Inspiration of Spiritual Community: Living in Harmony

Watch this beautiful talk by Nayaswami Anandi about the inspiration of community - based on many decades of successful experience at Ananda Village in Northern California.

From a morning of talks recorded during Spiritual Renewal Week 2015. See the whole video of "Communities: Lifestyle for the New Age."

Transcript

Welcome and Introduction

Nayaswami Anandi:

Well good morning. This morning we have the joy of speaking about one of Yogananda's great enthusiasms - the creation of spiritual communities - one of his original aims and ideals.

My name is Nayaswami Anandi and I serve here at The Expanding Light. I'd like to talk about the inspiration behind spiritual communities. One of the benefits of living so long in community is attunement with your gurubais and yesterday Nayaswami Parvati's talk was just the perfect segue into what I wanted to talk about, because Yogananda gave many reasons to start community - to spread a spirit of brotherhood in all lands, to show the importance of simple living and high thinking. But he was an avatar and his primary goal was to bring people to God.

Ego Gives Way to God in Community

And to come to God means the ego has to go. When God steps in, the ego steps out. Or what I should say is when the ego steps out God can step in, and that's what we're trying to do in community. It offers a wonderful way not only of supporting each other and our spiritual lives but even in the very fabric of community we find the blessings of how we can learn to live more expansively - less involved in our own personal attachments.

When I was thinking about Master sharing the heart of Yogananda and communities, I realized that it wasn't only Master who told us about communities - it was our whole line of gurus, starting with Jesus Christ, who said "Where two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them."

The Power of Souls Together Seeking God

So I was thinking about this Spiritual Renewal Week and every year it catches me by surprise. Every year I think of the week as being about classes and inspiring activities and so on, but every year I'm surprised by this uplift of divine power that is brought through all these souls together seeking God. So the good news is—not all of you will be going back to community, but Jesus says, "Where two or more are gathered..." So if you can just find one other person and dedicate your relationship to God you will draw his presence much more than times two - many more times than just adding.

Jesus on Seeking God First

So Jesus also said, and this I think is the greatest secret of Ananda and you'll probably hear more about it this morning, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you." When I came to Ananda in 1971, there was pretty much nothing here in the way of material resources and actually the human resources didn't look all that promising either, but we were seeking the kingdom of God and we did have our teacher to show us and lead us in that, and that has been what has blessed this community. Again something you can take with you when you leave.

Living in Childlike Joy

And the final point I wanted to share from Jesus is I believe extremely important in looking at community as a way to free yourself from ego. He said, "Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." To be able to live in childlike joy frees us from self-importance, from pride, from the tendency to be too involved in our own difficulties. This was something that was showed to us so well by example - always underlying everything was this joy he had.

He had surgery many years ago, a serious surgery, and one of the Ananda members came into the hospital room when the surgery was over. It was going to be pretty painful and he thought Swami would be in pain, and Swami was chuckling. The disciple said, "Um, what's happening?" He said, "Well, I'm telling myself jokes." And he was telling his favorite jokes and laughing at them. And he said ,"Laughter should be used as a deliberate sword of battle against the forces of delusion." Laughter tunes us in to God's joy and God's joy leads us to freedom.

Kriya Yoga and Inner Joy

So then we have Lahiri Mahasaya and Mahavatar Babaji, who brought us kriya yoga. And kriya yoga teaches us not by precept but by experience that all the happiness that we're hoping to find outside of ourselves is actually living inside of us and we can choose to live in that joy all the time. And when we live in that joy we discover that it really doesn't matter so much how other people behave - we really don't need them to behave a certain way to make us happy - and that leads to a lot more harmony in relationships, in community.

The Secret of Ananda's Joy

So that's part of why people at Ananda seem so happy - not because of all of this [gesturing to the external] but because of all of this [gesturing to the internal, the spine] that we've learned from our Masters. And Sri Yukteswar said, "The greatest thing," he said, "learn to behave," -a fundamental principle of community.

Someone else less exalted in their wisdom than Sri Yukteswar said that in this world you can be either a vacuum cleaner or a washing machine. A vacuum cleaner sucks up all the dirt, all the negativity, holds it inside and sometimes just has to dump it out on someone or something. But a washing machine takes in whatever dirty clothes come its way and sends them back clean.

Living Without Egoic Attachment

And so many of us have had the great blessing for 40 years of living with a washing machine, Swami Kriyananda, showing us that if you don't have egoic attachments, it doesn't matter what people say to you, it doesn't matter how they treat you, you just are free to say "What is the most useful thing I can give to this situation?" Not "How do I feel about that, what buttons are being pushed?" but "What is the most useful way I can respond?" It takes more energy, but it's much more fulfilling and it's infinitely more freeing and liberating.

Master's Blueprint for Community

Then we come to Master and to Swamiji who are our most direct links with the idea of community. Master said "I am planting the seed of community in the ether. the blueprint. My words are registered in the ether." This blueprint of community was planted by him. And what is that blueprint? Was it a blueprint that said "Here's how we should organize community - we want to have a governing body, we want to have a spiritual director, we want to have a village manager?"

