WHY YOUR KARMA....? and WHAT IS SAMSARA

Continue.....................

Drupadi.........

" It's not for you to decide matters of life and death."

" I'm a mother, the source of all life.........."

" You're no mother, let alone god. You're no better than a whole who commits sin simply because it bring you profit."

" Why don't you just take a look at yourselft then. You're no better than a rat that i rescued from the gutter, and have treated all this time as if you're my own husband. And now it turns out in fact you're in league with the girl that wants to usurp the throne of this household.

"It's not right for you to be jealous and suspicious of you own child, especially after she's sacrificed so much for this family," interupted grandfather suddenly.

" What do you care. It's not right for you to always defend that girl show all this time has been looking for a way to poison me....." I began to shiver where i stood outside the houseyard when i heard mother's accusation. It seemed mother suspected that the coffee and breakfast prepared with such a feeling of devotation every morning were my way of trying to poison her ! I should have screamed from where i stood, so that father and grandfather would know that what mother was saying was a cruel slander. But blood was boiling over so badly i found myselft unable to speak. But know i finally understood that was what was making mother hate me so much. 

" wouldn't it be better to act first than find my body rotting some day because of her poison," snapped mother angrilyas turned her back on father and grandfather.

Now my anger really boiled over. At a moment like this it would be a major mistake not to take a firm course of action. here could be no doubt that what mother said was a threat. My life could be plucked from my body at any moment. I might be sleeping and she would slip into my room to put a knife between my ribs.Or she might pretend to be  so friendly, then give me aglass of milk that she'd spiced with some powerful poison.

While i saws silently preparing to attack her from behind, i noticed that father and granfather had run inside the house. Not long after that i heard a scream from one of the rooms as father saw my corpse lying there growing cold and stiff.

Ray," said grandfather finally, " you really are the incarnation of Dewi Drupadi who's been born for the hundredth time on this earth. I was sent here by Lord Yudisthira to watch over you. But according to the decree of fate, you weren't suppose to die from the poison set out by your own mother..." I regret so much that i didn't find a way to tell you that sooner."

Note :

* Karma  - the law of action, the belief that one's actions in each life affect one's experiences in the next life. or later in this life.

* Samsara - life in the mortal world, assumed to be a cycle of recurring moments of pleasure and pain, with pain an unavoidable counterpart of all pleasure.

Thank you, hopefully it could enjoyable, please visit our website : http://www.rijasa.com/ for further information about Rijasa Agung Resort & Villas. And try to keep and treat youselft in  tranquility of life during your golden vacation.

Have aniceday.......................................



KARMA & SAMSARA AS THE COVER

Continue..........


Drupadi 


.........Like picking up my brothers after school and paying off anything we owed for utilities or other household expenses.


All this time i'd gone along with everything simply because it was the responsinbelity of a the eldest child for the family. But every time we quarelled mother said that i deserved to be humiliated, that all that i was to repay the sins that i'd comitted in a past life."Of course we have to pay off the debt of our past karma, but that doesn't give you the right to put Raytina in the corner with the excuse that it's payback time, " said grandfather, coming to my defense.

 "Didn't you just say that karma always has to be repaid " replied mother...."


"Yes, but that's no reason to constantly humiliate her.Doesn't that kind of treatment just mean that we're pilling up new sins for ourselves ? Be patient, Raytina, someday your mother will regret treating you no better than a dog......."


I hurried out.I couldn't stand any longer listening to that conversation that was so full of wisdom, but phrased in tones of mutual accusation. The way i saw things what they were saying was about as useful as lighting the fires of war because you want to set the world on the part to justice. I follows from that you find yourselves ready to maim and kill in the name of God, as if you're now free from the circle of guilt. You may be free from sin, but doesn't violence always bring more violence in its wake ?

In the hundred of time i'd reborn, i'd seen all kinds o f violence that seemed never to come to an end. From the outbreak of the Bharata war, through the oppression of colonialims, the cruely that stemmed from the japanese occoupation and the war for independence of the 1940s, right through to the bloodshed spilled in the horrible civil conflict of 1965.But it seemed that wasn't enough, and now violence and cruelty still had reached no end, with bombs going off all over the place.


