Christ-mass Greetings

December 25, 2008 Kamala Amma's Grace

Dearest Friends and Family,  

We hope you have a wonderful Chirst-mass, and are able to pour your hearts out on those you love.

Here, Amma was too busy giving darshan to stop and make a separate time for the Christ-mass eve program, so, it carried on, on the main floor of the Bhajan hall…I didn’t come out, I’m still having difficulty with cloth on the skin from the skin disorder.  Its getting heaps better now though…we have been on Ayurvedic medicines for over a month, and I guess its kicking in….(good ole american slang, loaded with violent metaphors….)

Anyhow, everything Amma does is a teaching. So, I ask myself, what does it mean?  Amma, for the first time, did not come and sit below and watch her children prancing about….

There are several things that come to my mind, as quite obvious.  It has always distressed and dismayed me, since we came, that it seems Amma’s children are for the most part, unaware of the value of her time on this earth.  This is only because we are all unaware of the value of our own time.  We all believe everything in our little heads will go on and on and on…despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary right around us.  Its really astounding how what is most obvious is least observed by us.  I speak for myself only,  perhaps the rest of you are more aware.

I found this quote from E.F. Schumaker, who wrote Small is Beautiful in the 1970’s.  He was an English economist who followed and preached what he called “Buddhist economics” .  His thinking appears to have developed out of his sojourns in Asia.  He was a compassionate and intelligent human being, who appears to have been awake to his ethical instincts.

Having looked at his thought, I find that these ‘Buddhist economics’ of Asia, are really, the indigenous way of life found in peaceful socieites dedicated to ethical ideals of Ahimsa and Truth.  This thinking was encapsulated by Gandhi with his ideas on Trusteeship, Bread Labour and Swadeshi.  Anyhow,  Schumaker also once commented something to the effect that  the watefulness involved in industrialization is so monstrous, that it is beyond the scope of our imagination, which is perhaps why we don’t even see it.  For example, to produce one bottle fo cocacola which sickens and damages our bodies, takes 9 bottles, (NINE) of clean drinking water.  Go figure.  Somehow, the great silent majority has settled for absolute inanity and insanity in the name of human liberty.  

Its just food to chew on, but, seems we will need something harder to chew soon, besides the fanciful dreams of never ending bigger and better, more and more, consumer life.  This is taken from Schumaker’s last speech at Caux in 1977 before he passed on.

 

“The first thing when we think about what we call the Third World or the developing, or to put it more simply about the poor, the first thing we ought to realise, is that they are real. They are actually people, as real as you and me, except that they can do things which you and I can’t do. They have a know-how that we don’t have. They are real, and we must not think of them as poor little souls, and luckily we come along and we are going to develop them.  No, they are survival artists and it is quite certain that if there should be a real resources crisis, a real ecological crisis, or this, that or the other crisis in the world, these people will survive.

Whether you or I will survive is much more doubtful. India will survive, though whether Bombay will survive is more doubtful. That New York will survive is an impossibility.    Probably the same applies for London orTokyo. And an awful number of other big cities.  You cannot help a person if you yourself don’t understand how that person manages to exist at all.”

So, where are we going as a human race, what was Amma’s teaching last night?

Another thing that comes to me, is that it is obvious that Amma has no time left to devote to enjoying herself or really, pleasing us, by being part of the audience.

For me, that teaching also means, that perhaps I do not have much time left for doing the unessential.  How can I do, and what is the essential that I must do? These are questions I am trying to understand.  It is important somehow, to get ourselves in order…before our Maker….it only takes utter truthfulness in heart….

Gandhi once commented something to the effect, that he had no disciples, he was trying to become his own disciple….I think I got a glimmer of understanding on that, I think it means that he was trying to make himself true to his conscience.  It takes constant listening.  It takes fearlessness, for we are asked frequently and constantly to do something other than the dictates of society and the world, and we squirm with uncomfortableness about what others may think of us….how others will take our actions….

How to become Truthful and Fearless before our Conscience?

I can’t think of anything more important, and pray that all of you will be able to become disciples of your own conscience, fearlessly and truthfully….may we all become True disciples of that which is the Christ within us, our conscience.

Loving you, 

Kamala Aunty