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Space Needles, Pine Trees and Rain:

Amma in Seattle-Tacoma

 

1 - 4 June 2006 â€" Seattle-Tacoma, Washington, USA

 

Amma has come to Seattle for the past 20 years, and for the past 13 years it

has been the first city of her U.S. Tour. But this was the first year that

Amma held a program in the heart of the city, just a stone's throw from

Seattle's most famous building, the Space Needle, a 138-foot-high

observation tower built for the 1962 World Fair.

 

One of the great things about Seattle is that it truly is "a melting

pot"â€"a country home to people of all cultures. This diversity clearly

reflected in the collection of people who came to have Amma's darshan.

People of all colours sat in meditation, sang along with the bhajans and

gazed at Amma as she gave darshan.

[image: space needle seattle]

 

The first evening found both Amma and Swami Ramakrishnananda giving satsang..

Swami Ramakrishnananda spoke about how, when he first came to the U.S. with

Amma 20 years before, he had thought it was like heaven, because there was

so much material prosperity. But then, as he listened to the people about

their problemsâ€"drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, depressionâ€"he learned

otherwise. "I soon realized that it was not a heaven after all," he said.

"Or if it was, it was heaven… with problems attached. I saw that there was

a high standard of living, but a low standard of life." Swamiji went on to

explain how Amma has been helping people to overcome their problems through

spiritual living.

 

The next day marked the beginning of the "Northwest Retreat"â€"three

intimate days with Amma on the verdant campus of Pacific Lutheran University

in Tacoma. A time for satsang, meditation and bhajan classes, a

question-and-answer session with Amma and a dinner where Amma herself hands

each person their dinner as *prasad*.

 

In his morning class, Swami Amritaswarupananda spoke about the importance of

not judging the various experiences in life as "good" or "bad.The truth

is that we have too many ideas about what is good for us and what is bad for

us," he said. "Amma says that as long as we insist on things happening

according to our plans, life will remain a struggle, a battle. But when we

allow things to simply unfold, life becomes as light and fresh as a flower."

[image: blue boy of brindavan]

 

For many, the highlights of the U.S. retreats are the question-and-answer

sessions with Amma. In Tacoma, the session took place on the campus

greenâ€"surrounded by majestic pine trees, the grass damp with the area's

perennial rain. This year Amma answered questions about the role of effort

in spiritual life, about how to gauge our devotion, the perception of

duality, the four *yugas* and "other worlds."

 

On the second night of the retreat, Amma's devotees from various satsang

groups in the Northwestern corner of North America put on a number of dances

and plays for Amma. There was a Radha-Krishna *raasa-leela* dance by

devotees from Victoria, Carnatic singing by devotees from Calgary, and a

dance by devotees from Seattle that mixed traditional Persian and modern

steps. This was performed to the English bhajan "In the Still of the Night."

 

The highlight of the cultural programs was the Seattle devotees' musical

adaptation of a Tolstoy story about a cobbler who has a dream wherein Christ

tells him he will soon visit him. In anticipation, the cobbler cleans his

house, makes a new pair of shoes for the Lord and prepares a nice meal for

him. The next day, as he waits for the Lord, he is visited by various

strangers who are suffering: a beggar, a lost child, an old woman. The

cobbler takes in the three people and offers them the food and shoes he had

prepared for Christ and helps them in various ways. At the end of the play,

the cobbler realizes that God resides in all people and that serving our

fellow man is in fact serving the Lord. The play ended with the devotees

saying:

 

This is a story of compassion

The story of Amma too

The story of Conrad the shoemaker

The story of me and you

 

As usual, Amma's 20th visit to Seattle ended with Devi Bhava darshan, which

extended into the morning of June 5th. When it was finished, Amma walked out

to a waiting car, shared one last silent moment with her children from the

Northwest and headed on to her ashram in San Ramon, California. Amma will be

there from June 6th to 18th.

 

â€"Kannadi