Archive for the ‘Anni's Diary’ Category

posted by Link on Feb 11

As more and more writers cry foul, saying that our current way of life is fine, and the status quo is worthy of retention and worship, I feel that it is necessary to put the Science in perspective. The duty of Science is to find out why things that happen are happening, in the hope that if something is wrong, it can be corrected. As far as I’m concerned, things are wrong, and we can correct them. But writers of late have begun casting slurs on the name of Climate Science, saying that there is a conspiracy theory among millions of scientists all across the globe.

But while people debate whether it is right or wrong, we must remember that, after all, the Science of Climate Change does not matter that much.

What really matters is:

Monsoons are failing, crops are failing,
droughts are prevailing, along with floods.
People are hungry, children are wailing,
“development” is sucking our Earth’s blood.

I cannot drink the water in the streams,
nor eat the snow that falls from the sky,
some would have be believe that nothing has changed,
but I know that the worst is yet to pass by.

I visit the city and can’t see the next block,
the smog is choking, people’s hearts are locked.
In the countryside too, the problems exist:
people struggling hard, just to subsist.

The river that flows past my friend’s house,
once over his head, he remembers,
Is now but a brook, the flow only seasonal,
Ten years of change have thus rendered.

The rice which once grew aligned with the season,
now withers and dries before harvest.
The rain comes without pattern or reason,
lays waste to the crop and farmers divest.

Bees, the very pillar of food production,
are gone from a whole district in China,
are disappearing fast, abandoning their function
poisoned by our toxins in the clima.

The Coral, the treasure-chest of beauty and life,
is bleaching and dying before our eyes.
Killing ecosystems - do we have the right?
We don’t! Yet we do it; ask yourself “Why?”

“Develop!” is the cry of the bygone age.
It’s farce and inequity now bare,
To increase in prosperity at the expense of the Earth,
Is not just, not right, not kind, not fair.

To Survive we must remember that which sustains us,
and give thanks to the many on who’s efforts we live
From Aardvarks to Zorillas, they all live in service,
Creating the global web that our Ecosystem is.

Why do we, as humans, break the sacred chain,
create waste for which no other life has use?
Our chemicals are found everywhere, even in the rain,
our behaviour has become inter-species abuse!

Our plastics are choking the ocean,
smothering out huge swaths of life.
Toxic, inedible are the fish that lie therein,
among so many life forms deformity is rife!

Our style of living has a visible cost,
hidden only by our willfull blindness.
Cancer and disease, to us are now tossed,
our body’s symptoms of environmental unkindness.

The way to redemption is clear, clean, and pure,
“Simple Living, High Thinking” - true development for sure,
The rights of all people to eat, drink, live, and think,
The same for all is our duty to ensure.

I pray that this poem will have an effect:
Remember that life is not just to get.
Now you are here, now do you live,
But when you lie dying, you will think:
“What did I give?”

posted by Link on Apr 15

Dearest Friends and Family,
We found these interesting little notes in some of Anni’s school books. These may have been SMS messages that inspired her, for she wrote them down. She doesn’t state the author, but, that was not her concern, the inspiration was:

  1. The present is our own
    Live, love and toil with a will…
    Place no faith in tomorrow
    For the clock then may be still….

  2. Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves….

  3. Smiles – miles away from stress
    Dreams – distances away from dangers

—Good things to think about, eh?

We find she always worked on keeping her thoughts and her mind in a good place. We miss our darling teacher and best friend.

Loving you,
Kamala, Anni and Link

posted by Kamala on Jan 31

Dearest Friends and Family,

Today is “Martyrs Day” in India, Jan 31, 2008 the day that Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead in 1948. His last words were, Hey Ram, or O Truth, depending on how one wants to translate that. Today is also the last day of Amma’s South India tour, and as I type, she is giving darshan in Thiruvananthapuram. I do not think anyone, including myself understands the sacrifice she is making there. She should be here tomorrow. I don’t know when we will get a chance to post this, we have ceased the cell phones and all the conveniences that come with them are also gone. What was Anni’s life sacrificed for? I still do not understand. Was it a sacrifice? It feels so to us. For us, she is purity and innocence, brightness, personified. Her presence in our lives kept us in that frame of being as well. Who and what Anni is, is so precious…Here is a verbatim letter that she wrote to Amma, the date of the translation into Malayalam is March 31, 2004, She had probably written it some days or weeks before, getting good translation is very difficult. Anni would have been 15, almost 16 years old at the time of writing.

Dearest Amma,

If this world is really so unreal, then why are we so unable to understand that? Why is it that the unreal appears so real, and the real so distant? Is the physical world (as in tables, bodies, etc.) also unreal or is it just the social world (‘I’,’me’, ‘mine’, ‘you’, ‘yours’, etc)?

I imagine that if we know our oneness with everything then there would no longer be any purpose of human existence. Riight? And then, if there is no longer existence, what would become of this world? It must all be a mirage anyhow.

A mirage of what?

When all is you, and each and every soul thoroughly knows and experiences it’s oneness with you, then the world would dissolve…I guess. At least we’d see it very differently.

It is said that we are creations of God, and “God hath created us in his own image.” Then how did we become so far from you anyways?

Amma, please always keep me near to you, come inside me, always be with me, and let me serve you with everything I say, think and do.

– Annika

The following quote from Amma seems appropriate here and seems to encapsulate every point of Anni’s letter to Amma:

“In the beginning the Guru will tell the disciple, who is a practitioner, “The world is an illusion. Reject it and become established in the Self.” This is to speed up the sadhana. But at last he will understand that this whole world is part of God when he reaches Realization. Then there will not be anything to reject, only to love and serve all. This state is not hypothetical, but is derived from experience.”

OM, OM, OM
Kamala Aunty, Link and Anni

Key West Fishing Payday Loan Florida Vacation