A Tale of Grace

posted by Kamala on Mar 24

Dearest Friends and Family,

Before Amma left for the 10 day north India tour, she had the Tour bookstall storage room turned into a room for her Mother, Damayanti Amma. That room, located directly beneath Amma’s interview room, in her ‘house’ was originally the ashram meditation hall and Vedanta Vidyalaya. Now, it seems restored to that former glory, in the service of Damayanti Amma.

For the ashram, for those who know Damayanti Amma when she was younger so much more active and able, so involved and graciously gracing innumerable ashram activities, it is a great relief and joy to have her here amidst us again, despite the shocking sadness of her declining condition.

For the last 2 years, she has lived in Kasturi Akka’s house (Amma’s eldest sister) on the other side of the backwaters. Many could not see her easily..

We have been going daily, and very often, Damayanti Amma is seated outside the room, distributing ‘prasads’ being adored by her many daughters and granddaughters, and occasional sons…Nina from tailoring flits back and forth, from tailoring to the room and back again…deep concern writ on every inch of her face…

It is a precious, precious time, all can sense the fragile beauty of these moments and days with her.

I remember when Anni was sick…I was trying to keep some sort of record of what was happening,, what the dr.’s were saying, when they called. I remember that every time I looked at the calendar, and saw the date, I had the thought, its a good day. A happy day. I did not realize, it was my heart telling me, that all these days of my life, had been so good. I had my precious, precious daughter with me. Later, I entered a different life.

It is the same now. For the entire Ashram, these are the days of greatest glory. Amma, her Father, her Mother, her family, all are here. The dream of togetherness is still intact. It is still so beautiful….the circle of love is full and flowing….

Amma’s natal family, are Heart people. They love everyone who comes to love Amma. For them, all of Amma’s devotees are wonderful, they accept them all. For them, all Seva done in the ashram is equal, its all Amma Seva, it all helps in some way, for them, there is no high and low in what people do in the Ashram.

In their love for Amma, they rejoice in everyone who also loves…its a path of inclusion, not exclusion. As her natal family, they are certain of her, in a way that is natural, so they are overjoyed to share what they love, they get their own happiness from this….

Damayanti Amma is the pillar of feminine decency in the ashram. Under her guidance, the role of women was clearly understood to be much more than playthings for men…Not for one second would she dress or adorn herself for pleasing a man. Nor did she countenance that in the ashram….she never had to say anything about it…life is duty, and attention to duty….not attention to anything else….it was a clear understanding that ethically formed the foundation of ashram life…

In her own lifetime, the scene here is so tragically changed. Female students, the puppets of media, are decked, adorned, and displayed in ways that would make a crow turn pink….

While visiting her, someone put the TV on. A scene of two women, arguing, one making ugly faces behind the other ones’ back appeared…..what more is needed to destroy the threads that make the fabric of sisterhood in India? And then what will be there? The aggressive, competitive, distorted woman hood so prevalent in the west where women have lost the art of supporting each other and sisterhood? Where they watch each other with hidden daggars in their eyes? Where they steal each other’s husbands, and go ruthlessly after men half their age, or twice their age? Where they get used as playthings, and their minds get messed up? Where,until past menopause, they keep their sexual fires on full tilt? In the last 3 years, the media inroads upon the consciousness of young India that we witness here among the students has been stupendous….disheartening and disgusting..

Damayanti Amma is from a time of ethical clarity…She is the only human being that Amma has given the title of GURU to….

Just her return to the ashram, revealed the aching hole that was caused by her absence. Sitting near her, despite the forgetful condition of her mind, that sense of peace that has always pervaded the atmosphere around her, is palpable.

So many things I wish I could ask Holy Mother Amma. Amma said:

Can you think of a quality, for example love or truth, unrelated to a form? It is not possible to do so because qualities are formless in themselves. To think of a quality, we need an object which has that quality as its attribute. Then what can be said of the Attribute-less Brahman, which is beyond all conception? Our mind is so gross that we cannot possibly think of a God who is formless, changeless and attribute less. Therefore, we need an object which is endowed with divine attributes. Krishna, Rama, Buddha or Christ are such Beings.

From: Awaken Children 2:302-303.

Sitting near Damayanti Amma, the quality of peacefulness pervades. If it is only in the body object that we perceive the quality, where does the quality go when the body object is no more? Why can’t we perceive all the qualities of the body object regardless of the body’s presence?

It seems that we can only perceive them in ourself after that, or in another body object…so, do qualities exist if they are formless? What kind of existence? I just don’t understand how it works….Amma says the ‘Attribute less’ so are qualities even real?

Are we , the body object identified mind stuff, our qualities? Even the ones we don’t exhibit? Truth is, un Truth is not….so, the Real IS….do we say attribute less or with attributes? Is that just form and formless? So, then, is the feeling of peacefulness around Damayanti Amma, is that feeling the form of peace? But then, are attributes Real, are they IS?

