White Roses (Part 1)

12 October 1957

To my dear little child Huta

This message of hope and love for all.

With my love and strength and sweet compassion.

The Mother

When I received the Mother’s card I wondered what she might have meant by “this message of hope and love for all.” I went to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Library and found the reference in these passages in Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology.

So the first preaching took place at Benares, in Gazelles’ Park. According to the texts, the Buddha in his first sermon ‘set in motion the Wheel of the Law’ (Dharma Sakrapravartana). The Mother’s first message indicated at the outset the tone of primitive Buddhist doctrine: lucidity, moderation, charity.

‘There are two extremes, O monks, which must be avoided. One is a life of pleasure, which is base and ignoble, contrary to the spirit, unworthy, vain. The other is a life of self-maceration, which is dreary, unworthy, vain. The Perfect, O monks, kept aloof from these two extremes and discovered the middle path which leads to rest, to knowledge, to enlightenment, a nirvana… Here, O monks, is the truth about pain. Birth, old age, sickness, death, separation from what we love, are pain. The origin of pain is the thirst for pleasure, the thirst for existence, the thirst for change. And here is the truth about the suppression of pain — the extinction of that thirst through the annihilation of desire.’

And again; ‘I am come to fill the ignorant with knowledge. Almsgiving, knowledge, and virtue are goods which cannot be wasted. To do a little good is better than to accomplish difficult works… The perfect man is nothing if he does not diffuse benefits on creatures, if he does not console the lonely… My doctrine is a doctrine of mercy… The way of salvation is open to all… Destroy your passions as an elephant throws down a hut built of reeds, but know that a man deceives himself if he thinks he can escape his passions by taking refuge in hermitage. The only remedy for evil is healthy reality.’

Thus began a wandering mission which lasted forty-four years. Buddha went up and down the land, followed by his disciples, covering all who heard him. Many episodes of this long ministration have been popularised in art or in legends.