It is nineteen years since I first met Amma. On that occasion, in
\nParis, we all asked her for a mantra, which she freely gave; but having a
\nspiritual name was never an issue for us. I was from time to time
\nbothered by being unable to explain my Christian name (Anthony), which can
\nbe traced back to Roman times but has no known meaning; but as it did not
\noccur to my friends to seek a new name I thought no more about it.<\/p>\n
So it was quite a surprise to find myself in Amritapuri this year
\nconsidering whether to ask Amma for a name. I had no idea of the
\nprocedure, but resolved to ask Her to give me a name; and so I went up in
\ndarshan. Amma said: “You sit later for name.” This meant waiting until
\ndarshan was ending and all those wanting a mantra had been attended to.
\nFour or five of us, all Westerners, were waiting for a name. Amma
\napparently consults a book together with one of the brahmacharis and
\nannounces the name, which the person concerned has to repeat out loud.<\/p>\n
So now I have a new and much longer name, Dayakaran — which means Giver of
\nCompassion or Source of Compassion. I have written it on my food card,
\nand sent messages to friends and family announcing it; but it will take
\nsome time for it to sink in and for me to appreciate its significance. As
\none of the swamis explained, if the name seems unfamiliar or
\ninappropriate, “that’s the whole point: you have to live up to it.”<\/p>\n
DAYAKARAN (from the UK)
\n3 Sep 06<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is nineteen years since I first met Amma. On that occasion, in Paris, we all asked her for a mantra, which she freely gave; but having a spiritual name was never an issue for us. I was from time to time bothered by being unable to explain my Christian name (Anthony), which can be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ashram-diary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}