Karma Rasa, Blacksburg, VA, USA

With sadness we share the news of the sudden passing of a devoted Proutist, Clark Webb, aged 65, also known by his spiritual name, Karma Rasa, the "Flow of Good Actions". He was born in Memphis, Tennessee, USA in a culture of white racism, but in college he started volunteering with a tutoring program in the Afro-American community. He was deeply impacted by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968 in his city, and for the rest of his life he supported social justice causes.

In the early 1970s, Karma Rasa moved to Washington, DC where he where he learned yoga and meditation and developed a personal relationship with Baba that continued for the next 40 years. He worked in low-income neighborhoods, organizing food cooperatives. Then he moved to Blacksburg, Virginia where, from 1978 to 1981, he was the director of Project Home Repair, a non-profit organization that repaired the homes of elderly and low income families in Appalachia; he handed it over to Janaka Casper, another Margii, who helped transform it into Community Housing Partners that over 40 years has built tens of thousands of homes and assisted over 310,000 individuals with their housing, financial, and social needs.

Karma Rasa opened Annie Kays, a health food store that still continues. He went to Nicaragua with Witness for Peace during the Contra War in 1987. Benjamin Linder, another American peace volunteer, was murdered when he was there, so two years later Karma Rasa convinced the town of Blacksburg to adopt a "Sister City" project with the Nicaraguan village of San José de Bocay, and almost every year since then he raised funds and recruited university students and professors to travel with him for a couple weeks of volunteer work building a school with the community and introducing appropriate technology with non-polluting fuel-efficient cook stoves.

He taught many meditation classes over the years. Three times Karma Rasa sponsored two-week Prout speaking tours of Dada Maheshvarananda, driving around to different universities, co-ops and cultural centers in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC. In May 2015 he helped organize the second Building a New World Conference at Radford University where Dada Maheshvarananda and Liila Hass were keynote speakers for Prout. On his initiative, early morning meditation sessions were held each day, attended by 25 enthusiastic participants each day. He was a true spiritualist who contributed greatly to the cause of Prout. He always had a smile, a gentle word of encouragement, a funny joke, and he always inspired people, young and old. He is survived by his loving wife and partner of 25 years, Phyllis Taub Albritton and his beloved daughter, Elizabeth Webb. He will be sorely missed.