Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

Pranams to the Jaguar Goddess and to all Goddesses who are veritably embodiments of  Mata Amritanandamayi Devi.

Cycles. The Moon Goddess. I begin with death. My friend of many years called me today from the hospital to say goodbye. When I had finally been able to reach him a few hours before, I could scarcely recognize his voice. He was so distant. His speech was slurred. He said he would call me back. I was amazed when he did. He didn't remember speaking to me. He said he wanted to thank me for my friendship. It was his time to go. He just wanted the final sleep now. I said I was sorry for what he was going through. It's life, he said. He sounded so different. So many layers of personality had been stripped away. I told him he was going to a better place. He didn't care. It didn't matter.

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

I called him again today. I thought they might have sent him home. I asked him where he was. He didn't know. He thanked me again for my friendship. I thanked him for his. In the end, it's the only thing that matters. All we had gone through, the years of devotion and service to the guru, the laughter and rage, horrible marriages and divorces, my choice of another guru, his steadfastness, the ever elusive quest for a holy grail, all of it came down to this.

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

He stayed for his son, as I for my wife.
But I do not look to the final sleep.
I look to the final awakening.
All that is mine I offer to my friend.

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

This from my letter to a mutual friend about my dying friend:

I have no doubt she does care about him and how difficult, stubborn and unreasonable he is in his condition. However, in fairness to my friend, I hope you are open to a more balanced assessment of the role she played as wife and mother. I have no intention of running her down, especially when she is doing all she can for him. I just want you to be aware of the unfairness of your statement to me that you had never heard the woman say a word of complaint about him. You might want to consider the possibility that for someone who has both directly and indirectly so contributed to his present condition it was unnecessary to add further insult to injury. How tragic and absurd life is that people so unaware of their behavior can pass themselves off as saints and martyrs. If I seem bitter and vindictive about this, please remember that I have been hearing stories about her for years, and he wasn't making them up. I maintain that if anyone in this relationship has been the saint, it is he. Perhaps now, if she ever really cared about him, she may begin to see it.

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

He's back from the dead, off life support and more happy and himself than I have ever known him, with a huge inoperable brain tumor more than twice as big as it was. An unbelievable, impossible miracle.

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

Sebastiao Salgado's signature black and white photograph of Sao Paulo looks appropriately like some archetypal City of Hell, it's crowded towers stretching to the horizon like the tombstones of a vast necropolis whose invisible inhabitants prey upon one another in an endless cycle of violence and death, while overhead the billowing clouds blow to an unattainable freedom. How well I know that place and how fortunate I am to have escaped it. I married a denizen of that land who imprisoned me in a tyranny of terror, deception and hatred, and took me on a journey to the heart of darkness where the only truth is deception, the only escape suicide or murder. How did I survive it? If the highly organized Primeiro Comando da Capital, the prison gang that controls the city could take its discipline one step further into the realm of a formal meditation practice, the supremacy of crime would be supplanted by grace.

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

I'm going to see the Dalai Lama tomorrow. It's been maybe thirty years since I last saw him at a big church in downtown Toronto. He didn't have the huge celebrity then that he has now. Some of the members of the church had waited in the front pew, and walked out in ostentatious protest when he ascended the podium. He was very gentle and took no notice. But when his gaze met mine, I stared so intently at him he flinched his eyes away. Where the protesters had failed to unsettle him, I in my own small way had succeeded. I have always felt strangely wicked about that. I was extremely depressed. He will be in a stadium tomorrow with maximum security. We are not even allowed to bring in bottled water. I will be on my best behavior, but it is highly unlikely that I will be able to make eye contact with him.

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

A kid introduced himself to the women sitting next to me and asked if they would be willing to give their names and answer the question why they had come to see the Dalai Lama for his student newspaper. I heard one of them say something about cultivating compassion. He dutifully recorded their answers with the pencil and paper that was all he had been permitted to bring in with him.  As he was getting ready to go I said, “Zachary, would you like me to give you an interview?”  It took him by surprise. He gave me the pencil and paper, and I wrote, “The Dalai Lama is an exceedingly rare awakened being in a world dominated by materialism and violence.” He was thrilled. “That's it!” he exulted. “That's perfect!  Thank you so much!” We shook hands warmly a couple of times. The ladies also were pleased by the direct hit.

