Ananda Ma says, "God comes to us in the guise of suffering."
Crowded 'round are those who wish to fill their heart with her,
"To be close to The Mother is all we want."
She comes in our dreams, sleeping or waking, and tells us she is
as close as a thought. Comes when she is summoned. Lives just
beneath our skin.
Whether we find our true teachers in a momentary glance or a
lifetime of service, in a book or in a cathedral, in a single gatha or a
stupa, in Her eyes or His, it is an initiation greater than birth.
Mother Teresa said she saw the ill and dying as "Jesus in His
distressing disguise." How dedicated the heart must be to catch its
own reflection in another.
In India passing and departing many say "Namaste"
acknowledging the divine in each other.
So many kind personifications, so many reasons to be thankful.
Genuflecting before a great ponderosa, or touching our
forehead to the feet of a gratitude-soaked image of the formless, or
covering our head before the first form, we continue our pilgrimage
into a certain Oneness.
Some see this Oneness in the eyes of their teacher; others catch
a glimpse in a flickering candle or a grain of sand, in a breaking wave
or a tear rolling slowly down a child's cheek. Zen masters note it in
the snap of a twig or the death of their mother.
In our longing is the irresistible draw toward the great satisfaction
of devotion. Devotion of greater consequence than any object
of devotion.
Step after step, breath after breath, we are able to step
within each step, to find the breath within each breath, and
within that the sacred essence
just where Kabir said we would.
Stephen Levine
Photo: Kathleen Knipp