“Ours was a holy mission,” Swamiji writes in A Festival of Light. “You charged us to learn great lessons from life: to be fruitful in the gifts You had given us; to expand and multiply them. Alas, we abandoned our mission. Instead, we hoarded selfishly. Nor did wisdom come to us when, repeatedly, we lost everything we had.” God’s saints … Read More
Dear Friend, Out of the corner of his eye, the old man caught a movement—waving hands, a mother smiling out of the fullness of her maternal love, a very small boy rushing forward, arms up and out ready to embrace the big, yellow tractor. The boy looked up trustingly, eyes wide and clear, unblinking, until the man understood, stopped the … Read More
Our winter here at Ananda has seen a succession of storms, with high winds and soaking rains. At Christmastime, a lone snow goose appeared on Lotus Lake. Perhaps this bird, like the young bird in Swamiji’s Festival of Light, had “entered a storm cloud, and soon found itself struggling for its life. Wind and rain lashed at its wings. The … Read More
To practice interiorization of the mind during normal waking consciousness, try this walking meditation. Throughout this practice, make it a point to relate to God, to God through Nature, and to your own higher Self. Walk alone, if possible, during this exercise, for its purpose is to interiorize the mind, not to externalize it in the company of others.
Christmas at Ananda’s Living Wisdom School Friend, Late in December Ananda’s Living Wisdom School let out for Christmas vacation. The magic of Christ-love was everywhere: colorful lights in windows, on trees; warm fires indoors; a growing sense of universal family. The next day would be the annual eight-hour meditation, all of us gathered in honor of the tradition started by … Read More
When we woke at 2:30 a.m., the tent seemed smaller than it had when we crawled in to sleep a few hours earlier. It had begun to snow and the walls were caving in. For the rest of the night, we thumped the nylon periodically to keep the snow from accumulating and collapsing the tent. We were sleepless, but not … Read More
Dear Friends: Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. For those of you who live outside the United States of America, Thanksgiving Day started centuries ago, after the Pilgrim Fathers’ first year on this continent. Tradition sanctions this as a day when Americans everywhere thank God for all His blessings. We too, at Ananda, have so many blessings for which to thank Him: … Read More
Dear Friend, In the gang-ridden Englewood neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side, a place where children playing outside can lose their lives in drive-by shootings, where a young man’s ambition is more often to be “like my big homie L.D.” than to be a teacher or a doctor—where his future is likely to be the penitentiary, or the morgue, or continuing … Read More
Songbirds come regularly to drink and bathe in a small birdbath just outside my window. The adults approach cautiously, flitting from branch to branch, looking around anxiously at each stop, lest the local hawk catch them unawares. Finally they land on the outermost edge, there to continue poised for flight even while drinking and bathing. Into this ritually structured scene … Read More
