Amma’s last Meditation Day

Travel Day 952 – Amritapuri Ashram, Kerala, INDIA

Today I woke up with a strange feeling and after being in the ashram for almost three weeks, I knew exactly what this feeling was. I was feeling restless…

Palm-lined Village Road by Amritapuri

The past three weeks had been great at the ashram and I had been doing a lot, learning a lot and volunteering every day for the spiritual community. But when I woke up this morning I felt kind of lazy because I had not physically moved around during this entire time. Normally I would walk around quite a bit, take photos and explore places, but here I was confined to the close boundaries of the ashram and all the good food I had enjoyed from the canteen did the rest to make me feel lazy and restless at the same time…

So I put on my shorts, found my shoes in the backpack and went for a run along the beach. Well, it was more a run along the waterfront as the breakers were covering the actual beach, but at least I got to exercise, see the area and on the way back, I got to visit the palm-lined village around the ashram. Unfortunately the ashram made us promise that we would not interact with the villagers and so I just passed by and took some photos here and there along the way…

It was actually an amazing experience to see the village and to try to imagine in which simple conditions Amma had grown up. I was still thinking about that when I joined Amma’s last meditation day. Exactly two weeks ago I had been in the hospital with my infected finger and one week ago we had the meditation in the Kali Temple, which had been a much more atmospheric location than the main stage. But too many people had shown up on this last day and too many people wanted to listen to Amma one last time…

After being in the ashram for almost three weeks, this time I knew the customs much better. I got in line quickly, received my blessed food from Amma, waited for the communal blessing, enjoyed my food with everyone else and helped with the washing. Yeah, everything had become much more fluid around here and I couldn’t believe that it would all be over by tomorrow…

Luckily it wasn’t over without one last evening of Bhajans with Amma and of course I participated from beginning to end. After that we had another teaching in the Kali temple, which was mainly used to translate and explain certain things that Amma had spoken about during the meditation and lunch session earlier today. While it was good to hear more about Amma’s teachings, I personally had my own teaching in the afternoon as well…

A lady from the ashram had asked me to help her and without even knowing what I agreed to, I found myself today teaching German to school children from one of Amma’s schools around the ashram. Teaching German in India, that was definitely a new experience for me… : )