The ‘Hugging Saint’ embraces Los Angeles
PAUL CHAVEZ gets a hug from Amma and reaction from others in an asap video report
http://asap.ap.org/stories/1546032.s
Tuesday, 26 June, 2007, 17:20 EDT, US
LOS ANGELES
Mata Amritanandamayi greeted me with a big smile and open arms.
Amritanandamayi — known by her followers as “Amma,” which means “mother” in several Indian languages — guided my head toward her right shoulder and wrapped her arms around me.
She rubbed my back up and down with her left hand and then started whispering in my ear, “More, more, more, more, more, more, more, more … .”
Time seemed to stand still in Amma’s embrace. At the end, she gave me an apple, a Hershey’s kiss and a few flower petals.
I walked away weak-kneed and blissed out.
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ABOUT AMMA
Born in 1953, Amma has developed a following throughout India and in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia and is known as the “hugging saint.”
Her hug is called a “darshan,” a Sanskrit term that typically signifies being in the presence of a holy person. Amma’s version of a “darshan” is the embrace — and devotees estimate she has given more than 25 million hugs over the past 30 years.
In India, she has been known to give up to 40,000 hugs in one day, never turning anyone away and not charging anything. She’s currently on a 10-city summer tour of North America. Thousands of people in Los Angeles waited patiently at a recent hugging session that lasted nearly until 5 a.m.
She’s making her first visit to South America this summer and said she also wants to go to Kenya.
Amma also is a tireless humanitarian. She has opened schools, hospitals, clinics, orphanages and has provided free homes for the poor as well as providing disaster relief funding for 2004 tsunami victims, Hurricane Katrina survivors and victims of a 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. Her latest projects: helping sex workers in India and poor farmers who are committing murder-suicides in her home state of Kerala, India.
The Amritanandamayi Charitable Trust has centers in 15 countries, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Britain.
watch video here
http://asap.ap.org/data/interactives/_lifestyles/amma/