Lessons in Compassion

📍Kathmandu, Nepal (Issue 200)

Hiking under the Manaslu & Annapurna peaks

It's now possible to buy an oat latte almost everywhere, and the world is worse because of it. Once richly-textured cultures are ever more grey, homogenous and familiar.

Even so, like nowhere else I have visited, India has escaped the ruin of Westernisation (or Americanisation, perhaps), and each state remains culturally beautiful and distinctive. Why? It might be that TikTok is banned or that Hinduism is impervious or that their culture is some 5,000 years old. The cresting waves of alternative milk macchiatos and woke culture and selfies splash up against some impenetrable harbour wall. India remains India; there is nowhere like it. Moreover, my God, the food is so damn good! And because every state is her own country (and each once a kingdom), adventure is culinary. This was especially true in Kerala, where the masala dosas and idly were insane. And especially when you get away from the ghastly touristy coastal towns, you ride among thousands of acres of flattish wetlands, following roads between flooded rice paddies with buffalo lying up to their haunches, with their wet noses shining in the evening sun.

I had not intended to go to Amma's Ashram. But the universe led me there, literally past the gates, so I booked a room among the three thousand devotees. Due to bad health, Amma, who is 70, travels less these days and was in. It turned out that Amma (The Mother in Malayalam, the local dialect and the only language she speaks publicly) was the most fully realised person I've ever met. Fully realised? A being who has come to realise the truth. Therefore, the meeting was powerful for me. Let me explain.

Perhaps a third of the devotees were Western, and everyone wore crisp white linens. Those not walking with purpose held prayer beads and repeated mantras under their breath. There were half a dozen large apartment buildings, and my basic room was cheap (it was summertime and too hot for most, so plenty were available).

I was immediately overwhelmed. As I walked around the ashram, which is incidentally in the village where Amma was born, I saw images of Amma (born Sudhamani Idamannel) everywhere: in the lifts, around people's necks, in front of potted plants, on bracelets. Her devotees, I reflected, were damn devoted. And I could not understand why. A cult! That must be it! After all, I am not used to seeing truly dedicated people. After leaving school, we infrequently go to church in the UK, only on Christmas Day or maybe Easter, but God is left squarely at the church gates and never discussed nor even alluded to elsewhere. We are spiritually impotent and only go to church when culture (or grandparents or marriage or death) forces us. God is forgotten. So, being around people with complete, unrestrained devotional practice was new, especially when it appeared to glorify a human being, not an icon or painting, all fleshy and bloody and physical, just like me!

Anyway, I didn't have anything white to wear, so I stuck out somewhat and wandered around the ashram, helping with some washing up here and some pizza making there. I spoke to devotees, some on their second visit, some visiting Amma for twenty-five years.

I learned that Amma was unusual from the start. She was born in '53 into a backward-caste fisherman's family and had six siblings. Her family was not wealthy, and one of her tasks was gathering food scraps to feed their goats and cows. In these walks, she was confronted with poverty and suffering. Despite being punished by her family, she would take from her home and give to the poor in her community. Since then, she has devoted her life to helping people. She hardly sleeps and works every hour she can to alleviate the suffering of others. Her philosophy is summarised in her own words:

"I don't see if it is a man or a woman. I don't see anyone different from my own self. A continuous stream of love flows from me to all of creation. This is my inborn nature. The duty of a doctor is to treat patients. In the same way, my duty is to console those who are suffering."

She sees us as individuals as parts of the same substance, slices of the same cake, perhaps. As such, Amma is a practitioner of Advaita Vedanta, which Swami Vivekananda explained:

Suppose there is a wave in the ocean. The wave is distinct from the ocean only in its form and name, and this form and this name cannot have any separate existence from the wave; they exist only with wave. The wave may subside but the same amount of water remains, even if the name and form that were on the wave vanish for ever. So this Maya is what makes the difference between me and you, between all animals and man, between gods and men.

Amma is most famous in the West for hugging people. Ultimately, because of Amma's grace, God's grace, or luck, I got two hugs from her, and the second one struck me powerfully. I had to sit down as if a bold of some mystical lighting had crashed into my nervous system and loitered for a while. I felt a divine connection, a clarity I had never before felt.

