On Karunamayi Ma, from Deities and Devotees in _The Graceful Guru_: part 2

[Guest guest]

Ma Karunamayi, aka Bhagavati Sri Sri Sri Vijayeswari Devi

 

" The aim of Sri Karunamayi's mission is universal peace

and spiritual upliftment of humanity. Her chief message

to us is to achieve higher levels of consciousness

through the regular practice of meditation, and She

advises a minimum of one to two hours daily practice.

[....] It is meditation, Amma says, which will yield

genuine spiritual progress and Divine Knowledge. With

this purpose in mind, She provides initiation into the

Maha Sarasvati Mantra, inscribing the mantra on the

tongue of the devotee using a twig of holy basil (tulsi)

dipped in honey. The purpose of this loftiest of

initiations is to render one's speech " as sacred as basil

and as sweet as honey, " and to bestow upon the

practitioner, in time, Supreme Knowledge for the sake

of individual as well as universal peace. "

 

Excerpted from the essay _Deities and Devotees_

by Vasudha Narayanan

 

In: The Graceful Guru

Hindu Female Gurus in India and the United States

Edited by Karen Pechilis

Oxford University Press, 2004

ISBN: 0-19-514537-2

 

Part 2

 

Ma Karunamayi's Life

Bhagavati Sri Vijayeswari was born on Vijaya Dashami

( " the victorious tenth day " ), considered to be one of the

most auspicious days in the Hindu calendar. It is the last

day of the nine-day festival of Navaratri which, in most

parts of India, is celebrated in honor of the Goddess.

Like most festivals, it marks the victory of good over

evil; specifically, it celebrates the victory of the goddess

Durga over the buffalo-demon, Mahisha. It is because

she was born on the victorious tenth day of the festival

that she was called Sri Vijayeswari or the goddess of

victory.

 

As with other holy people in India, a number of miracle

stories are associated with her life. It is said that when

Annapoornamma, her mother, visited Ramana Maharshi

[...] he predicted that she would bear the " thai " (the

Tamil word for " mother. " ). Eventually, she went with

her husband to Mysore during the holy nine days of

Navaratri or Dasara, the major festival which comes in

September-October. Here, during the festival devoted to

the Goddess, " Annapoornamma felt unusual

illumination entering her body. She felt as if Sri

Chamundeswari (the presiding deity of Sri

Mahishamandala) had entered her body. "

 

Almost exactly a year later, on the last day of the same

festival of Dasara which ends with the Victorious Tenth

day, Sri Vijayeswari Devi was born in Gudur, which is

in the Nellore District of Andhra Pradesh. As is the case

again in other hagiographies, we hear of holy men

recognizing her as an embodiment of the divine. One Sri

Bhavananda Saraswati Swami from an institution called

Sri Vidyapeetham Kanva Bhoomi (which sounds like a

monastic organization) wrote a testimonial in her

biography. Apparently, after several years of meditation

in the Himalayas, he had a vision (darshan) of the

Goddess m her childlike form-the youthful Bala

Tripurasundari ( " the young beauty of the three worlds " ).

Many years later, he says, he came to the south, and

came to the home of Annapoornamma during Dasara.

Annapoornamma asked her daughter, the five-year-old

Vijayeswari Devi to bring fruits to the visiting holy man

[who then had a vision of the young girl as Bala

Tripurasundari.]

 

There are many [hagiographical] stories of how her

father recognized that she was someone special, and

other incidents of miracles. Her father died when she

was quite young. Apparently, when she was about

twenty-one (the date is given as June 9, 1980),

Karunamayi Ma left home to [perform austerities.] [....]

 

At the conclusion of her austerities (tapas), Sri

Karunamayi founded the Sri Mathru Devi Viswa

Shanthi Ashram on the outskirts of the forest at

Penusila. The web sites dedicated to Karunamayi say

that a beautiful temple dedicated to Bharat Mata

(Mother India) is nearing completion there, and display

pictures of this temple. She also maintains an ashram,

the Karunamayi Shanthi Dhama, in the city of Bangalore

and, according to the websites, more than a thousand

people per month are fed at her ashrams. There are other

institutions that she is starting-an orphanage and a

school for handicapped children and those with special

needs. Most recently, a forty-bed hospital for the

indigent tribespeople in remote Penusila Kshetram is

being built. The mission statement on the Internet gives

us a good idea of her work:

 

" The aim of Sri Karunamayi's mission is universal peace

and spiritual upliftment of humanity. Her chief message

to us is to achieve higher levels of consciousness

through the regular practice of meditation, and She

advises a minimum of one to two hours daily practice.

She regularly gives meditation retreats so as to refine the

experience of the individual meditator and propel him or

her along the path to liberation. It is meditation, Amma

says, which will yield genuine spiritual progress and

Divine Knowledge. With this purpose in mind, She

provides initiation into the Maha Sarasvati Mantra,

inscribing the mantra on the tongue of the devotee using

a twig of holy basil (tulsi) dipped in honey. The purpose

of this loftiest of initiations is to render one's speech " as

sacred as basil and as sweet as honey, " and to bestow

upon the practitioner, in time, Supreme Knowledge for

the sake of individual as well as universal peace. The

Maha Saraswati Mantra initiation is made available in

India only to students due to the large numbers of

devotees who come for her blessings. In the West, She

has consented to initiate sincere adult aspirants. "

 

Many of the pamphlets and books tell us about the

importance of the Saraswati Mantra-this is called a bija

or " seed " syllable; it is a kind of mantra whose syllables

embody the divine Mother and that will transform the

human being who meditates on it. The implication is

that when this sacred syllable is written with honey and

the sacred basil leaf on one's tongue by the holy Mother,

a person gets a jump start into spiritual awareness. And

this Divine Mother is none other than Karunamayi Ma,

according to her followers.