Fierce Grace

Was watching the documentary "Fierce Grace" with Ram Dass yesterday:

He was talking about his Guru, Maharji

Ram Dass & Maharji

One day, when he was alone with Maharaji, Ram Dass asked, "What do I need to do to become enlightened?"
Maharji said, "Serve people. Feed people."


Serve people. Feed People.

I keep coming back to this poem in my head over and over...  I know it's a famous one, but I only recently discovered it, and it has impressed itself on me..

i carry your heart with me
                by E.E. Cummings



i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
                                  i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

This is how God speaks to us... But we don't understand...

The other night I was sitting in my room and I looked up at the big picture frame hanging above my bed. It is of one of the photos taken as part of the Ashes & Snow exhibit.

This is it:

I have had this picture hanging above my bed now for about 5 years but for some reason when I saw it that night, I felt the need to go back and review the whole exhibit online.  In doing so I found a note about the animals in the exhibit - some of the animals in the photos were trained; others were wild. Then I googled "elephants", wondering if I might be able to determine which group they fell into.

What I found were several articles talking not only about how smart elephants were, but that they are the only animals besides us humans that bury their dead. They also experience grief, joy, and (this was the "Wow" moment for me-) they are capable of compassion even for other species, and even in some cases where the compassionate act requires risking their life.

Up until this point, I had thought that what separated humans from other animals, what made us more than just really smart primates, is that we had the capacity to transcend our instinct for survival.  We are capable of putting our own lives on the line for the sake of others or for things we believe in.  But it turns out that elephants are capable of this too - not only of trading a primary survival instinct for a secondary or tertiary one (that is, not only would they put their individual survival on the line for the sake of their kins' survival, or even for their own species' survival) - they are actually capable of the kind of compassion that is purely for it's own sake.  At least, I cannot come up with any other reason why an elephant would risk its life over and over again to pull a baby rhino out of a hole it was stuck in, while it's mother continued to charge the elephant every time it went to help (a field researcher working on the "Save the Elephants" team reported this incident.)

Soo, a day or two later, I was flipping through the channel guide and I saw that there was a documentary on the "Secret Lives of Elephants", which I then taped.

A day or two after that, I went to Lincoln Center to visit my old college and as I came out of the subway, what do I see?  Two life size statues of elephants planted in the middle of the 59th St. traffic circle. "That's weird," I thought to myself, "I was just thinking about elephants...".  I decided to take a picture:

As I walked along Central Park South to another subway line, just people watching, etc.  I glance over and in a window that I'm walking by at that very moment is this display:

Seeing as how this was starting to get pretty odd, I decided to take a picture of that too.

OK, so now I'm really starting to wonder - is there some kind of pattern here? What's with all the elephants?  I get to the N train and I walk down to the platform, where I begin to pace up and down, as I wait for the train, continuing to wonder about the elephants.  As I am turning the question over in mind, I look up and see this advertisement:

A message?  I dunno.  I take another picture and  keep walking. 

Next poster:

This is an ad for a TV show that I "happened to" set to record the day before.  The series premiere would be that night.  The Fox website says the show is about a boy who, "possesses an extraordinary gift—the ability to perceive the seemingly hidden patterns that connect every life on the planet."

I keep walking.  Next poster:

That was it.  There were a few more posters along the wall, but nothing that I perceived to be part of this...trail?  I don't know what other words to use.

The experience left me in a state of bewilderment...and wonder. A quote from the very beginning of Elie Wiesel's, "Night" also kept running through my head:  Moshe the Beadle says to Elie,

"Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him...That is the true dialogue. Man questions God and God answers. But we don't understand His answers. We can't understand them. Because they come from the depths of the soul, and they stay there until death. You will find the true answers, Eliezer, only within yourself!"