This is addressed to my past self of December, 2004, just after I decided to move to Ananda Village.
These are thoughts of daily life are from over a year ago — I’m just now sharing them! This is an experiment, and I’d be glad to know what you think of this format in the comments. February 3, The Joyful Arts Center Right now I’m standing in the auditorium of the Joyful Arts Center,…
Yogananda was a very playful soul at a young age. There’s a story of the time he used yogic techniques to play dead, fooling his entire family and household, and there are many others — but one stands out as a fascinating example of the relationship between the Guru and the disciple. The Guru is…
Wherever we are, no matter how bad our life might look, we can take a step forward. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done, what we forgot to do, or what other people think of us — our choice is basically the same: to go forward. At a Sunday Service several years ago I heard a…
A shining light has passed out of this world, and into another. It’s joyful and sad at the same time. Maria and I worked together for the last five years, I supporting her role as the webmaster for Ananda.org and other Ananda Worldwide sites. What little I can share in words to tell you what…
Several days before the release of Rescuing Yogananda, a friend emailed me a copy. I read the book through that same evening.
It was… well, the book was not like any other book that Swami Kriyananda has written. I didn’t know what to make of it. Initially, I felt uneasy.
This blog is a semi-live account of the Ananda Village monks’ trip to Los Angeles three weeks ago, on August 22nd, to hear Swami Kriyananda talk at a packed Ford Amphitheater.
It’s “semi-live” because I wrote the first half at about 2:30 pm. After that, I was writing more or less as-it-happens.
I hope you enjoy it.
Yesterday was an interesting day. The morning at work began fine, outwardly, but my heart and mind were not in the right place. This showed up in a lack of kindness to some of my co-workers. In the afternoon, this lack of harmony, as if reflecting itself in the world around me, began to express…
Seven years ago, unexpectedly, I woke up one morning with a strong desire to meditate. I’d thought meditation was a good idea for some time — but meditation was something that other people did. I’d tried it and it hadn’t worked out. But, here was this new feeling: “I must find God!” I struggled on…
After Yogananda told Nayaswami Kriyananda that his life’s work was “writing, editing, and lecturing,” Kriyananda asked, “But Sir, haven’t you already written everything that is necessary?” Yogananda looked shocked. “Don’t say that,” he replied. “Much more is needed.” Since then, Nayaswami Kriyananda has gone on to write almost 100 books. And even so, I doubt…
Last weekend I wrote an email to my family, sharing with them about the lifetime monastic vow that I took on Christmas Eve at Ananda Village.
In the email, I wrote, …
There was a time in my life, which ended relatively recently, when I simply couldn’t appreciate why people thought gratitude was so important. At least, I didn’t resonate with the way most people expressed it. When I came onto the spiritual path, however, I found that there are actually different kinds of gratitude. The normal…
In 2005 I was asked to create the Swami Kriyananda website as part of my work with Ananda’s outreach ministry. It will probably remain one of the best writing projects I’ll ever work on, though I continue to write for 60 years or more. Particularly amusing — and also indicative of Ananda’s good character in…
When I was in high school, a friend of mine said to our class, “My goal for this year is that I want to have no regrets.” “That isn’t something you can achieve through your actions,” I thought, in an unusually insightful moment. “Who can act perfectly? Having no regrets has to be a consequence…
What do you think makes for success? Is it an end result? Or is it the way we do something?
This blog post is simple: it’s the story of a photo shoot done by a group of young adults living at Ananda Village. There’s a burgeoning youth movement within Ananda now…
Have you ever clicked on “Daily Inspiration,” near the top of any page on www.ananda.org? If you have, you’ll have seen a saying taken from the book Do It Now!, probably with a related talk by Swami Kriyananda. The sayings are short, inspiring, and extremely practical.
I suppose there’s some cosmic law at work here, …
Tuesday night was for me the last night of a several-day seclusion—one that is ending more or less as I write this blog post. (The time-honored practice of seclusion is one of silence and of being alone with God.) During this seclusion, I spent some time outdoors, some time meditating (of course!), some time sleeping…
On August 31st I was honored to be a part of something wonderful and new at Ananda: the start of a dynamic youth movement. Over 20 young people from Ananda centers around the world hosted a lunch-and-concert fundraiser at Ananda’s Institute of Alternative Living and Meditation Retreat. It marked the first time that a large…
I played the part of a Self-realized master last Thursday.
A small group of us at Ananda Village had gathered to do theater improv “for fun and spiritual upliftment.” One improvisation game we played went like this: 4 people got on stage, each inventing a character with a specific level of consciousness. …
I was sitting outside, feeling sorry for myself.
