When the saint comes hugging in

[Guest guest]

The following item appears in the current issue of

NOW, Toronto's über-leftist free entertainment rag

(Toronto's imitation of The Village Voice). Note that

they didn't mention the www.amritapuri.org and

www.amma.org web sites or even the contact

person/phone/web address of the local Toronto satsang

group for anyone interested in learning more about

Amma, and the politically correct socialists couldn't

resist taking a dig at capitalism ("the rhythm of cash

registers").

 

Keval

 

 

http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2004-08-12/news_feature.php

 

WHEN THE SAINT COMES HUGGING IN

AMMA RADIATES MOTHER POWER ALL NIGHT LONG TO THE

RHYTHM OF DRUMS AND CASH REGISTERS

BY ALICE KLEIN

 

I'm dragging my cranky, downtown, Western butt off to

Mississauga to meet my first living saint, but I'm

mostly thinking about getting home again. Can they be

serious that the evening's program goes to 3 or 4 in

the morning? By the end of the four-day visit and an

equal number of all-nighters or close to it, I've

learned lesson one: if you want to keep up with a

self-realized being, be prepared to stay up late.

 

Move over, Mother Teresa. Indian spiritual leader Amma

has never met a human she hasn't touched. Her visit

two weeks ago was a first for Toronto and the last

stop on her eight-week, 13-city North American tour.

In the middle, she left the continent briefly so she

could deliver the keynote address at the Parliament of

the World's Religions in Barcelona. The tour staff,

hosting the unexpected turnout of 6,000 on her first

night here, are pretty buzzed. There've been no days

off. Amma's not about days off.

 

She's held more than 20 million people in her arms, so

it's Amma's hug that gets the media hype. Her

similarly overachieving charity work gets less – we're

talking homes for the homeless, pensions for destitute

widows, an 800-bed state-of-the-art hospital, scores

of educational institutions, an orphanage, food

programs, hospice, home for the aged, environmental

projects and more. If this all sounds simple and

sweet, don't be fooled.

 

Amma (which means mother) was born with divine

consciousness into a poor but devout Hindu fishing

family in the southern province of Kerala. In her late

teens, she chose to embody the universal feminine as

her gift to the world. Her more formal name, Mata

Amritanandamayi, translates as "mother of immortal

bliss." It was given to her by her disciples at the

start of her guru career in the mid-70s, when she

began the practice she is famous for today, bestowing

her blessings with a trademark embrace. Amma at 21,

hugging any man who asked, was one radical young

mother.

 

Amma's embrace is still not polite. It is intense, and

each one is unique and personal, almost embarrassing.

Being enclosed fully and firmly at the chest of the

ever-longed-for mother, her breath rising and falling,

her voice in your ear, her softness also in your arms,

her warmth shamelessly speaking the language of the

human heart – it's a potent psychological and

spiritual stew. Many a grown man cries.

 

My favourite one-on-one with Amma happens the next day

during the two-day retreat for her followers, who have

converged to be with her from everywhere from

Pittsburgh to Victoria. She holds me, then pushes me

away, looks deeply into my eyes and pinches both my

cheeks like I am the cutest little baby she's ever

seen. Then she hugs me again and coos syllables into

my ear: mo mo mo mo. And then, like every hug, it

finishes off with a little burst of energy and a

flower petal and candy kiss thrust into my palm. Holy

mother chocolate – one more sweet lingering connection

between the physical and the spiritual.

 

The actual term for the hug is "darshan," an ancient

tradition in her home culture. The Sanskrit word

refers to an audience with a saint or sage from any

tradition. The Pope gives darshan, for example – a

blessing.

 

Amma's approach to darshan is unique. She brings her

body into a squeeze play for the soul.

 

It's unsettling, to say the least. Amma challenges you

to deal with her unconditional love.

 

She has a story about a guy getting on a train who

continues to carry his heavy luggage until someone

explains that he can put it down because the train is

actually carrying the load. She thinks many of us are

carrying this kind of excess baggage, unaware of the

larger reality.

 

Amma includes surrender to the power of the divine in

her advocacy of the feminine. She says it opens the

door to grace – those moments when things mysteriously

just work out.

 

Her devotees swear it's true. Many believe she herself

sees past present and future and personally brings

grace into their daily lives.

 

As I talk to Amma, she keeps doling out darshan while

her orange-robed swami translates from her native

language, Malayalam. She multi-tasks like this all the

time. Amma has no time to spare. From close up, she

seems to use some kind of mystical syncopation so the

space between the beats of one activity is used to

maintain the whole second rhythm. Each seems to get

her full attention.