Thousands of people line up daily to receive a hug, then sit around watching others get hugged. It's a strange sight! A hug might last only a few seconds, but in that time, there is an opportunity to ask a question about life, and the stories I have heard about her answers (as I watched in the gloomy midnight light of the vast meditation hall) made my skin crawl with delight. How did she know?! What an insight! What vision! But it's not my place to relay the supernatural as it happened to others, so I'll keep sharing what happened to me.

Anyway, the Hugging Saint (Amma) explained the beginning of the Darshana she offers others:

“People used to come and tell [me] their troubles. They would cry and I would wipe their tears. When they fell weeping into my lap, I used to hug them. Then the next person too wanted it... And so the habit picked up."

However, her commitment to this approach is no weekend seminar; she has hugged over 33 million people.

*

I stayed for a few days and cycled north. Later that day, I cycled past a church and felt compelled to go in. Funnily enough, Saint Thomas, one of Jesus's disciples, arrived at the ancient seaport Muziris on the Kerala coast in AD 52. Because of this arrival, there are a large number of churches.

I never go into a church if I can help it. The last time I had been in a church would have been Christmas '22. I have been on a journey east, spiritually and physically, and Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Zen, Bon, and Tao all resonate these days. The church still reminds me of 'working hard for the sake of it' Protestantism and empty pews and limp hymns.

It was, therefore, a surprise to be called inside the church I cycled past, as if by some inner voice—something ethereal. Very odd!

Still, I have learned to trust my instincts. I locked my bicycle. The church was built of grey stone slabs, and a giant painted statue of Jesus was hanging from the crucifix above the altar. It was almost lifesize and loomed above me. The church was empty, and the only sound was the swinging of the broad wooden door. I sat and meditated for a while, and then, as if flooded with understanding, I cried. And I couldn't stop crying. This was weird!

In thirty years, I must've gone to church perhaps 1,500 times, and I had never before connected with Jesus hanging from the Cross. I've never really understood what it means for you or me. What is the vitality of that story? Why is it more meaningful than War & Peace or The Odyssey?

Meeting Amma, it was clear that she sees no intrinsic difference between herself and us and the rest of this divine manifestation: the universe. As she sees it, we are all manifestations of Braman, all waves (as Vivivekanana says above) in a vast, numinous ocean. Amma looks out at a crowd and sees one thousand faces, all her face, looking back at her. She understands we are all the same. We are as good as the next individual or the next animal.

And in a way, there is no Amma in any of it. It's either all her or none of it is. The individual disappears! There is an intrinsic equality to existence—all a collective happening in this collective creation. We are busy trying to separate ourselves and be special where we are not. My new shoes or my haircut will make me unique! But there is nothing special about it; it's the most ordinary thing in the world.

So I sat on that cold stone floor, weeping and looking up at Jesus hanging on the Cross that day, and I tried to understand what had clicked. Why did I feel as I felt? Then it came back to me: I must have heard Jesus's words dozens of times around Easter, for decades, preached at me by some flyblown priest about the moment of crucifixion:

'And Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'

I never before got it! But now it was clear! Can you imagine being crucified, the agony of it? Only are the perpetrators so equal to you as to be you; they are closer than your brothers and sisters—you are crucifying yourself in some essential way?

Well, this — I think — is the point of the story. Here, Jesus has supreme compassion to even the people who were crucifying him, which is the same deep compassion that I felt Amma express in her ashram—the compassion of seeing everyone as equal and nobody for better or worse. Compassion is the point of Jesus's tragic story. Feeling in love for one another is the meaning. But it took me 11,000 kilometres and a Hindu sage to realise this, even though hundreds of priests and vicars have told me the same.

I think it's because I had never seen compassion until meeting Amma. Where else do we glimpse genuine, unrestrained compassion?

Of course, for a while, I stopped in every church I cycled past for a good cry. It was cleansing. Today, though my feelings are less intense, I live in comfort with the fact that Amma, Jesus, and Buddha point to the same fundamental truth. The Buddha said, 'Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.' The Bible reads (Galatians 6 3), 'If someone thinks he is somebody when really he is nobody, he is only deceiving himself'. Amma explained: 'You have a body, but you are not the body. You are the nature of infinite power. The entire universe is within you.' — Are they not each saying the same thing?