Anandamayi Ma | |
|---|---|
 Studio photo of Anandamayi Ma | |
| Personal life | |
| Born | Nirmala Sundari[1] (1896-04-30)30 April 1896 |
| Died | 27 August 1982(1982-08-27) (aged 86) |
| Spouse | Ramani Mohan Chakrabarti |
| Religious life | |
| Religion | Hinduism |
| Order | Self-realization |
| Philosophy | |
Anandamayi Ma (bornNirmala Sundari; 30 April 1896 – 27 August 1982) was an Indian saint, teacher, and mystic. She was revered as an incarnation of Hindu goddessDurga.[2][3][4]
She was described bySivananda Saraswati (of theDivine Life Society) as"la fleur la plus parfaite que le sol de l'Inde ait produite"[5] [the most perfect flower the Indian soil has produced].[6] Her life was suffused inBhakti Yoga and she was considered an epitome of "divine grace" that inspired the societal cultural milieu to lead the path of service, love and constant remembrance of the divine.[7] Her followers experienced her spiritual attributes includingprecognition,faith healing andmiracles.[8]Paramahansa Yogananda translates the Sanskrit epithetAnandamayi as "Joy-permeated" in English. This name was given to her by her devotees in the 1920s to describe her perpetual state of divine joy.[9]
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Anandamayi was born Nirmala Sundari Devi on 30 April 1896 to the orthodoxBengali HinduBrahmin couple Bipinbihari Bhattacharya and Mokshada Sundari Devi in the village of Kheora,Tipperah District (laterBrahmanbaria District), in modernBangladesh.[9][1] Her father, originally from Vidyakut inTripura, was aVaishnavite singer known for his intense devotion. Both parents were from well regarded lineages, though the family lived in poverty. According to Nirmala Sundari, her mother gave birth to three sons, all of whom died in infancy or early childhood. Nirmala attended village schools of Sultanpur and Kheora for approximately 2–4 months.[10] According to Anandamayi Ma's autobiographical account in "Mother Reveals Herself", the reason for her short attendance at school was that no one could accompany her on the long journey to school as her brothers had died.[11] Although her teachers were pleased with her ability, her mother worried about her daughter's mental development because of her constantly indifferent and happy demeanour. When her mother once fell seriously ill, relatives too remarked with puzzlement about the child remaining apparently unaffected.
In 1908 at the age of 12 years and 10 months, in keeping with the rural custom at the time, she was joined by arranged marriage to Ramani Mohan Chakrabarti ofBikrampur (Munshiganj District) whom she would later renameBholanath.[10][12][4] She spent five years after her marriage at her brother-in-law's home, attending to housework in a withdrawn meditative state much of the time. It was at Ashtagram that a devout neighbour, Harakumar, recognised and announced her spiritual eminence, developed a habit of addressing her as "Ma", and prostrated before her morning and evening in reverence.[13]
When Nirmala was about seventeen, she went to live with her husband who was working in the town ofAshtagram. Their relationship was not in accordance with social norms as it was a celibate marriage—whenever thoughts of lust occurred to Ramani, Nirmala's body would apparently take on the qualities of death.[14] In Ashtagram Nirmala manifested symptoms of religious ecstasy for the first time in public, accompanied by extraordinary psycho-energetic and physical phenomena.[15] Her parents were then informed by the villagers that Nirmala Sundari had become "hysterical." Her husband, however, took her in defense and reported to his in-laws that Nirmala was perfectly healthy. In 1918, the couple moved toBajitpur, where they stayed until 1924. In this period, Nirmala Sundari continued to fall back into spiritual rapture (bhāva) while listening tokirtan. Bholanath was somewhat concerned about that as she would then often fall to the ground and sometimes take hours to return to a normal state of consciousness.[16]
According to her spiritual biographers, from the end of 1918, Nirmala Sundari was completely absorbed in the name of God (harinām) at night, which emanated without effort and in unison with inhalation and exhalation. During this time, yogic postures(āsanas) are said to have manifested spontaneously:
"Sometimes the legs stretched of their own accord and then gradually formed themselves into the lotus position or some other body position without the help of the hands. [...] When the body became completely still and remained seated for a while, I went to sleep. The next morning when I got up early, the body felt light and from the feet to the head a wave of bliss flowed through me. Of this kind was the experience. Day and night, an overflowing light of bliss pervaded me."[17]
On the full moon night of August 3, 1922, at midnight, twenty-six-year-old Nirmala enacted her own spiritualinitiation.[18][4] She explained that the ceremony and its rites were being revealed to her spontaneously as and when they were called for.[13] Although she was uneducated in the matter, the complex rites corresponded to those of traditional, ancient Hinduism, including the offerings of flowers, the mystical diagrams (yantra) and the fire ceremony (yajna). She later stated, "As the master (guru) I revealed the mantra; as the disciple I accepted it and started to recite it."[19]
Nirmala moved toShahbag with her husband in 1924, where he had been appointed as the caretaker of the gardens of theNawab of Dhaka.[12] During this period Nirmala went into ecstasies at publickirtans.[10] Jyotiscandra Ray, known as "Bhaiji", was an early and close disciple. He was the first to suggest that Nirmala be called Anandamayi Ma, meaning "Joy Permeated Mother", or "Bliss Permeated Mother". He was chiefly responsible for the first ashram built for Anandamayi Ma in 1929 atRamna, within the precinct of theRamna Kali Mandir.[20] In 1926, she reinstated a formerly abandoned ancientKali temple in the Siddheshwari area.[12] During the time in Shahbag, more and more people began to be drawn to what they saw to be a living embodiment of the divine.[21]
