Karunamayi's Talk

Yesterday I went to attend karunamayi's evening program. The setting was very indian. A sort of sankeertan. It was held in a church, and the church had quite good acoustics. There were very few indians. Quite a lot of old people, a few young ones, and some little ones. The little ones were running around carefree. Some of the young women were quite beautiful. A young mother had come with matted locks, and a baby wrapped in her arms and a shawl like cloth. Some white women wore bindis, salwars, saarees. I am not accustomed to seeing that, and I felt saarees and salwars didn't look good on them, but they looked quite comfortable in that. Some men wore kurta-payjamas, white. There was a young guy on my adjacent bench, black hair, slender body. He sat eyes-closed. Mostly, the organizers wore a hushed silence, and beatific smiles on their faces.

It had just rained a while ago in boulder, and there was a lot of thunder; after a while rain had stopped, everything seemed fresh, and the roads were a little cooler, and when I biked along the creek, it had rushing waters. When she came, we all stood up, she greeted many on her way, walked to the dais, and sat quietly. It felt nice and cool when she walked in, and past by. There was an old monk with small hair, flowing beard, and a red robe. He met quite nicely with her. He sat two seats ahead of me.

We started out with a simple bhajan, listened to it, and maintained a long silence after the bhajan had finished. She was introduced by a person, who I thought travelled with her, and does much of the talking because he speaks english well. Then she started speaking. She speaks a little fast, but usually clear. She spoke about a lot of things, the seven chakras, the need for meditation, following whatever you do, blessing students and teachers all-over the world, world peace. I became filled with pride and chided myself, when she mentioned ujjain. She mentioned kshipra river, vikramaditya, kalidasa, and king poet bharathari. She said of bharathari, that he said to all the kings, his brothers "All this wealth, this gold, and much more, is nothing against the divine wisdom of a poet". She said kaliadasa's abhigyan shakuntalam has 54 german translations, and has inspired many western poets of 15th to 17th-18th century.

Her talk was interspersed with her singing, and a few 2-3 min silences after the singing. Mostly, I sat with my eyes closed, sometimes joining in, otherwise listening. We recited a few mantras, for ourselves, and giving peace to others. She talked a lot about the need to be sensitive to nature (mother nature as she says), and talked about glodal radiation (by which she meant global warming). Some of the things she said, I simply couldn't believe, and felt they were mostly stories. But her singing and voice quality, is very nice. And when a hundred people are tuning in, you can feel the vibrations inside your body. The woman sitting next to me sang quite well too. As I said, I mostly listened.

This one explanation I liked. She had started the talk with a description of saraswati. She said, saraswati is sara+swa+iti. Sara means the crux, swa means the self, and iti means thy. So saraswati, implies, the sara of thy self, that she said is the highest knowledge, nirvana, or mokhsa. From that comes all the knowledge, and hence we worship goddess saraswati, as the fountain mother of knowledge.

Before her talk ended, we were shown a small video of her charity works in india, and images from her world-tour. Seeing poverty and disablitiy in my face again and again, didn't feel nice. But then, those are real people I thought, and are being helped by her. So whats the harm if someone gets inspired to donate some money for them and her works, watching that.

In the end, most of us made an indian queue (which is a herd) towards the dais, and she put a chandan timki on each one of us telling each, my lovely child, children. The chandan timki (not sure if it was something else), had strong and soothing fragrance. Then some people including me stayed, she walked down from the dais, and sat on the floor, and talked about a few more things, and stressed upon the need to wakeup early in the morning, doing surya-namaskaram, meditation especially in the morning at 5 am.

Finally, she said come to the individual blessings tomorrow, and I will see your progress report, how many marks you got in science, how many in spirituality. We all stood up, as she walked past by. I moved a little back, others were rushing in to be in the frontline. Everyone stood with folded hands (in namaste), as she walked past by. I initially stood with crossed arms, I don't know why. May be reason made me defiant. I dislike bowing usually. But then my years of training came rushing in, and when she stopped in front of me, she looked blankly, or kindly, I don't know, but I did offer a small bow with arms still crossed, and then did do a namaste. Reflex happens in a split-second, you know :)

It was already past ten when I came out. Three hours. I wore my shoes, unlocked my bike, and drove on the empty roads. The night yesterday, was colder than usual because of the evening showers we had received. Biking in the night felt good, and I thought I will write about this experience. So there.

Update: Here are some photos from the program.