22\u00a0 January 2008 – Pondicherry
\nSince the first night in Coimbatore, some of the Western women have been called to do crowd control at the beginning of darshan.\u00a0 We form a line against the railing leading to the stage, hands linked together, prepared to stop the local devotees from jumping over the railings to the front of the darshan queue.\u00a0 We all know bhajans are coming to an end; I look at an Indian woman with a mischievous grin on her face.\u00a0 She knows why I am there.\u00a0 It is her role to try and get over the railing and my role to stop her.\u00a0 We look and acknowledge each other before the leela begins.<\/p>\n
At the Pondicherry programs, \u2018crowd control\u2019 becomes \u2018crowd reassurance\u2019 with a large number of Westerners attending.\u00a0 The sea of women devotees heading towards the darshan queue was pushing aggressively and Westerners had questions about where to go and what to do for darshan.\u00a0 Several women, perhaps unaccustomed to traveling in India, were frightened by the force and pressure of the crowd.\u00a0 I could only repeat phrases like, \u2018It will be ok, Amma won\u2019t let you get trampled.\u00a0 Just let go of the railing so you can head in that direction\u2026 you\u2019ll get there eventually\u2026 chant your mantra, keep breathing\u2026\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 I was thankful to have my seva change from that of enforcer to that of protector, understanding that at their source, they are one and the same.<\/p>\n
We also have a stage seva called \u2018pushing\u2019 which was recently amended to a more politically-correct \u2018positioning\u2019 – admittedly it may have sounded\u00a0 a bit strange for a new-comer devotee to be asked to do \u2018pushing\u2019 near Amma on stage.<\/p>\n
I am consistently reminded on tour and at the Ashram of how challenging I find it to be in the midst of pushing \u2013 pushing in the chai line, in the food line, pushing to get a good sleeping spot on the floor in the tour accommodations, pushing for a spot near Amma.\u00a0\u00a0 While I may pat myself on the back for avoiding the physical pushing in these situations, aren\u2019t we all pushing each other in some form or another?\u00a0 Is pushing our agenda?\u00a0 Are our desires, our interpretation of justice, our ideas about how the world should work any less aggressive than pushing in a crowd?\u00a0 In the end, we are pushing against our own stubborn egos in our attempts to find God.
\nAmma talks about burning through karma on these tours.\u00a0 I wonder if the direction of all this pushing \u2013 against each other, against ourselves \u2013 creates that fire.\u00a0 So with that beautiful irony in my mind – the group of us pushing our way towards surrender \u2013 I am off in search of the dinner queue.
\nKate – USA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
22\u00a0 January 2008 – Pondicherry Since the first night in Coimbatore, some of the Western women have been called to do crowd control at the beginning of darshan.\u00a0 We form a line against the railing leading to the stage, hands linked together, prepared to stop the local devotees from jumping over the railings to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-with-amma"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}