“Nabha, you’ve got to drive away the smoke.”
Huh? I looked up.
“Nabha, you’ve got to drive away the smoke!”
A friend at Ananda Village was saying this to me. With fires all over Northern California, even though …
During his lifetime, Paramhansa Yogananda exhorted his students to create spiritual communities, places that would support their spiritual lives. As he put it, “Environment is stronger than will power.”
I moved to Ananda Village 3 years ago, and rarely leave it.…
A visual tour, with commentary, on the deer of Ananda Village. Includes cute baby deer!
My Mother gave my Father a copy of Paramhansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, in 1978 – almost 20 years later, they come to visit me at Ananda Village.
Shortly after I found Ananda, Swami Kriyananda wrote a small pamphlet called “The Way of Ananda Sanghis.”
The original edition stated:
“If formal renunciation is an option… it would be wise to consider embracing it.”
This was in the middle of text which made it clear that, to find God, it is not necessary to become a monk or a nun (i.e. a formal renunciate)…
Paramhansa Yogananda said that Kriya Yoga was the most effective route to God. Usually a kriya yogi does up to 108 in a single meditation, and counts them on a mala, or string of beads.
But Yogananda once told an advanced disciple that he only had to do one kriya in each meditation. This made me think of an idea for a gift…
Swami Kriyananda was a gracious host. He shared his words, but much more than that, he shared his kindness and friendship.
When he had been talking with the Indians for a while, some of them set their food aside, probably out of respect or because they had experienced an inner stillness.
Then Kriyananda stopped in mid-sentence and said to one of them…
A friend of mine died two weeks ago. He was my closest friend during high school, and was planning to visit me at Ananda Village today.
Art is one way to help Divine truths become more dynamic to our minds.
You may have experienced this: you are reading a spiritual book, or talking with a person who has a lot of wisdom. You think, [...]
On May 29th, a prayer vigil began at Ananda Village, inspired by the two that were recently held at Ananda Assisi.
“Divine Mother,” Vanamali Devi said during the retreat last weekend, “is the easiest way to God. As any child knows, you can make demands of the Mother than you can’t make of the Father. It is the same with Divine Mother. So, this way of worshipping God has become very popular in India.”
Our tour group had a short audience with Vanamali Devi. One of the first questions we asked was if she would talk about devotion. She replied, “That is one of the hardest things to talk about!”
So she took a charming approach to the subject: why wisdom is a necessary prerequisite for deep devotion. Wisdom, she said, is the knowledge of what we would be devoted to, and without it, we become dogmatic and fanatical, focusing our energy not on our perception of God, but on our conception of Him: on mere belief or superstition. [...]
An excerpt:
“As the story goes, Swami Purushottamananda walled off the vast majority of the cave to stop people from disturbing the siddhas (realized or perfected souls) who were, and perhaps still are, sitting back there in their astral (energy-based) bodies, meditating.
“Is this true? I certainly can’t say for sure. However: this cave is the one place I would make sure to go if I ever returned to Rishikesh. It was intense.”
In celebration of making a commitment to deepen my own meditations, I want to share something to help people get started with a solid daily sadhana (spiritual practice).
I started meditating daily nearly four years ago, and in that time I have grown more spiritually than I would have in forty years of not meditating. It’s that profound.
Like Dave, I’ve enjoyed and felt blessed by my time here in India. One of the things that struck me immediately was how natural it felt to be here. This pattern repeated itself several times in the first couple of days: I see someone (an Indian) while I’m walking down the street. They are probably…
We arrived in Delhi four days ago after fourteen hours of flying and four hours of driving – Zack, one of the monks at Ananda India, picked us up. Once we were on our way to the Ananda center in Gurgaon, he said, “Well, I don’t know if you guys are up for it, seeing as how you just got in, but in five minutes we’re starting a six hour meditation…”
This website is called “A Place Called Ananda,” but what and where is that place? A dream I once had offers some explanation, as does my first Christmas meditation.
In the dream, a friend was telling me that Ananda is like a lake of consciousness, filled with joy and reflecting all the colors of the rainbow. I only very rarely share spiritual dreams, but this one illustrates so well [...]
Today we had a sweet (sweet in Spirit! though there was also pumpkin pie) dinner at the Meditation Retreat. This was my second year here for it, and both years what I have enjoyed most is serving together with spiritual family.
This weekend at the meditation retreat we had around 50 Tibetan Buddhists as guests. It was an inspiring experience to see other truth-seekers advancing in their chosen path.
