Pre-dawn bonfire, a special moment of meditation and
communion
The bonfire burned bright in the wee hours of Sunday
as Aurovillians celebrated the 48th anniversary of the founding of the
universal township by The Mother.
By custom, the Auroville fraternity which
now has members from across 53 countries, gathers for the pre-dawn bonfire
ceremony on two special days of the year — February 28 to commemorate the
founding of the City of Dawn by Mirra Alfassa, spiritual associate of Sri
Aurobindo, on the day in 1968 and Sri Aurobindo’s birth anniversary on August
15.
This year saw an extraordinary turnout for
Auroville’s dawn bonfire, which has always attracted non-Aurovillians, from
casual visitors to school children. For participants, the bonfire offers a
special moment of meditation and communion.
The celebration is marked by playing a music
score, the audio recording of The Mother’s address about Auroville’s founding
principles, her vision of the experimental township being a place upon earth
that no nation could claim as its sole property, a place where all human beings
of goodwill, sincere in their aspiration, could live freely as citizens of the
world.
The crux of the Auroville charter is also
disseminated in French, English, Sanskrit and Tamil (the four official
languages of the “City of Dawn”), which is essentially of being a place of an
unending education and constant progress and representing a bridge between the
past and the future.
A special team at Matrimandir is in charge
of the arrangements of the bonfire ceremony which takes place in the
amphitheatre. Floral decorations deck the floor in front of the bud-shaped urn
here that contains a handful of soil from the countries across the world that
shared The Mother’s vision for a universal township, where in her own words,
“men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive
harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities” and strive to
achieve the higher purpose of human unity.
(Article written by M.
Dinesh Varma and sourced from The Hindu)
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