Ma's Vows Ceremony

January 14^th is an auspicious day on the Vedic calendar since it marks the solar transition to Sidereal Capricorn. Although the sun enters Tropical Capricorn on the winter solstice, this is not actually aligned with the constellation of Capricorn, due to a phenomenon known as the Procession of the Equinoxes, which relates to the sun’s twenty four thousand year journey around galactic centre. For the Vedic calendar, it is the sun’s entry into Makara, or Sidereal Capricorn, which marks the beginning of the sun’s northern journey, the path of light. On this auspicious day, vows and initiations will be especially effective. Hence ‘Makara Sankranti’ or January 14^th is the traditional initiation day at Alandi Ashram.

I have performed initiations for students and devotees every Makara Sankranti for many years, never imagining that one day I would carry out a self-initiation on that date. Preparations for this event arose spontaneously in my psyche and were carried out meticulously yet effortlessly. So I came down the stairs to the temple at dawn dressed in a brand new pure white $10 sari created from a bolt of muslin at the fabric shop.

 I could not help but recall the occasion twenty eighty years previously when I made brahmachari vows on the banks of the Kaveri River with Bede Griffiths. It was 4^th April 1980 and I met Sadananda for the first time later that day. Almost twenty years later, here I was again making vows.

Sadananda, Matrupriya, Alandi Board president Jane Bunin, Hilary Moshman, Alandi Mandali musician Seva, Ashram administrator Rivkah and her son Toviah, as well as Amanda, a friend from Omaha, were present to witness the vows. After sunrise agnihotra we did a homa fire ceremony, offering 108 Healing Mantras and then making offerings to all the gurus in the Alandi lineage. At the end of the fire ceremony I read my vows in the presence of the assembled witnesses and of the lineage gurus –invoked through fire— and Agni, Fire himself. As we always do in our initiation ceremonies, I walked three times around the fire to confirm the vows.

Then I received an ochre shawl and a tulsi mala from Raghudas’ Seat, as tokens and reminders of eth vows taken.

My new life had begun.

Soon I realized that the ochre shawl is a constant reminder of the fires of Shiva that burn away all secondary things leaving only the One. I am never alone because I am clothed in that Fire.  And I saw too that the true brahmacharya is to abstain completely from identification with the limited self.

“In my end is my beginning” as Heraclitus said. At this time in life I experience both a death and a birth. My married woman self is undergoing a death experience as the new self comes to birth.

The anguish of the death experience is the birth pangs of a new level of being, one on which I belong more completely than ever to my children, all sentient beings.   May this broken heart be a fountain of healing for all suffering beings!