Jillellamudi Amma
I don’t think that human life is the highest. It doesn’t occur to my mind that one is higher and another lower. Is everything created for man’s sake alone?
Man thinks, birds too have thoughts. If birds had no minds, how could they build their nests? Some birds can even be taught to talk. In that case, what do you mean by ‘highest’? Is it in intelligence?
They too have intelligence, but we don’t understand their knowledge. May be no snake could invent television; may be no bird could invent an engine; but if you look at it in that way, has mankind collectively invented anything? Birds and animals have their own ways of doing things. They can easily do some things that no man can.
Can we fly as birds do? Even a fellow considered ignorant thinks of many things a highly educated man may not have such thoughts. I don’t think that one thing in this creation is greater than another. That is the miracle (mahatmya) of creation. It doesn’t seem to me that the miraculous is elsewhere. All these are in creation itself. Only if you, I and everything is included, is it creation.
Q: What is sanctity?
Amma: Limits. Deciding to be like this on this occasion being pure and making the mind pure. A bath gives some pleasure as well, and eating is necessary for the body. Bathing, sanctification, and so forth are for the mind. ‘Sanctity’ means ‘the particular limits observed on this or that occasion’.
Some consider that a flower, which has come from the ground, is unfit for worship if it is dropped on the ground. In creation there is nothing but That. `What is’ is That alone. In truth, you know, the image in the temple is the stone on which the sculptor sat while chiselling it.
Q: In our country one must give bribes to advance even one step forward.
Amma: Perhaps it was always so. We have never been without problems. At any moment what is being undergone always seems particularly serious. Each age has the problems appropriate to its times stupid customs in one period, slavery in a second, epidemics in a third, famine in a fourth, floods during a fifth there is always some problem or the other.
People are never contented, happy and smiling. We often mention those early times when Rama reigned; but even those days had their characteristic problems. All of us are bribing, giving and taking, so there is no need for any special mention.
These problems, in varying proportions, are always with us.
Good days, bad days
There are no “good situations” or “bad situations” as such. Nor are there “good days” or “bad days” as such for anyone.
Good days, good situations, are those where you can just experience, without getting perturbed, whatever comes to you. When the fullness of your experiencing is more important to you than your usual likes and dislikes— that is what I call a good day, a good time, a good situation.
I want to tell you that both “good fortune” and “misfortune” are imaginary. They are just subjective attitudes of the mind. There is nothing objectively real about such descriptions.
I have all the same qualities which you have. I am just like you. They worship me because, owing to their purity of heart, they see the divine in me. But I am in no way different from you.
Excerpted from ‘Talks with AMMA’ edited by Rodney Alexander Arms. The 99th birth anniversary of Jillellamudi Amma was observed on March 28
