Today, January 16, America commemorates the life of the Rev.
Martin Luther King, Jr. 2012 marks the tenth annual tribute to Rev. King and to Mahatma
Gandhi by Ananda Sangha in Seattle & Bothell, WA. This evening's program
was cancelled due to snow, and postponed until this coming Sunday, January 22,
10 a.m. at the Ananda Meditation Temple in Bothell. Ananda Bothell website
Over ten years ago
I had the inspiration to create a tribute to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
("MLK") and Mahatma Gandhi ("MG") using quotes from their
writings and speeches. It was deeply inspiring to me and has proven to be so to
many hundreds who have attended the tribute both here and in Mountain View, CA and
other places where it has been presented.
The text has
changed over the years, partly to keep it fresh and partly to follow new
insights. At first it was strictly limited to inspirational quotes drawn
equally from MLK and MG. In the last two years we've quoted mostly from MLK in
keeping with the national holiday and American interests and have emphasized
more of the drama of actual events in MLK's life.
There are,
however, some salient aspects of their lives that are not commonly emphasized
in most public tributes or documentaries. The most important of these is the
inner, spiritual life of each of these men. Another is the dynamic relevance
their lives, message, motives, and methods hold for the world today. In
anticipation of Sunday's presentation and owing to today's official
commemoration, I would like to share some of these salient aspects with you in
this blog.
As revered as both
men are throughout the world, we find that it is not necessary to have them be
perfect or all together saintly. Their relevance to our own, personal lives
comes from the simple but life transforming fact that each aspired to
"know, love, and serve God." For each of them, their divine
attunement came through serving and giving their lives in the cause of racial,
political, and economic freedom and justice.
While the public
generally is aware of their political victories, most are only dimly aware that
each had a deep inner life of prayer from which they sought, received and
followed (to their death) divine guidance. It was not that they did not know
fear, or were unaware that their actions placed them constantly in danger of
assassination and violence. It's that the inner divine sanction they sought and
received gave them the comfort and the strength to carry on in spite of their
very human shortcomings. What a lesson for each and every one of us. We do not
need to be public servants or heroes or martyrs. Unseen by any, we can carry on
what is right if we, too, will live for God alone.
The night before
his assassination and in the face of multiple threats to his life, MLK declared
that he "had been to the mountaintop" and was not afraid of any man.
That it did not matter now, for God had shown him the "promised land."
And, while he would yearn for a long life like anyone, that was secondary for
he wanted only "to do God's will." In fact, that afternoon, alone and
on the verge of despair and despondency for the challenges that faced his work,
his life, his family, and his reputation and influence, he prayed and, I
believe, had a spiritual experience from the heights of which he spoke those
ringing words. Most hearing him then and now believe he was referring to the
promised land of desegregation. And who would argue, and why not? But prophets
of old and new and scriptures of all lands speak on many levels of meaning. And
I, and others, believe that what he was "shown" was far more than
that. What he experienced gave him the courage and faith to do what he had to
do and to give his life in doing it.
Few people know
that MLK travelled to India in 1959, after his first victory in Montgomery,
Alabama with the now famous bus boycott prompted by Rosa Parks' refusal to give
up her seat on the bus to a white passenger who had just boarded. King spoke on
All-India Radio urging India to lead the way to universal disarmament (India
subsequently did not). Dr. King and Coretta and travelling companions were
veritable celebrities in India where the bus boycott had been followed in newspapers
throughout India.
MLK was more than
a southern Baptist preacher. His religious views were liberal, in the most
elevated sense of the term. He was more than an eloquent black speaker from the
south. He was an intellectual who grappled with the issues of twentieth century
western culture and was well read in philosophy, scripture, and history. Had
his calling not been towards civil rights his own inclinations would have led
him to stay in the north and become a professor, writer and lecturer. In
college he felt the presence of God in nature and spent many hours alone,
out-of-doors, day and night.
MLK was a
"disciple" of Mahatma Gandhi who saw that Gandhi resolved what King
thought was the gulf between the "love thy neighbor as thy self"
teaching of Jesus with the compelling need to fight injustice. MLK said that
Jesus gave the teaching of love but Gandhi gave the method to make it
applicable to social causes. King followed Gandhi's understanding that
resistance was anything but passive. Nonviolent resistance required as much
courage, self-sacrifice, and strength as that required in battle for a
soldier.
MLK like MG was
not only assassinated but both felt that their efforts had been unsuccessful:
Gandhi, due to the communal rioting that followed the great victory of
nonviolent freedom from the British, and King, in the rising militarism of
younger, up and coming civil rights leaders. MLK took considerable heat from
his anti-war stance on Vietnam. He was harassed by the FBI and Johnson
administration and hounded by rivalries among his own civil rights
associates.