Violence now seemed to be snowballing. The longer it went on the more it seemed to press in from everyside. It was amazing to me that it seemed that no one was trying to bring things to ahalt, or at lest to spread light and warmth, so that the ice that had descended on us would begin to melt. I'm not sure when it was that it came to me, completely outside my concious throught, that history in fact moves along from one act of violence to another. And there was no sing anywhere that history was going to be free of violence any time soon. So is history in fact identical with violence ?


One day when i arrived home after work i could see that mother and father were very tense, on the point of an open quarell. It was the first time i'd seen that rather small man with his hands on his hips, taking a defiant attitude mother. Perhaps because granfather was there too, standing in the doorway of the houseyard, father had worked up the courage to say to mother that she seemed not to understand how fortunate she was to have a daugther like me.Me? Right away i understood that they were fighting about me.


" I Regret that ever let that girl grow within my womb," said mother.


" On the contrary, she was too noble for that womb of yours, that you surrendered so often to any man at all," countered father.


" What i should have done was to close tightly that gates to this world of samsara for that girl who is completely drenched in sin."


Continue............ 

KARMA & SAMSARA THE COVER OF RIJASA AGUNG RESORT & VILLAS LIFE

Continue.............


Drupadi.............


I was desined be born i a family that in my estimation had a very difficult history. It was only after i turned twenty that i began to realize that in fact my own origins were rather complicated. according to the gossip that i overhead my mother had married five times. And each times.And each time she'd married she'd had a couple of kids. The complicated thing was that every time she'd marriedwith the next guy within a few months it would be clear she was pregnant again. That was why whenever anyone asked who my father was my face would suddenly flush red from the blood that rushed to my cheeks. How embarrassing it was to always be someone who couldn't even tell people who her father was.


As far back as i could remember i'd only known the man who lived with us now, a man with a thick mustache, He was the silent type and then some, so we rarely spoke at all. Only mother spoke to him much and that was because she was because she was always giving him orders to do something, including cooking. It's lucky that he was a good cook.Everything he cooked was delicious. at least according to the measure of mytongue, that was always wild for hot, spicy dishes.


I vaguely remember too a couple of guys that in the past often came to visit. But mother never let us kids them. And it wasn't unusual for her to recieve them only on the verandah of our house. When i sometimes warily peeked out at them from a crack in the window curtains i could see mother shaking her finger at them, and sometimes shrieking at them to go away.


After some time it began to seem normal to see something like that, but a feeling of pity for those guys slipped into my thoughts and began to haunt me. Sometimes i'd be daydreaming and i would return in my mind to see their faces as they bowed their heads when mother told them to get away from our house this instant. Somtimes if there was one who didn't want to leave i could see that mother didn't feel any reluctance at pushing them along until they were outside the gate of our house - yard.


One evening i saw mother sitting beneath the almond tree that grew so luxuriantly in our house - yard. The light of the sun that spilled from spaces between the leaves of the almond tree was reflected in her face.I could see that she was feeling more relaxed than usual . So i figured that this would be a good time to ask her about a couple of things.


"Mother, " i said while approaching her from behind, "Who are those guys really who keep coming by here?"


Mother didn't answer right away. She looked hard at me with an expression of distaste. Her expression tol me that she was angry .


"Sorry, mom, there's no need to think about it...." I said right away, hoping that would calm her anger.


"Your karma has indeed decreed that you be born as a stupid girl!" said mother suddenly.When i tried to slip away, afraid that her anger would only get worse if i stuck around, she called me back,"Ray, the only thing you ever do is work, work, work.Don't add to your burdens by worrying about those guys, do you understand ?"


Feeling guilty, all i could do was to nod my assent. But when i was about toleave suddently grandmother was there facing us, as if he'd appeared out of nowhere.


"Raytina was born again here to pay off the debt of her past karma," he said.