No, the blueprint was for brotherhood, the blueprint was for respect for every person, for living in harmony, for living in cooperation, for living in inner freedom. That was the blueprint that he gave us. And his teachings told us how to do that, and Swami's teachings told us how to do that, but what really told us how to do that was the example of Swami living it before our eyes.

Swami's Example

Because he lived without personal attachment, without egoic attachment, he showed us a person who didn't defend himself in any situation. He said "I make it a principle never do try to defend myself."

He didn't need to exert power over us, he didn't even see us in the role of followers, he saw us in the role of friends. He saw himself as our friend and he lived in this such a place of freedom that when we saw it all you could say is "Well that looks good, I'd like to do that. It doesn't look that hard, I think I could be that kind of a person."

And that we hope, to the extent that we can, those of us who knew him, try to live it to the best of our ability and hopefully those who see that want to live it to the best of their ability and gradually it spreads. But I wanted to share just a couple of examples or stories from Swami that showed this.

Compassion

Earlier this year, Nayaswami Jaya told a story that actually probably many of us or most of us heard. I want to share it again because I want to add something to it. When Jaya was first here in about 1970 there were probably 30 or 40 people living here and most of those people who're no longer here didn't last that long here.

But one of the men in the community at that time made some serious blunders, some very public blunders I guess, more than one, and consecutively. And people were really mad at him and he just, he took a lot of abuse. Probably that was what made him decide to leave.

And after that Jaya was talking to Swami Kriyananda about this. And Jaya said "You know I know the man made mistakes but I wasn't comfortable with the way people jumped on him the way they did." And Swami said "Yes I agree with you. If your friends can't be loyal to you when you're in trouble, what kind of friends are they?"

Now this story is extremely powerful in and of itself as an example of compassion, kindness, and love. But you know I reflected on it afterwards for a long time, because to me what it said, it says incredible, and this I think is one of the real secrets of Ananda, incredible wisdom and understanding Swami had that nobody is perfect.

Why should we be surprised if people make mistakes? If they're here on the planet by definition they're imperfect. If they're imperfect by definition they're going to blow it at some point. Let's just accept that.

Accepting Imperfection

And I think that attitude of just respecting people no matter what is really one of the foundations of Ananda, because it's so common in the world for people to create exalted standards of behavior that they wish that they could personally emulate and then when other people don't raise themselves to their standard then we can get all self-righteous and judgmental. And what does it do? It builds our own ego.

And so with this idea that no, it's fine, yes he didn't behave in the right way, yes I try to hold out a higher standard for people, but this is fine, this is how he is and we'll still support him.

Years later, another person in the community made another public mistake. And for 30 years I've remembered what Swami said at that point. People were upset, people in the community were upset. And it's for me... at one point he said, "I know a lot of people are upset by this mistake" - or he didn't use the word "mistake" or upset by this choice. He said, "but these things happen."

Three words - "these things happen." Boom, end of story. You can let it go, let your ego relax, no need to get aroused about that, just give your support.

Acceptance Rather than Forgiveness

Someone said to Swamiji at a satsang I was at, "Sir, how do we forgive people?" And he looked at her - I think he was reading deeper levels of her being - and he said ,"Don't think about forgiveness. Think about acceptance."

And I realized that in the many years that we were here and all the many, many books Swami wrote and all the talks we heard, he rarely talked about forgiveness - occasionally but rarely. And I think it was not a big part of who he was. I don't think he thought he owed anyone forgiveness. I think he just saw, "This is a person with a lack of understanding, lack of kindness perhaps, lack of whatever." Just accept them, this is who they are. And he gave that to everyone, which is definitely an expansive way to get beyond our own little egos.

Swamiji's Final Words

I'd like to leave you with a thought - this is the last, turned out to be the last, word Swamiji said to me in 2012, a year before he died. And I'm sharing them with you not because he said them to me, but because I think he would say them to everyone here. They're not words that were meant to praise, they were words that were meant to redirect, to refocus, to point us in the direction of inspiration.

What he said to me was, "Thank you for the love you have given me all these years." It was a beautiful and perfect example of the way he taught. There was nothing there for the ego to hold on to.

He didn't say "You're an exceptionally loving person, you're better at loving than anyone else." He just said "Thank you for the love you have given me all these years." And what it does is it redirects your attention to what's really, really important inside of yourself - the love you have for God.

Love Given to God

So what I would like to suggest as a takeaway for you from this week of so much inspiration is to take this into your meditation. I've done this many times and see what it does for you. Imagine that God is saying to you "Thank you for all the love you have given me through the years."

And what it will do - don't worry if you don't think you've given God that much love, it doesn't matter. He didn't say that! He said, "Thank you for the love you have given me," not the love you didn't give me. So just focus, focus on the love you've given God.

And it is a way to free yourself from ego, and it is a way to live in communion and community with everyone you meet.

Namaste. Thank you.