By Raga Devi dasi
As a progressive aspiring Vaishnavi, I have plenty of appreciation for so many of the things and people I’ve experienced in this lifetime. From doing more than two decades of daily japa and a whole lot of hearing Krishna’s messages in the company of devotees, I’m also quite convinced that neither our births or activities are accidental. They are in many ways and most cases more of a continued af-fair, or at least, far from accidental. My experience of Muhammad Ali accentuates this point for me.
I first learned of Ali in my 7th grade class when I chose to do a book report on him for my first black history assignment. As a whopping 12 year old, Ali was actually the very first name change I had ever heard of. He went from Cassius Clay to his new Muslim name, and as a name-change virgin, I found the whole thing very intriguing. Maybe fifteen years later, I met the devotees, took diksha initiation from HH Bhakti Tirtha Swami and soon discovered that during his preaching efforts, he actually met and befriended Ali in Los Angeles during the 70s. Being the ingenious risk-taker and strategist he was, BT Swami (at the time Ghanashyam) was so daring and caring a Vaishnava that he actually found out where Ali lived, boldly drove up to his lavish estate and then got lined up to become one of his limo drivers. This was all done as an undercover agent of course, but soon after I heard about this feat, I realized that this was a perfect display of Krishna’s Bg As It Is, verse 12:16.
“My devotee who is not dependent on the ordinary course of activities, who is pure, expert, without cares, free from all pains, and not striving for some result, is very dear to Me.”
Now admittedly, Bhaktitirtha Swami may have been striving for a merciful result (for Ali), but he was certainly pure and expert and was not taking an ordinary course of activity, especially for a leading renounced prabhu to take. But Bhaktitirtha Swami has always been a master at using unusual opportunities to build bridges that conditioned souls can cross over into bhakti. Like his spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada, Bhaktitirtha Swami liked making others fortunate and was able to. Disciples and observers of BT Swami were always taking note of this fact and often taken aback by his incredible successes. In fact, I can only imagine the conversations Ali and BT Swami had as a driver and the driven, but being so reminiscent of Krishna and Arjuna’s pastime, I’m sure this dialogue came up and I’m sure that the humble service BT Swami briefly rendered for Ali did result in them bonding, and soon in Guru being invited into Ali’s mansion to discuss philosophy and then the two of them being photographed together for publicity purposes. A beautiful picture of BT Swami and Muhammad Ali appears in Steven Rosen’s biography of BT Swami, Black Lotus: The Spiritual Journey of An Urban Mystic.
It wasn’t until adulthood that I also found out how courageous and heroic Ali had been in his refusal to fight in the Vietnam war. He actually made quite a public display of it, went to court about it several times and served a 3-1/2 year jail sentence for it also. For a short period, he also returned the solid gold heavy boxing belt he’d won through a championship to the boxing commission, but this was later returned to him when he was finally accepted by the U.S. Army as a conscientious objector. Regarding Vietnam, Muhammad Ali is known to have said that he didn’t want to go and fight and kill people in Vietnam because “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong!” Award winning writer Joyce Carol Oates wrote a detailed article about him June 6ths New York Times. Here she points out that Ali retired in 1981 after 61 fights and 56 wins. After his jail term, he returned to the ring and at 32 beat 25 year old George Frazier. She also attributes a lot of Ali’s charisma & smarts to his spiritual insight.
It turns out Ali was a Sufi, or a follower of Mystic Islam. Such Sufis, as it’s also done in regular Islam, do a lot of praying and chanting. In fact another famous person many of us will remember who also converted to Islam is the successful musician Cat Stevens. Stevens’ music has even been greatly influenced by his conversion, and in some spheres, his music is as popular as Ram Dass.’
Indeed all of these kinds of things must have come up in conversation between Ali and BT, and indeed Ali was able to develop a great deal of appreciation for both bhakti and his new friend, Ghanashyam prabhu. Although Ali never took Harinam initiation, he did read a lot of Bhagavad gita and the Sri Isopanisad. But more than anything he became close friends with a senior Vaishnava and was able to reveal his mind in confidence to BT Swami, which led to more interesting conversation.
Much of what Ali revealed to Bhaktitirtha Swami were his woes and complaints about how some bad choices of his led to a lot of pain and frustration. There was even a brief period that Ali complained to BT about all the burdens of fame. Ali point blank told him that his own boyhood desires of wanting great wealth, fame and popularity were still sometimes haunting and sabotaging him. The many wives and properties he wanted in youth seemed to be the most complicating of his desires. For sure, Ali can tell us all more than anyone how co-wives don’t always get along or make life very easy. But polygamy is perfectly legitimate in Islam, especially for people as wealthy as Ali. Some other of Ali’s confidential complaints were that some family members of his were getting greedy and demanding of him, wanting much more of a share in his wealth than he felt was appropriate.
Ali is also well known for his close relationship with sports announcer Howard Cossell, and these two often participated in many star-studded televised celebrations of Muhammad Ali’s birthdays which are now broadcasted on YouTube. Since Ali has as many fans as he garnered from boxing, the participants in these shows were huge celebs like Billy Crystal, (who does an incredible Ali impersonation), but also dozens of other singing groups, like the Pointer Sisters, and many, many more! Ali was clearly a very fun loving and intelligent person, who in spite of his boxing performances, had squelched a big part of his false ego. He will definitely be missed by me and many other devotees.