"That why she has to work so hard.Her past karma has sentenced her to this fate now.It's only fitting that she was born this time to be humiliated,"said motehr. Other than mother i was the only woman in the household. Of my four relatives there, along with the man that for all this time i'd regarded as my father, they were all men.  And i figured that they were all younger than me. One of them was even still in junior High school. So inpractical terms, since i was the oldest and neither mother not father had a job, i was the one responsible for all of them.


Motehr always treated me like her servant.Before going off to the office at around 6:15 in the morning, so that i could avoid the heavy traffice later in the morning. I would have to cook and prepare all the schoolday needs of my younger brothers. And when i was in the office it wasn't unusual for mother to call me to tell me to arange all sorts of things, .......


continue.......

COMPASSION & SOLIDARITY

Rijasa Agung Gazebo

COMPASSION & SOLIDARITY
( HiVOS - Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2009 )
A billingual Anthology of Indonesian Writing .

Putu Fajar Arcana

Drupadi.............


I remember now that the hundred time i've been born to live in this world. And it's strange that everytime i'm born again i always meet granfather again. A man with curly hair, a hundred over body and rather overlange ears i guessed he must be more than 100 years old. In any case his appearance was always a sure sign to me that i'd been born again in the same family.


The last time i' died it was in the train crash when i just 30 years old. Back then Grandfather once said, "I don't want to born again in the same family. And your name will be the same, Raytina........."


If I'd been able to speak back then, and not just able to hear, i'm sure i would have said , " i don't want to be born again , because birth just leads to death again....."


" Some day you're going to achieve what you've been aiming for, liberation from the cycle of life and death ," grandfather said suddenly.I'm sure he had been reading my thoughts. Who was that old man really ?


"And when will that moment come?" I thought to myselft.


"It depends on your karma, on everything you've done in the past."


" Is my karma completely stained with with sin that i always have to meet my fate like this?"


"It's not for me to decide that. Being born as human is still the ultimate..." said grandfather. His age must have been speaking. Suddenly before my eyes there seemed to be a picture spread out, almost like a video , about grandfather's past. The picture showed the journey of a dog who following his owner in a search for the gateway to heaven. Sometimes the picture was only in the form of silhouette like the shadow cast on a shadow - play screen, sometimes it seemed to shine out from cloe by, so that i could clearly see the face of the dog's master.


Now it seemed that i was on a hill and was carefully observing their journey. They were walk in single file, going uphill and downhill, by day and by night, in the heat of the sun and coldness of night, whether clear and raining., hungry, and thirsty while keeping their courage to themselves and fighting of all their feeling of fear.


Even when one woman and four men who were originally part of the journey died one by one along the way, that white dog kept walking. Through storm and rain he stayed without fail by the side of his master. But when the arrived at the gate of heaven and the dog's master was invited to enter into the heavenly abode, he refused. He said that his dog, who had faithfully stayed by his side through rain and storm and protected him from all kinds of wild animals, had to be allowed into heaven too.


But the gatekeeper refused to open the door for a dog, " Dog's aren't allowed into the heavenly abode," he said.


" If my dog isn't allowed in, the refuse to go in myselft," said the dog master


" Why are you sacrificing the good fortune that's been offered you only for the sake of defending a dog ?" asked the gatekeeper.


This dog has demonstrated his faitfulness over and over again ."


The gatekeeper's supervisor said, " a dog has nothing else but his faitfulness, so let it be his fate to live in the world and better himself through a human birth." that said ,it seemed that his words were the fate of the dog.


" And that's how i came to be...." said grandfather suddenly.And with that the picture seemed to crystallize and then fade away.


Now i knew that grandfather was none other then the dog who had faitfully followed Yudhistira to the very gates of heaven , i felt i'd been tossed back to the final moment of the tale of the Mahabharata.


"Even now yudistira is waiting there at the gates of heaven . And he won't go in untill finally i show up there, " said grandfather.


" you mean that yudhistira was willing to wait for hundreds of years at the gates of heaven?" I asked.


"That's what's known as true nobility ...." said grandfather calmly.My guess had been right, i was sure now that grandfather was over 100 years old. But why was still holding on to life in this world when he almost no flesh left on his bones ?


Continue...........