We waited in the sun for three and half hours. It was unnecessary. The stadium was only two thirds full. Images from the Dalai Lama's life were shown on the big screen, and wonderful sacred Tibetan music played. Some of the images shown of the monks in their ceremonial tiaras and robes were like glimpses into a celestial realm. When the Dalai Lama finally appeared on stage, he seemed like a frail old man. He patiently and smilingly endured an endless succession of Hawaiian chants and leis, some the exact size and shape of Christmas wreaths placed over his head, which he immediately removed, finally prompting laughter from the audience when he thought it was all over and unselfconsciously brushed at the particles clinging to his back and neck. Since I am half deaf and the sound system was poor, most of what he said eluded me. But I got the message. Compassion. The frail old man proved himself an immortal god: easy, charming, engaged, amusing and amused. Utterly original. Utterly authentic. A Bodhisattva.

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

Reading your words, feeling your friend, sensing your connection….ahhhhhhhhhh

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

Thanks, Bliss Faerie!

I get it that I'm buried in a dream,
As the past is buried in the present,
Or God is buried in the universe
And resurrected in enlightenment.

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

Dear Friend, we will meet again in Heaven.
You have gone to your Eternal Reward.
The Divine Being, like a gentle cat,
Gazes at you leisurely in the eye.

I have entered the twilight of my life.
The seasons come and go now like ripples.
God is visible in the myna birds
And in the friendly faces of lovers.

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

The taste of death in my mouth, an old wound,
Kali's gift of misery and despair.
Silent black wings dropping into branches
Throw it all off in the richness of dusk.

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

Tell me, goddess, why your beauty moves me
As If I had never seen a woman,
Or divine music had burst on deafness
Like an avalanche of light in darkness.

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

This quiet place that the world violates,
Where you have gone as if you never left -
Tell me more about the pristine wildness,
Your abandonment to a fine madness.

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

Friend, I feel your thoughts from that holy place.
You are too generous in your revels,
Too sweet a friend in such celestial pomp,
To give me such sublime assurances.

From this overlook with a distant view
I sense your union with divinity,
Your Guru's immeasurable reward
And astonishing realization.

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

I was combing out my hair this morning outside my car before going into work. A beautiful girl from the company walked by and said gaily, “Chris is combing his hair. Yours is longer than mine.” “Yeah,” I replied, “But you have more.” “True,” she said.

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

I am going to write a humorous screenplay
About some guy who gets hit in the head,
Comes back from the dead thinking he's Ramsses,
And starts writing poetry to women. 

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

id like to read that.

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

There was a woman who had lived countless lives
as a man
hard of heart and blind
to beauty
he dies into Love to become a woman and
begins to understand
finally
what it is to find God in the form of the Goddess

There was a man who had lives countless lives
as a woman
she dies into Light to become a man and
begins to understand
finally
what it is to be God in relation to the Goddess

One
and eternally Mutually
Empowering
Balanced
and Beloved

You Me Us All Beings Then Now Always

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

ahhhhhh, such truths.

Thank you for sharing such poignant and valuable thoughts.

loving, magical hugs on this magical Summer Solstice day…..

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

the summer sun soaked into my being

sent me into the universal seeing

alive with prana shakti and vision

receptive believing in the healing mission

pranam
pranam
pranam

make the soul a sacred pool for love's opportunities
invite everyone to swim in it's irregularities!
JAI

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Re: Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

mmmmmmmm
I sit on a beam of my Sun
Absorbing your words one by one
Smiling, glowing and floating
Universal love coating
My luminescence
My sweet essence
My being
Me.

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- Adi Shankaracharya

“I bow before that personification of nectar,
Who is the ever lasting immortal bliss,
Who is the luster in the Sushumna,
Which is in the six chakras of the body,
And who melts the moon and drinks its light.

I sing about that Bhavani,
Who sits in the triangle,
Which shines in the stamen of the great lotus,
Who has the luster of crores of rising suns,
Who is immensely pretty,
And who attracts the entire world by her charm.”

- Adi Shankaracharya
Bhavani Bhujangam

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