Is it hard to be compassionate?
Excerpted from Immortal Bliss Magazine, 2006
Amrita eNews, Sept. 2010
https://www.amma.org/
One day a seven-year-old girl, Amritavarshini, with big, blue, innocent eyes presented Amma [Mata Amritanandamayi] with a letter and a small envelope containing her life savings!
The letter read, “Dear Amma, How can we cure sick people around the world? How can the world see that we are one in harmony and stop bombing each other? How do we make slavery and racism go away? It really puts me in deep sorrow. Please give this money to the world that is sick. Please take care of all the sick and the poor.”
“What do you want to do for the world?” Amma asked her.
” I want to make peace for the world…” said the child between sobs.
Amritavarshini’s mother had come home from work earlier that week to find the child sitting on her father’s lap, crying uncontrollably. She had been watching the news with its everyday horror stories of violence, war, famine and poverty, and had felt moved to do something to relieve the suffering she had witnessed.
Having known Amma since infancy, the idea of helping others came easily to her. Perhaps, she could make a difference she felt, using her savings account money.
As Amma listened to her story, she smiled and said “Children like this are the hope of the world. May her innocent wishes come true.” (1)
Compassion is born in human hearts in many ways….Is it hard to put this profound feeling into action? Children like Amritavarshini answer the question, “Is it hard to be compassionate?”
“No, it is hard for us to be quiet when we see people suffer.”
Footnotes
(1) To Amritavarshini’s life savings, Ammachi added $11 million, raised for flood victims in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Previously Amma sent $1 million to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. She has built, if I recall correctly, over 50,000 homes for the victims of the tsunami, given tens of thousands of scholarships to the children of farmers who suicided over not being able to afford GMO seeds and tens of thousands of lifetime pensions to widows, established hospitals for the poor, and the list goes on.