virtually naked, but there was no sense of body consciousness as our media depicts. They exhibit great dignity. They are the human being, tied to their ethical sense. Its been so many generations now under globalized media madness that I don’t think people are even consciously aware of what they do or why they are doing it. Yet, subliminally, we are, we should not deceive ourselves. I wore jeans as a teenager, I grew up with them. Habituated to them, I was less aware of my body, but, definitely, the effects of the media and body consciousness are unescapable without mental isolation or social and cultural examination and reflection, which is why I think Anthro and Sociology are such a great idea. Once one mentally accepts tight clothing, it no longer feels awkward or constricting. I know that in 2003 when we were in the US, I felt like an average Joe when I put jeans on…it was part of social acceptance. Anni wore jeans in the US, but they were not tight. She always looked decently dressed no matter what she wore.
Its sad to see the changes in the student body attending institutions around . The girls, this year, - many of them came in tight jeans and T shirts. In India where it is so hot that close fitting clothes - well, its all a matter of the conditioning of the mind. Less than 6 months ago, there was respect for the association of the ashram…but, we are seeing that each new wave of students brings in minds that have been exposed for that much longer to the sick models of globalized media madness and its effects upon them.
Of course, one can’t change the world, but it sure would be nice to see India not lose her sense of social and ethical responsibility that her citizens adhered to just 40 years ago…dress is just a symptom of that eroding loss…really, whats going on here is worse than the Spanish inquisition. One can’t even yell though for those who are being dumbed down and denuded of their cultural beauty and dignity are willing for it to happen….and its considered a ‘right’. Their parents encourage them to ape the west…and its an aping….Its all very sad to see India shift from her ideals of duty.
I remember Anni telling me about 6 months after we came that she was relieved that hair was just hair here. Not something to show off to others, or flip around in the air, or make a statement of individualized self identity with, just something on the body to be kept orderly and neat (as in her case) and out of the way. She was glad not to have to devote her mind’s energy to it. I had always kept her hair in two neat braids, and didn’t realize that she had felt some pressure from her school environs in the US to do otherwise. Even here, some girls have told her to wear her hair loose…she never did. I think many children, given a chance to grow in ethical awareness would take to it like fish to water. But we aren’t giving our children the chance. They are accosted everywhere by the sick adult minds around them at work to get money, broadcasting into their homes, ears, eyes, magazines, through every conceivable avenue. Its an inundation that surpasses any military invasion…but no one bats an eye in protest….it astounds and dumbfounds….My dear dear India, precious heart of the world, where is your Soul going?
Some rumors we have been hearing that we want to correct:
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Anni did not have Animal TB, Amma said no such thing, We never took care of sick animals, only injured; if they were sick, we kept them outside of the room, I am the one with the habit of kissing animals, neither Link nor I got sick.
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Amma told us to go to the USA which is why we went. We did not want to go. The rest of that story is in the blog at that time.
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The “Amma said Anni’s an angel many years ago “ rumor, we have already addressed. Amma did this in June 2007 itself only to prepare our minds. Not before. Yes, Amma has said our Beloved is an Angel. To some children who lost their pet dog, she once said, your dog was an angel, and angels don’t live too long. People have since made their own connections and associations.
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The concept of Divine Revenge. This one I will take up with Amma. I don’t believe in this for one piece of a half second. In all, we find people are so fearful and keep themselves terrified when they are not, and oppress themselves with terrifying thoughts. Don’t any of you do this. Embrace fearlessness.
OM OM OM.
Loving you,
Kamala Aunty, Anni and Link