44 An Angel
The centre this year is graced by the presence of an angel; she has been here so long now that her arrival and where she came from have been lost in the mists of the past, though it is said that she has spent the last few years in various meditation centres here in Sri Lanka. It may be true, but I like to think that she is the genie of the sacred tree that stands near the entrance to the meditation hall.
Our angel is so gentle that when she walks it’s as though she were walking on a small cloud that lifted her an inch or two off the floor, and she floats by on this cloud, in the hall, in the kitchen, or when she’s walking through the garden as she returns to her room. This particular angel doesn’t speak our language and she has no name, but everyone calls her amma, meaning mother. She may not be able to talk with her children but she always has a smile ready, and she manages to communicate much more by her silence than she ever could with words.
Amma is very devout and each day she prepares water and rice, and even a cup of tea, to be offered to the Buddha, and also arranges dishes of flowers – frangipani and Jasmine are her favourites – as a fragrant offering to the Lord. She arrives early to meditation and laying out her mat, prostrates herself on all fours, and one feels that she is offering up her very being to the Lord.
Amma is a blessing upon us all and many of her children are inspired by her gentle demeanour and peaceful presence in this place.
first thing today
a cloud I saw
passing away:
a shape it took
like the mountain that below it lay
a glass it leant
to natural things:
ages came and went
dissolving form
in God’s eye it was but a moment