I was walking at the park this morning when a senior man about my age ran past me. Moments later I heard a cry. I stopped and turned back to look. He apparently had fallen as he was sitting on his buttocks. I turned back and approached him asking if he was fine. Luckily, he seemed to be all right except for bruises on his palm having hit the tarmac face down. After some moments and some small talk, he picked himself up and bid me bye-bye to continue his activity. That is when I saw a group of people peering over the bush fence just some meters away. They had apparently completed their morning exercise and meditation and were chatting on the grass as I arrived some time ago. But none came to enquire if everything was alright. It made me wonder what has become of society these days. Has this renown exercise and meditation that takes its roots from Buddhism lost its element of compassion among modern day practitioners?
I remember watching the opening credit sequence in the movie "Unnal Mudiyum Thambi", where a blind old lady struggles to pick up a banana thrown by a passerby at the ghats. A kid sitting just meters away is indifferent and keeps singing a hymn. An old man comes to her aid. He later turns to the boy and dress him down asking how it never crossed to his mind to come to her aid. We fail to see God in everyone and everywhere. Apparently, we have locked God behind the temple walls and his sannadhi. In fact, literally speaking that is what we have done. We let him out at specific times. A priest told us to pass food parcel after the Nitya puja for then God shall see what we are doing. This is ridiculous I told myself. Though I wanted to speak my mind, I refrained from arguing with him.
A story is told of a lad who stopped a devotee on his way to the temple with offerings to the Lord in the form of fruits. He was hungry and wanted some. The devotee gave him some fruits. Later God came before the devotee as he invited him to partake the fruits. God told him that he had already taken and was quite full. But how and when the devotee asked. God replied that he came as the lad earlier.
When our ego became inflated as we made our rounds helping the needy and hungry giving them provisions and cooked food, what my wife described as getting high in doing this work, Agathiyar in a timely manner brought it all to a standstill and asked us to go within. If we were contented that we have done our part and moved away, a youngster among our group went a step further and married someone from this lower income group wanting to bring her out of her plight. I told him that I see him in a different light and have very high regards for him.
Compassion is lacking these days. I guess we too needed to by schooled or rather have it bloom from within us through certain acts. That is the reason Tavayogi started me with charity at his ashram that soon Agathiyar expanded with the coming of several youths to my home. We engaged in starting to feed the young and old at the orphanages and old folks' homes. Later through Sri Krishna who was already doing it, and his Agathiyar Universal Mission, we started to feed the homeless too. Later Agathiyar introduced us to the unfortunate few who were struggling to work and feed their family at the same time. We took over from an individual who was doing it after Agathiyar told her to do so in the Nadi as an alternative remedy since she was in no position to travel to India then. Grandmas trying to make a living and raising small kids at the same time, grandmas trying to make a living and looking after special child at the same time, single parents who juggled between work and home, and those looking after bedridden and sickly family members, were shown to us as we went knocking door to door to enquire if they needed food and provisions. But what surprised me was that instead of getting caught in another web of responsibility and relationships, besides the role of a householder that we are in, Agathiyar cut us off asking us to move on or rather move within consoling us that others will come by and continue the charity work we did earlier.
The world's religions seemed to me to dish out regimes of do's and don'ts and seem to groom one to become self-centered and possessive. Where have the good values gone? Agathiyar in revealing the purpose of man's birth states compassion and service to others right down to the animal, plant and even mineral kingdom in his 5 tenets for man. Ramalinga Adigal wept at seeing the crops wither. That was the immense state of compassion he had towards all of live. He respected all live as Agathiyar asks us too.
We cannot possibly separate God and his creation. He is in every one of his creations. Feed his subjects and it is equivalent to serving him. Similarly, God sends help in moments of our need. He need not necessarily come in the form that we are accustomed to seeing him in paintings, statues or even the movies. He can come as the pauper, an animal, the hungry, the desolate, the homeless, the unfortunate, and in many other ways. Next time someone steps up to you for help tell yourself it is God who has come to test you.