posted by Kamala on Oct 6
Dearest Friends and Family,
I feel I have to discuss a dreadful sense of foreboding nervousness….
Today the dogs in the apartments, simultaneously set up a howl at around 10 AM…
It is autumn here, Nature has been changing her green dress to yellows, oranges and reds, and now is dropping it with wanton carelessness, to Her feet….
Link and I have been able to feast our fill on apples, and often pears, for free, from the many fruit trees in our neighbourhood…and every time I see the fruits rolling about on the ground, and in the streets, the blessed face of my Damayanti Amma comes into my mind…Oh Lord, My God. O Truth that holds this Creation! Hear us! Do not drop my Damayanti Amma!
I think is it the spirit of Troy Davis, who was so unrighteously executed, that is now bolstering the conscience of millions of us `nobody’ people on this Earth now. We are the little people, the unimportant ones, who have been told for years, if not centuries, to shut up, while the selfish and malicious stomp and tromp all over this Earth….This Nobody has an opinon, which cannot be silenced any longer. We thirst for Justice of Truth and Love, Everywhere.
I want to say here, loud and clear, that all my studies, research and findings on Damayanti Amma and Amma’s family, have shown me that Damayanti Amma, like Amma, (Holy Mother Amma, Mata Amritanandamayi) has always been the way she was. A very great mystery is slipping away from us all.
2010. Centre - Damayanti-Amma, Left, Her devoted daughter-in-law, Right, Physiotherapist Nilla, volunteering at the Ashram, from Sweden
Before coming to the ashram we noticed that the 108 names mentioned Amma’s parents, “Om Dharmistra Sugunanandan Damayanti Svayambhuve Namah, ” (The One who incarnated to the virtuous Sugunanandan Acchan and Damayanti-Amma). And, “Om Mata Pita cirachirna punya pura phalatmane namah.” (Who was born to Her parents as a result of their many virtuous deeds over many lives.) That archana was written by one of Amma’s beloved poets, Ottoor, who lived in the ashram in the `less crowded early days’, and wrote that sacred prose based upon his experiential knowing of the relations between Amma and Her Parents, and saw them as being virtuous, and worthy of the highest respect. This opened our minds and hearts to their love, with reverence.
When we first came to the world spiritual centre of Amritapuri, in Kerala, India in 1999, I had an experience one night, towards morning, where I saw Damayanti Amma’s feet for 3 hours straight. It was so strong, I woke up, I could see them whether my eyes were open or shut. I did not understand why, or what was going on. I told Holy Mother Amma the next day, She just smiled. I went to Damayanti Amma, and told Her. She also, just smiled. I didn’t know how to understand it, and for a long time, put it on a back shelf, of bizarre and un-explainable and illogical experiences. But inwardly, an inner awareness began growing.
I observed that there was a little ancestral shrine near the Kalari. This told me, that Holy Mother Amma honours her ancestors, straight back to the source, as should we all. Later, I found out that Holy Mother Amma refused to sit during Her first days of giving darshan in the different bhavas, until that shrine had been built in honour of her paternal grandfather who had passed. Yogishwaran Acchan was known for his virtuous conduct, his intense and selfless compassion for all living things, particularly animals. Holy Mother said then that she could not sit as Grandfather was standing. The shrine was constructed in honour of his spirit, and our Amma sat down for Darshan.
I thought about this relationship, that Amma has made clear to everyone, from the beginning, for actions speak louder than words, through the existence of this shrine, every time I walked by it. I love it, it is small and adorable, right in front of the Kalari. In my own peculiar way, I found myself always bowing there, rather than to the inner room with the big photo in the Kalari…I somehow felt, it was more my size. Maybe, I felt I needed a divine lawyer, in my quest. This prayer, always welled up within me, each time, “I bow to You all, who gave us our Amma, Help us to be of True Service to Her, help us to help Her, may we be of true service to you all.”
Look at Jesus. He came to Mother Mary. All of the Mahatmas, have had outstanding Mothers. Holy Mother Amma is the Rule. The Supreme Consciousness could only come there because Damayanti Amma has a pure mind, a clean heart, because, if anyone has taken the trouble to observe, Damayanti Amma has always had Sama Bhava, Equal Vision….Because She is Honest, Sincere, because She has moral integrity. Because She was always KIND and CONSIDERATE, the real hallmarks of saintliness and spirituality. She had intense self-discipline….and could help the baby Holy Mother Amma, to grow in that path, and thus, through Holy Mother Amma, impart a way of life and living and being to BILLIONS who have lost all perspective, and become utterly confused about the most simple nuances of dharma.
The entire Ashram Schedule of rising, prayers, everything, is one that Amma based upon the training that She received from Blessed Damayanti Amma. When the early renunciates came, they were ushered into the ways of ethical relations with one another, that had been authored by Damayanti Amma’s gracious, yet extremely dharmic ways of being. No where else in India that I know of, does an ashram hold both male and female monastics. It was because of Damayanti Amma’s example and teachings, that this is possible.