Yet both men, to
the end, maintained their faith in God and in the victory of good over evil.
Both were practical idealists, eloquent speakers, gifted writers and astute
organizers and negotiators. Possessing great will power, yet they were loyal to
their own and forgiving to those who betrayed them. Both saw their religion and
their politics as applicable to all humanity and for all time. Never did either
succumb to sectarianism or nationalism.
Mahatma Gandhi was
initiated into kriya yoga by Paramhansa Yogananda during Yogananda's one and
only return visit to India in 1935-36. Yogananda, prior to leaving India for
America in 1920, was asked by revolutionaries to lead the fight against British
rule. Yogananda declined saying it was not his to do in that lifetime but that
he predicted that India would win its independence by non-violent means: and
this was before Gandhi had come onto the political scene in India and had come
into his role as leader for Indian independence.
An earlier
generation black leader for justice in America, W.E.B. Du Bois, invited Gandhi
to come to America but Gandhi declined, saying it wasn't his role to do that
and India was where he was needed. Du Bois predicated, however, that it would
take another Gandhi to end segregation and uplift the American
"negroes." How right he was.
The world today,
and America especially, is in dire need of a voice of moral authority. Our
nation seems polarized between extremes and has lost the dignity, compassion,
and ideal-inspired reason to see our way clearly to the greatest good for the
greatest number. We must find a way to affirm universal values, including
spirituality, without sectarianism; to teach, model and encourage balanced,
positive, and wholesome values and behaviors without censorship,
discrimination, or coercion; to encourage self-initiative and personal
responsibility rather than entitlement and victimization. To foster a hunger
for knowledge, not mere profit, for sustainability, not indulgence, for cooperation not ruthless competition.
The law of
survival and happiness is based on one and the same principle: self-sacrifice.
Self-sacrifice means the recognition that we are more than we seem and reality
is bigger than our individual self. Self-sacrifice is the investment into a
longer rhythm of sustainability that brings a wholesome prosperity, harmony
with nature and with humanity, and lasting happiness rather than passing
pleasure. "Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his
friends," as the Bible says. Few are called to give their lives for the
lives of others, but all of us are called upon to become the "sons of
God," meaning to live up to our own highest potential which is far greater
than to live for the moment and for the senses and ego gratification.
As parents sacrifice
for the good of their children (health, education, safety, comfort, and
security), as soldiers sacrifice for defense of their country, as great artists
and scientists toil to share inspiration and create a better world, so too each
of us are called upon to harmonize ourselves in daily life with right diet,
exercise, cooperation, compassion, knowledge, community service and wisdom. Such requires moral vigor and personal sacrifice of the desires of the moment for a greater reward.
Both Gandhi and
King labored to instill these basic and universal values in their followers and
to their people. Each understood that no victory over injustice could take
place without the moral victory of an honorable, self-respecting,
self-sacrificing, balanced, and compassionate life.
When and by whom
do we see these values held up for honor in America -- not by words, alone --
but by example, by leaders in every field such as arts, entertainment,
religion, business, science, and politics? Look at those whose lives we are
fascinated by: celebrities whose lives of debauchery echo the lowest common denominator of humanity. Yet there are heroes here and there, and all around us. They don't necessarily shout
and conduct public polls. But we need them now just as Dr. King was no less a
prophet than those of the Old Testament, no less flawed than any one of us, but
willing to give his life to something greater than himself.
Ananda's worldwide
work is focused upon discipleship to the living presence and precepts of
Paramhansa Yogananda. In this respect the example of Ananda may seem irrelevant
to the world today. But it is not, for from a tiny seed a mighty oak can grow.
We do not practice "Yogananda-ism." Discipleship for Ananda members means to attune ourselves to the truths that he represented, rather than to worship a mere personality. Ananda is anything but a cult, focused inward upon itself.
It is no
coincidence that Yogananda initiated Gandhi into kriya yoga or that MLK was a
"disciple" of Gandhi. The movement towards universally shared values
such as "life, liberty, and happiness" and the equality of all souls
as children of the Infinite is no cult but a powerful tsunami closing in
towards the shoreline of modern society. The destructive aspects of this all consuming tsunami are felt only by those who stand fast in their sectarianism, racial prejudice, bigotry or other narrow-eyed identity. Kriya yoga symbolizes more than a
meditation technique. It represents the understanding that each of us must find
within our own center these universal values, our conscience, and our
happiness. Much more could be said, but I have planted enough dots along the
path for others to connect.
We celebrate the
life of Dr. King because we celebrate the precepts he represented and the
example of self-sacrifice that has been all but forgotten in the haze of modern
materialism. If America, and other countries, are to survive the challenges we
face, we must face them together with a sense of our shared values and
essential unity.
Blessings to all,
Hriman
