Seeds And Beans Are A Basis Of Daily Sustenance Given By God

~ the incense sticks are igniting, camphors are flaming, wheat is strewing on the stone by the feet of ganesh, we pray for enough sustenance and adequate subsistence but not anything excessively more ~

Day 42

31.3.2024
Sunday

Udaipur, Rajashtan

While waiting for the water in the kettle to boil, I feel my forehead is getting heavier. I have thought I may lack of sleep, of which I need to sleep for another hour before getting up from bed so that later, when I am in the temple, I'll feel fresh. But oddly, I have my blurry head pulling the sensual of the eye of my mind float. Instantly, I know I have a visitor knocking in my head when they are about to reach my third eye. I let loose the sensual of the mind, and whatever coming in, I let them enter the eye of my mind.

I see a south asian pye-dog, or a very native dog treated a pariah. This dog is an ownerless, half-wild, free-ranging dog that lives close to human settlements but it looks very weak and under nutrition caused by not eating enough of food. When I see this brownish dog at a flash, I notice the dog is also aware that I have noticed its presence in a position reclining on the street. This dog vouches my third eye, and I let it be.

Then comes in another flash. I see another dog, of the same breed but in different colour. This black dog is drenched in water and the entire body is wet. I see the dog shaking off the water on its fur very vigorously. This black dog shivers in cold and hungry. After that I see another two visions of dogs. They are all hungry and waiting to be fed with their front legs curling up to the heads.

I can't do anything for them. I do not know they are whose dogs and their whereabouts. All I know, they are cold and hungry. I know what hunger is about when our stomach is churning in extreme starvation in inanition. At home, the food is abundant but in certain places in India, you don't feel surprise when someone is pulling you up short for rice. I often let my body starve. It is not because I do not have money to buy food but I know, occasional starve will make me to introspect about myself more deeply. I feel very grateful for the food, of any type of food I would have on the dining table serving from the kitchen. At this dawn, I will pray for enough sustenance and subsistence in my daily life. I do not ask for a subsistence more than I need but a cup of grain is making suffice to my need for a day.

When I was in Mt Abu, the brahma kumaris' sister, who was in her early 60s, she had something to iterate to me when the spiritual centre received many NRI visitors coming from the United States of America. The NRI is a non-resident indian who is living outside India but a citizen of India. She said to me, "In my village, we have lived shortage of food over a period of time when I was younger. That has caused death when there was famine."

"I come from a poor village in Tamil Nadu. We endure a lot of suffering because we are poor, and we live below the subsistence level. We live under a dollar a day with no food. When there is no food, there is also no education for our children," she added.

She asked me, "Do you know what we eat when we have no food?"

She answered her own question when I began to pay more attention to her, she responded by saying, "We dig the root bulbs from the ground to eat when there is no rainfall to water our plants in the farm."

Then she asked me, "Where do you come from?"

I replied to her, "I am from Malaysia."

She said because I came from Malaysia, I would have known what was poor and having no money to buy grains. I agreed with her because when she said as such, I trusted she knew a lot about Malaysia. There may not be a famine in Malaysia, but there were some hardcore poverty striving for daily food and shelters.

Then she said to me, "Many NRI visitors have forgotten their roots. When they emigrated to America, they begin to live a good live there. The way they approach us when they return to India is the highlight how they perceive their countrymen. They may not have shunned their countrymen but they have us with some disdain."

Then she did not wish to describe further. I got her message very clearly.

At dawn just now, I see many devotees come to the temple with a small plastic bag in their hand. The plastic bag contains grains in it. Some of them have brought wheat and barley or corn seeds, while others have green beans or black dhal in their plastic bags. One devotee gets a scoop of the wheat from her hand and puts it down on the stone of the little shrine where Ganesh sits on it. Then, she ignites some black incense sticks and put the two camphors in flame. Seeing her performing the rituals at the feet of the deity, I clang the bell three times.

It is a ritual performs by hindus to pray for sustenance and subsistence. They ask for livelihood in abundance from god when they put the seeds and beans at the feet of the deities. If you collect the grains, you are collecting a share of the sustenance from them that was given by god. In catholicism, it is the daily bread the catholics pray for sustenance. In hinduism, the nourishment of sustenance given by god is represented by the seeds and beans.

I touch the wheat strewn on the stone at the shrine gently and lightly, because I take the ritual very seriously that I am also praying for my sustenance, a small one, hoping to come enough to me everyday from god.