Amma – Mata Amritanandayi.(The saint who hugs you like a mother.)

Amma was born in 1953 in a small coastal village in Kerala, India. At the age of nine years she was withdrawn from school to look after her seven siblings and the household as her mother was ill. She collected food scrapings from door to door for feeding her cattle and realized the pangs of hunger and suffering.

The sufferings made her delve deep into meditation and she realized that suffering is due to past actions or karma of the person. Amma accepted the concept but she refused to accept it as a justification for inaction. “If it’s one man’s karma to suffer, isn’t it our Dharma (duty) to help ease his pain and suffering?”

Since 1987 Amma has been conducting programs throughout the world in selfless service, her  unique form of Darshan is hugging people like her children, she hugs almost 12000 people in a span of twenty two hours and has hugged more than thirty six million people over a span of thirty years. Simply spreading love, compassion and kindness.

Amma stresses on the importance of selfless service to purify the mind and cultivating divine qualities of compassion, forgiveness, patience and self control. She recognizes two types of poverty – one is lack of food , clothing and shelter and the other is lack of love and compassion. She believes if we have love and compassion in our hearts , then we will wholeheartedly serve those who suffer from lack of food , clothing and shelter. This is the secret behind her charitable mission. Amma says that once we experience the highest truth of oneness with an attitude of serving others knowing them to be extensions of one’s self we attain liberation.

Amma says that her religion is love which when expressed is compassion – meaning accepting the needs and sorrows of others as one’s own. She has never asked anyone to change their religion but only to contemplate the essential principles of their own faith and try to live accordingly.

Amma has recorded more than ten thousand bhajans or devotional songs and regards devotional singing as a spiritual practice.

Amma holds free public programs throughout the world and offers words of wisdom and guidance on personal fulfillment as well as climate change, terrorism, women’s right, cross cultural tension and invites everyone to get involved in rebuilding a concerned and caring society.

More information on Amma’s activities can be found on her website www.amritapuri.org which spans across disaster relief, healthcare, education, social welfare , cultural and spiritual activities.

The saints , fakirs, pirs, yogis always focus on love for Humanity across caste , religion , nationality and break down all barriers to help the individual evolve beyond his karma or destiny to liberation by serving humanity.