 

"Amma says she has offered herself to the world. She

has become an offering," her swami translates. "Once

you become an offering, you don't have any claims. You

just keep giving."

 

I ask what the experience of giving darshan is like.

As she answers, I feel the shock of hearing someone

speak from the vantage point of a deity.

 

"As far as Amma is concerned, there is no experience

and experiencer. The duality is not there. In true

love there is only oneness. It is just like seeing

your own reflection in the mirror. Once you become

sugar, where is the person to experience it? So there

is no experiencer, experiencing or experience.

 

"Suppose you have a hundred pots filled to the brim

with water and you see a hundred suns reflected in

them. But in reality there is only one sun. Likewise,

in true love, when you become love, there is only

oneness."

 

Her gathering is a chaos of diversity. Barefoot is the

only dress code for your audience with Amma, so shoes

are everywhere, stacked on shelves lining the halls

and exploding out of every corner. The crowd is maybe

half South Asian and half everything else.

 

On opening night, the hall is filled fuller than it's

safe to say. People are saying it's a bit like India.

"Don't worry," word goes out, "Amma will see everyone

who has come."

 

And she does. I crash at 3 am. Amma doesn't finish

until almost 7. She never stretches, takes a break or

goes to the bathroom. The hugs are meant to wake you

up. And believe me, this place is hopping in the wee

hours. It feels like a parallel reality.

 

She keeps grabbing her children and pulling them to

her – sometimes singly, sometimes in couples or family

groupings of two, three, four or more. At the same

time, tables that line the big hall sell Indian

treasures, jewellery, scarves, clothes, even handmade

Amma dolls. There are books, tapes, Vedic astrology

readings, stickers and images of Amma, all

fundraisers.

 

Outside the room, volunteers dish out low-priced

snacks, meals, sweets, fruit shakes and lassis all

night. Meanwhile, the music is non-stop. Harmonium and

tabla accompany the rotating tour staff who sing

continuous rhythmic songs of devotion. The cash

registers, too, keep ringing all night.

 

Most uniquely Amma is the table that sells her own

stuff, the gifts she's been given, the silk saris she

wears for special ceremonies, even her shoes. Anything

she's touched has added value that she puts to use for

yet more fundraising.

 

The whole event is like a karma-processing plant –

everything is constantly recycled from the ethereal to

the material and back again. And likewise, the

practices Amma advocates are a combo of community

service and meditation.

 

Meditation is as precious as gold, she says. "It takes

us to freedom from all bondage." When compassion and

love are added, "it is like gold becoming fragrant."

Amma herself smells like sandlewood and flowers.

 

Amma's teachings are full of metaphors and stories.

They seem endless, but if you stick around you will

likely hear them more than once.

 

"Sorrows are like the birds," always flying over our

heads. "Just don't let them nest in your hair."

 

She's pretty down on the ego-driven love she sees in

the modern world. "When we say 'I love you,' love is

imprisoned between I and you. When we say 'I am love,'

there is no duality. Love is not an emotion, it is a

flow."

 

When the husband and wife each crave only to receive

love, "it's like honey trapped in rock." She says two

people coming together in the hope of creating a whole

are really multiplying fractions instead. "One-half

times one-half is one-quarter," she says, doing the

math for us. "Did you get that," her translator asks,

laughing.

 

During a question-and-answer session with her

devotees, one asks what to do about the thoughts that

still arise during meditation, though he's been

practising for years. She answers that it is the

nature of the mind to produce these thoughts and

emotions. "Treat it like a supermarket." Take the ones

you want and don't waste your time looking at each and

every item that's in there.

 

On her last night, the throng has swelled to 9,000.

It's the grand finale, called Devi Baba [sic], where

she takes on the form of a goddess. She changes her

white cotton sari for one of beige and gold and dons a

silver headdress, which can't be comfortable. I watch

her teach, then sing and then give darshan until past

11 am the next morning. She stands up to close the

ceremony, fresh as a daisy, beaming. She flings

handfuls of flower petals at the thousand or so of us

still left, who are circling in front of her, until

they're inches thick under our bare feet.

 

Not long after, back in her white sari, she departs

through the adoring crowd, hands out, touching and

being touched. She gets into the back seat of a

near-beater Honda Accord and leaves behind the mystery

of who she is.

 

alice