Category: Seva
selfless service, sadhana, and its joy
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Giving eye sight, a fulfilling seva
April 2026, Kenya Volunteers from Embracing the World, in collaboration with the Spanish NGO, Visio Sense Fronteres recently completed a cataract eye surgery camp in Iten, Kenya. Over the course of a week the team successfully completed 235 surgeries restoring the sight to local villagers in the area. Dr Isabel is a long-time devotee of Amma from Spain and the head of Visio Sense Fronteres. In 2008, Amma told her she should go to Kenya and do eye camps and surgeries. She has now been going all over Africa, regularly conducting camps since 2011. I was fortunate enough to have…
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Developing Shraddha
14 Aug 2022, Amrita Hospital, Faridabad Amma always tells us that the first quality we need to develop is shraddha, awareness. Shraddha leads us to Bhakti, pure love for God, and Bhakti ultimately leads us to Vishvasa, unshakable faith in our true Self. When we arrived in Faridabad, I was very impressed to see so many people working very hard sometimes in dangerous places without getting hurt, even ladies carrying heavy loads and using machines. I realised that this was possible only because they had developed concentration and focus on their work. So I started to analyze myself to see…
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Compassion in Action
03 Aug 2022, Amrita Hospital,Faridabad It was the last day of our 4 – day bus pilgrimage and everyone was a little fried. As we entered Delhi, our group of approximately 40 vehicles were drawing quite a bit of attention. Suddenly, I noticed people on the streets waving to us and making pranam gestures. They recognized these were Amma buses and were showing their reverence to Her. It was extremely touching. As our bus pulled onto the property and I got my first glimpse of the hospital, I gasped, my jaw dropped and my eyes welled up with tears. I…
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Being the little squirrel of the Ramayana in Faridabad
08 August 2022, Amrita Hospital, Faridabad When Rama decided to build a bridge over the ocean to rescue Sita from Ravana’s clutches, the huge army of monkeys went to work carrying huge rocks for the construction. However, a small squirrel couldn’t carry such loads, so, in order to contribute to it, it rolled around in the sand, climbed onto the bridge under construction and shaked its body to drop the sand between the rocks. That’s exactly the feeling I’ve had since we arrived here, to be this little squirrel in the middle of a gigantic work, with buildings that touch…
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Seva brings forth inner purity
6 Aug 2022, Amrita Hospital, Faridabad Construction work is going on in full swing at the hospital site. Day and night, people and machines are working tirelessly to make everything perfect before the inauguration. One of the seva is to clean the construction waste: bits of cement blocks and bricks, plastic and cardboard wraps, metal pieces and a lot of cement dust. I was amazed to see sannyasis and sannyasinis in ochre cloth, coming in and doing this work. All were working alongside the paid workers. I guess they are a bit surprised to see ashramites doing such work. The…
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The art of relaxation
02 August 2022, Amrita Hospital, Faridabad One of the many things I have tried to imbibe from living in India, over the last twenty years, is how to apply the art of relaxation to work. When I used to watch Indians work, I used to be amazed to see how they would work in a very relaxed manner. They would work well as a team. This is very different from the west, where work is often ego-driven and competitive. Over here, work gets done without all the unnecessary stress. This way work gets done and their minds are at ease…
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Fighting the war with love
When I close my eyes, I still see faces of old couples walking with heavy luggages, mothers and kids left alone without a father, exhausted children, all escaping the border, literally running for survival, looking for a safe shelter.
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It’s all about working with the right attitude
“Being an atheist, I had never known what values were in their true sense until I met Amma.” Mr. Sairam, Income Generator of Amrita SeRVE greeted us with this strong statement in a freewheeling chat, wherein he conveyed the idea behind AmritaSeRVE and how, through an amazing transformation effected by Amma, he became a part of this program. This mind-set is the result of a transformational meeting Sairam had with AMMA on 26th September 2015. Even as a young entrepreneur in Andhra Pradesh, he did not feel entirely satisfied with the line of work he was in and sought answers…
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Spreading Amma’s doctrine of helping the needy
In remote villages, providing proper healthcare services continues to remain a challenge in modern India. One reason India’s HDI (Human Development Index) is low is because of the absence of quality healthcare services in rural areas. India, after all, has the world’s largest number of people living in rural areas. In order to address this issue, the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences trained healthcare workers, who provide early diagnostic and preventive care in the villages. The health workers are often married women and sometimes they have not even attended college. But they are beginning to work confidently in Amma’s villages,…