She is the second mother to millions of mankind.
Protection of the cow means protection of the whole dumb creation
of God. The appeal of the lower order of creation is all the more
forceful because it is speechless."
Three daily rituals are enjoined on the orthodox Hindu. One is BHUTA
YAJNA, an offering of food to the animal kingdom. This ceremony
symbolizes man's realization of his obligations to less evolved
forms of creation, instinctively tied to bodily identifications which
also corrode human life, but lacking in that quality of liberating
reason which is peculiar to humanity. BHUTA YAJNA thus reinforces
man's readiness to succor the weak, as he in turn is comforted by
countless solicitudes of higher unseen beings. Man is also under
bond for rejuvenating gifts of nature, prodigal in earth, sea, and
sky. The evolutionary barrier of incommunicability among nature,
animals, man, and astral angels is thus overcome by offices of
silent love.
The other two daily YAJNAS are PITRI and NRI. PITRI YAJNA is an offering
of oblations to ancestors, as a symbol of man's acknowledgment of
his debt to the past, essence of whose wisdom illumines humanity
today. NRI YAJNA is an offering of food to strangers or the poor,
symbol of the present responsibilities of man, his duties to
contemporaries.
In the early afternoon I fulfilled a neighborly NRI YAJNA by a
visit to Gandhi's ashram for little girls.
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