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After her move toDehradun, various scholars were drawn to Anandamayi Ma's light, gift, power and message of love, though she continued to describe herself as "a little unlettered child".Prangopal Mukerjee[10]Mahamahopadhyay Gopinath Kaviraj,Sanskrit scholar, philosopher, and principal ofGovernment Sanskrit College inVaranasi andTriguna Sen were among her followers.[12]Uday Shankar, the famous dance artist, was impressed by Anandamayi Ma's analysis of dance, which she used as a metaphor for the relationship between people and God.[12] From the 1950s onwards, the establishment of an official headquarters of the "Sri Sri Ma Anandamayi Sangh" in Varanasi marked the beginning of an institutionalization process. On the foundation day of this community (Sangha), more than five thousand disciples of Anandamayi Ma participated. During this period, Anandamayi Ma also traveled to South India for the second time, where she was received by the great temples such as Sri Rangam. On the occasion of these visits to the great temples, ten thousand people gathered to see Anandamayi Ma.[22] Furthermore, she was a contemporary of the well knownHindu saints like Udiya Baba,Sri Aurobindo,Ramana Maharshi,Swami Ramdas,Neem Karoli Baba, andParamahansa Yogananda.[9]
Ma died on 27 August 1982 inDehradun, and subsequently on 29 August 1982[1] asamadhi (shrine) was built in the courtyard of herKankhal ashram, situated near the banks of the Ganges inHaridwar inNorth India.[12][23]
"As you love your own body, so regard everyone as equal to your own body. When the Supreme Experience supervenes, everyone's service is revealed as one's own service. Call it a bird, an insect, an animal or a man, call it by any name you please, one serves one's own Self in every one of them."
Anandamayi Ma never prepared discourses, wrote down, or revised what she had said. People had difficulty transcribing her often informal talks because of their conversational speed, and Bengali use ofalliterative wordplay was often lost in translation. Before audio recording equipment became widely available in India, her personal attendant Gurupriya Devi and devotee Brahmachari Kamal Bhattacharjee attempted to transcribe her speech.[13]
"Who is it that loves and who that suffers? He alone stages a play with Himself; who exists save Him? The individual suffers because he perceives duality. It is duality which causes all sorrow and grief. Find the One everywhere and in everything and there will be an end to pain and suffering."[24]
A central theme of her teaching was that "the supreme calling of every human being is to aspire to self realization. All other obligations are secondary" and "only actions that kindle man's divine nature are worthy of the name of actions". However, she did not advise everyone to become a renunciate. She would dismiss spiritual arguments and controversies by stating that "Everyone is right from his own standpoint,".[10]
She did not give formal initiations and refused to be called a guru, as she maintained that "all paths are my paths" and "I have no particular path".[25] She did not advocate the same spiritual methods for all and emphasized that "each person may advance according to his inborn nature", and welcomed people from many traditions, including Shaivaite, Vaishnavite, Tantric,Islam,Christianity,Judaism,Sikhism,Buddhism, andZoroastrianism.[citation needed]
She taught how to live a God-centered life in the world and provided the living inspiration to enable thousands to aspire to this most noble ideal.[10] Her style of teaching included jokes, songs and instructions on everyday life along with long discourses, silent meditation and recommended reading of scriptures.[citation needed]
Anandamayi Ma was understood by her followers as the embodiment of Bliss, as a healer, and as the incarnation of the goddess Kali. She has active disciples in India today.[4] The Muslim population of Kheora refer to her as "our own Ma".[13]
Shefrequently referred to herself in the third person as either "this body" or "this little girl", which is a common spiritual practice inHinduism in order to detach oneself from Ego.[26]
Paramhansa Yogananda wrote about her in his bookAutobiography of a Yogi.[1][27] His meeting with her is recounted in the chapter titled "The Bengali 'Joy-Permeated Mother'", where she explains her background:
"Father, there is little to tell." She spread her graceful hands in a deprecatory gesture. "My consciousness has never associated itself with this temporary body. Before I came on this earth, Father,I was the same. As a little girl,I was the same. I grew into womanhood, but stillI was the same. When the family in which I had been born made arrangements to have this body married,I was the same... And, Father, in front of you now,I am the same. Ever afterward, though the dance of creation change around me in the hall of eternity,I shall be the same.[28]"
TheShree Shree Anandamayee Sangha in Varanasi rpublishesAmrit Varta, a quarterly containing her teaching, in English, Hindi, Gujarati and Bengali. The Sri Sri Anandamayi Sangha in Haridwar organizes the annualSamyam Mahavrata congregation to devote a week to collective meditation, religious discourse and devotional music.[10] A few excerpts are noted below:[29]
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Data from Wikidata| Gurus |
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