Its hard to frame intelligent questions worthy of Amma’s answer….or that will evoke an answer that satisfies….many times, different translators will answer them for me, confident in their knowing, and afterwards, I feel to stupid to ask…

Its interesting. I find, perhaps because of Anni, that my thinking on life has shifted into eternal life. Life is eternal….only suffering comes and goes…but Life is Eternal….

Now, I don’t know if I really understand this, or if I have just convinced my intellect. I was really puzzled when a friend wrote to me about life here, I didn’t understand what they meant until I understood they were saying, Physical Life….

Yet, its all very precious. Its very very precious because we can feel ethical qualities…although, they are still not visible…we can feel peacefulness, honesty, sincerity, joy, generosity…so, whatever the answer is, its an amazing place…this place of form…perhaps, because that which Is, IS attribute less, and through the gross form of our bodies, becomes a quality? Something that we feel, so we say it is a form?

Don’t know….I only know, we are all so glad that Damayanti Amma is here…She is so , so precious…to our beautiful dream of Ashram life….

Loving you,

Kamala Aunty, Anni and Link

Our Anni, with Damayanti Amma and Janhvi. The two were seeking her blessings before their med school entrance examinations to AIMS, in 2005.

posted by Kamala on Mar 21

Dearest Friends and Family,

Amma is now in Mysore. We remember our several travels on the road from Mananthavati to Mysore. The first year, I recall, we were told it was only two hours journey. But, lo! the ashram bus took over 6. Even now, I remember the tremendous heat in the bus…we were all crammed in. In those days, the brahmacharini’s rarely had actual seats, and suffered in the aisles, on top of luggage, or just plain standing packed together for hours and hours…often after being up all night, preparing foods, frying endless dosas over huge hot table size griddles, the gas fumes and flames right under their faces, etc. The bus exhaust fumes combined with the heat were nauseating. A very kind brahmacharini named Swati gave us lozenges for our throats, something for our motion sickness…little acts of kindness always smile in our hearts, isn’t it? reminds us, that our underlying reality is Love, known through respectful consideration of each other…Love and Joy are truly rare things on this Earth…

There were wild rumors circulating in the bus…that Amma had stopped somewhere and was waiting for us…as such, the inching, groaning engine, and our seemingly incremental progress, was even more intolerable…At that time, were were not adjusted to patiently waiting out our perceptions of the inefficiencies of time around us, so we suffered much angst amongst ourselves, chaffing at the bit, wondering if we should just get out and walk….

For us, the first year tours were very challenging. In a large part it was a chance to practice ethical ‘bus behaviors’. We didn’t understand why those who had seats would not take turns sharing them with those who didn’t. We still don’t. We made it our personal policy on all tours to time share our seats, with those who had none…For this, we even received a fair amount of verbal abuse and once even actual threats. The children spent much of the travel times in the stairwell of the bus steps. Those first years, I was stronger, and gave up my seat for the tours as well. As a result, I recall very little of the outside scenery. Later, the children insisted I stay in the seat, but at least through their willingness to share, I continued to have that satisfaction. Getting off the bus was another experience. I don’t want to say more about it, but there is a good book that I think we can all profit in reading. Its called, ‘All I really need to know, I learned in Kindergarten’ by Robert Fulgram.

Now, by God’s grace, there seems to have been an ‘evolution’ in compassion and people are more inclined as a whole to share with one another, whether or not one is Indian or Western, paying the fat rate or the thinner one…its all donation anyhow….that’s how one comes to understand it…ultimately, nothing is ours. Thankfully, whatever goes to Amma’s institutions, despite many problems, many many people are helped, and this is what we have to keep in mind. Institutions can have this great positive capacity, despite ALL.

There is a saying, that when the Guru comes, the Teachings are Sattvic, the Guru will be Rajasic, strenuously working, day and night, and the institution is Tamasic, clunking along behind the Guru. Its just natural, the people in the institutions are not the Guru, they are the ones seeking ethical reform in themselves, to get over our spiritual diseases. None have achieved it yet, we are all works in process and progress. By grace, the institutions bearing Amma’s name, can turn to her for guidance and problem solving, and in many cases, she is able to use them to help numerous others. Not only institutions using Amma’s name come to her for guidance, others do as well. Even political institutions. For an example, during the Tsunami, she used the Vishwa Vidya Peetham campus buildings in Clappana for housing and shelter, medical and cooking for about 10 thousand people in deep shock and trauma. I think the distinction is important to bear in mind, otherwise, one may feel disillusioned.

