Living Hindu saint embraces thousands
published: Thursday | September 7, 2006<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do you need a hug? How about 75,000 hugs in less than a day? A bit much? Well, if you’re Amma, the living Hindu saint of hugs, then it’s all in a day’s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amma, which means ‘divine mother’, is the nickname given to 52-year-old Mata Amritanandamayi, who though born in extreme poverty in the slums of southern India, now presides over a network of schools, orphanages and hospitals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A living deity<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In India, Mata is considered a living deity and about 10,000 people a day travel miles to line up for hours to get a hug from her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to a recent USA Today article, Amma has hugged an estimated 27 million people in her lifetime. On her birthday last year, she hugged 75,000 persons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what’s so special about Amma’s hugs anyway?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, her followers say that her hugs are more tender and loving than anybody else’s. They say that a hug from Amma is like being in the presence of God. Quite intense for a simple hug, but 27 million people can’t all be wrong!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
www.jamaica-gleaner.com <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Living Hindu saint embraces thousandspublished: Thursday | September 7, 2006 Do you need a hug? How about 75,000 hugs in less than a day? A bit much? Well, if you’re Amma, the living Hindu saint of hugs, then it’s all in a day’s work. Amma, which means ‘divine mother’, is the nickname given to 52-year-old … Continue reading Amma news in Jamaica<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5220,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5219\/revisions\/5220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}