Ma Jaya Speaks at Divinity School

People must touch, hug and love those with AIDS for whom no one else will care, spiritual leader and AIDS activist Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati told a standing-room-only audience at the Divinity School yesterday.

Dressed in a black sari accented by a "Brooklyn" necklace, other gold chains, heavy gold earrings and a nose-ring, the unconventional guru spoke in a thick Brooklyn accent about death and caring for the terminally ill.

"I am here without shame. I am on my hands kness and I am begging you all to get involved," Ma said in an address entitled "Death Has a Heart."

Once a Jewish housewife living in Brooklyn, Ma is now the spiritual director of the Kashi Ashram, an interfaith community in Roseland, Fla., which combines Eastern and Western Spirituality.

The guru took her message to the World Parliament of Religions this past summer when she spoke to more than 6,000 delegates, including the Dalai Lama. Ma is also an artist, and she recently presented her photographs of babies, children and adults with AIDS to Pope John Paul II in Rome.

Ma said she tries to prepare those she serves to deal with death, and she told her audience that death is noting to fear. "I've seen death take away so much pain in the dying," Ma said.

The Leader also told stories of people she held as they died. Ma spoke of the death of one child, Misha, and talked about how death can represent mercy for those who are suffering.

"When a little baby is about to die, I bring the silence of death," she said. "When the fever just went so high that she was burning, I begged death to engulfher. As my tears fell against her little cheek, Irecognized the heart of death."

Ma also confronted her audience with "the faceof AIDS," asking one follower to take off hisshirt and display his receding Kaposi's sarcoma.

Ma's message evoked an emotional response fromaudience members. She took time out fromquestion-and-answer session to comfort onelistener who had begun to cry.

In an interview after the speech, Ma called forundergraduates to form a coalition to work in areahospitals and encouraged students to hug, touchand love the dying.

"Say...we want to touch and we want to serve,"she said.

Ma also told The Crimson she would aid such acoalition by taking one or two students on herrounds to visit the sick dying. She said she wouldinvite students to visit the Kashi Ashram.

The event was sponsored by the PluralismProject and organized by Professor of ComparativeReligion and Indian Studies Diana L. Eck todocument religious diversity in America.

Ma will end her visit to Boston by speakingtoday to Eck's class, Literature and Arts C-18:"Hindu Myth, Image and Pilgrimage.

Ma also confronted her audience with "the faceof AIDS," asking one follower to take off hisshirt and display his receding Kaposi's sarcoma.

Ma's message evoked an emotional response fromaudience members. She took time out fromquestion-and-answer session to comfort onelistener who had begun to cry.

In an interview after the speech, Ma called forundergraduates to form a coalition to work in areahospitals and encouraged students to hug, touchand love the dying.

"Say...we want to touch and we want to serve,"she said.

Ma also told The Crimson she would aid such acoalition by taking one or two students on herrounds to visit the sick dying. She said she wouldinvite students to visit the Kashi Ashram.

The event was sponsored by the PluralismProject and organized by Professor of ComparativeReligion and Indian Studies Diana L. Eck todocument religious diversity in America.

Ma will end her visit to Boston by speakingtoday to Eck's class, Literature and Arts C-18:"Hindu Myth, Image and Pilgrimage.