Did you know that Damayanti Amma took innumerable fasts for innumerable reasons, some ritual based, many, between Her and Her Maker…and on those days, She would not even drink water…Her children, desperate to see Her at least drink, would offer Her tender coconut water, but She would not take it, unless the Tree had dropped the coconut down on its own accord….this I know, because I found out one day that She was fasting, and hadn’t drunk all day, and offered her tender coconut water. She asked me where I had found the coconut. When I told her I got it from the stall, She told me on these days, she only drank it if the tree had given it.
I never saw Her, when Her hands were not busy in someway to be of service to others, or in the ritual worship of her Ishta Devata….in fact, everything She does, is in the worship of God…even if it was only to sift the sand where She sat by the backwaters on the jetty, and remove sharp pebbles that could hurt somebody’s foot later. She was particularly loving to animals and deeply respectful of Nature, as though to an actual person, which Nature really is, a very BIG PERSON, in fact, we can say, the BIGGEST PERSON.
We cannot begin to understand Her way of being, it is in complete harmony with Nature, with Earth Ethics…when we began to take care of Kaiser, Amma’s parent’s dog, it was my beautiful Damayanti Amma who told me how and what oil to put on the festering scabies type of sores on him…by then, She was too old to give the baths to Kaiser who although also old himself, had some determination to remain unbathed, an unannointed.
She has timing, a delicate, sure sense of timing, that just moves into the moment…even now, if one sits by Her, one can feel, that She is not in `another world’ nor `walking down memory lane’ She is in Sakshi Bhava, withdrawn and watching, Out of the two inseparable birds within us, discussed in the Mundakya Upanishad,i She has moved her awareness to the one who is alert, and watching….
2011. Damayanti-Amma has shifted into Sakshi Bhava
It is the grandmothers of this Earth, particularly the Indian Grandmothers, who are leaving us now, who have and know the ways of being, with the Earth and with each other. We will be sorely lost without their ethical guidance which goes far deeper than what we can see or comprehend. The rajasic-ness of energetic youth and adult life, has little reflection, little time to develop wisdom…we need those who have.
And my Param Guru, my Damayanti Amma is not an unconnected phenomenon. She became the way She is, from my Param Param Guru, Her Mother, the great Shakti, Karutha-kunya, who was a legend in her own time, the village vaidya, midwife, advisor, and shining example of every ethical quality of one who bows to the ideal of truth. She was a full blown blossom of all the qualities seen in Maha-Lakshmi, the indwelling ideal of the wife in the grihasta ashrama (Householder or family pattern). It was my Param Param Guru, Karutha-kunya, who instilled in Damayanti Amma, the great tradition of Pati-Vrata, the vow unto the Truth in Her husband, Sugunanandan Acchan. This vow, makes one like the Earth….patient, all bearing and fruitful.
And who did my Param Param Guru come from? That we don’t even know now. Although there are some who do… Its a great loss to future generations, who will and are turning wearily back to older sources in their desperate need to gain a vision of the ideal. There is much we can learn from Damayanti Amma’s stainless life. Damayanti Amma and Holy Mother Amma’s faces are stamped with the beauty and grace of Karutha- kunya.
Damayanti Amma lives in constant meditiation, what Holy Mother Amma has said is real meditation: the constant, loving remembrance of God.
When we left Amritapuri on August 15, to come to Sweden for Link’s studies, as Holy Mother advised, I was crying to leave Damayanti Amma, and She laughed…so, then, I hoped all was OK, that I would see Her again…., then I had a dream….in it, she fell, I saw Her, cradled Her in my arms, and heard the little humming sound that She is wont to make these days…and I can’t say the rest….upon waking, I told Link, and we immediately tried to get in touch with Amma’s little Brother and his wife, Maneesha, to learn if She was OK….She is Fine, we were told….this was before Holy Mother Amma’s birthday celebrations…
I feel very sad when I meet people who do not even want to meet Damayanti-Amma.
The only way to understand, anyone’s life and context is to open the eye of Wisdom, with the key of Love. Anyone who wants to understand Amma’s parents, has only to see them from `the eyes of the Guru’…its all around something that everyone in the family holds aloft together: the ideals of Truth and Love and the integrity of the family in honouring Truth and keeping Love alive…..its not like consumer-based societies, where everyone lives, as an individual in the group, concerned first with their rights, last with their duties to one another.
Some have told me that my Param Guru didn’t talk much, or spend time explaining things. She had 13 children! Who has time to talk and coddle with that much work to do? And when you are in a constant, dynamic relationship with the BIGGEST PERSON? I see parents now, both - two, who can’t even deal with one child, they seem to need a `break’ every few hours. There was no thought of `break’ or `vacation’ from the duties of family life in Damayanti Amma, nor is there in any true parent. And by that I mean a parent who is true to the relationship that life gives the parent, and that life, is the one who is present in the child….its an inner pact, between parent, particularly, mother, and child.
Through her Family, Holy Mother Amma has shown the world many gifts to offer to the re-stabilization of society: living examples of the ethical relations in childhood, later between husband and wife, between parents and children, between families and communities…
I encourage you all, who are concerned about truth, to go an meet our Param Guru - Damayanti Amma, while as yet you can sit in Her Holy Presence, and bask in Her Great Inner Peace that she showers on everyone who comes to see her.
Loving you,
Aunty Kamala, Anni and Link