The road to Mysore from Manathavadi goes through the forest reserves of Wynad. Once I saw an elephant roaming freely, it was a thrilling sight. I would hear calls of ‘deer! peacock!’ but as the bus was jolting along, rarely caught sight of these… Often times, Amma would have the buses stop, and there would be a picnic in the woodsy area. It was always astounding to see Amma on these occasions. She would have been up all day and night, and have barely finished giving darshan to 20 to 40 thousand people, sometimes more, I don’t recall less since we have come, and she would still have on the clothes she was wearing during the maha yagna…the great sacridice, as yet not understood by humanity…

Amma is a constant demonstration as to the power of the mind, the power of living in the present moment. The immediate past, and seemingly its effects would melt off of her, and everyone would be joyously picnicking,as though she hadn’t just been up all night meeting 20 thousand plus people…

That, I suppose is the power of Now. She Lives Now, in the Now. Anni is now in NOW.

Sometimes the road to Mysore would be shorter, the bus more efficient, the travel time at night and therefore blessedly cooler…

I remember one year, Amma left without warning from Manathavadi for Mysore, from the stage. Everyone had expected her to go back to her room where a meal was waiting for her…we were happy she escaped the crowds…

It was amazing and amusing to see the panic that ensued, as everyone who could commandeered a vehicle, and charged after her…but, she got away that time…far from the maddening crowd…only the driver was with her…we of course, were and remain, nothing and nobody in the scene here, our roles are backdrop figures so, we waited for the buses, and got to Mysore well into the morning…

there, it was even more amusing to see the crowding that was going on in her house there…on the first floor, brahmacharis were sleeping on their sides, packed like sardines, all claiming their rights of access and closeness…or worse, perhaps feeling insecure without that proximity, while the spacious school, less than 100 meters away, stood in silent observance of the scene…

I don’t know, but we have never been into this type of behavior…I think there could be two reasons, 1. frankly, sour grapes. 2. a certain detachment from group consciousness, and subsequent group behaviors. This comes from our life experiences, backgrounds, etc. But, I think it is a quality worth nurturing and cultivating within oneself. It is the group, that conditions the soul, and it is the group conditioning, that is part of the outer peels of the onion, that must come off when trying to peel down to the self.

I remember once Amma said, “Before God, you have to be completely naked, you have to take off even your skin.’ Group acceptance relies upon silently and subtly agreed upon group behaviors, standards and expectations….its definitely the clothes. It can start positively or negatively in families.

The groups around Amma, are not Amma, and they certainly have developed their own little conditionings, whose in, out, OK, not, etc. I find it all very wearying, and don’t want to play. I am grateful to have studied anthropology, and one of the best courses I ever had was with Dr. Jane Goodall, called Monkeys, Apes and Humans.

well, enough. Amma is now in Mysore. I’ve got to take the mind back, off the tour onto the work here…Mysore is another story….

Loving You,

Kamala Aunty

posted by Kamala on Mar 19

Dearest Friends and Family, 

Our Amma is now in Mananthavati, a place that is very special to Anni, Link and I…its in the great Western Ghats, the highlands of Kerala…the nights and mornings are cool and crisp, the days hot and dry…the program takes place in the Amrita Vidyalayam School building there, on a hill top, surrounded by other hill tops, all dressed in swaths of differing shades of Green…huge plantings of Banana, coffee, cocoa…the wide banana leaves, and their particular shades of green, and turning under leafs in mass have a beautiful visual effect, seen from a distance…on one hill, one sees a Christian cross…there is a feeling of the Great Unity in Diversity that is Sanathana Dharma…At night cool mists roll in, everything becomes quiet.  the morning light lifts the cooling clouds away…we had lots of adventures there, someday we will share them…we were there also when Amma inaugerated their Brahmasthanam….we worked in the juice stall there…I remember the people were so poor most could not afford the juices, and we had light work…I remember also, that Amma had sent out word to reduce the cost of the juices….

Amma once said the place is Ananda-vati, the ananda meaning bliss, instead of  the original name, Mananthavadi.

The people of Mananthavadi are poor and pious.  they come about 30 thousand thick.  Probably more now, we haven’t been there since 2006, and the crowds around Amma are only swelling up by the thousands upon thousands….

It is the only place I have been on tour with Amma where, when Amma starts to speak, the entire crowd, including babies, is completely silent, listening intently…to the words of the One who is so intimately dear to each of them…

For this simple respect and reverence, I love Mananthavadi…for this, your great respect to our common Truth, we love Thee, O Ananda-vati!

We made one song in honor of the spirit here, which has evolved over the years with input from many, into a beautiful song, it will be on Anni’s Album, Ammu is singing it..you may recall, she called Anni and sang to her over the phone 2 days before she left the form…

Can such a thing have happened?

How is it, I even say this?

gotta go…

Loving you, 

Kamala Aunty