Happy Anniversary Ananda Community!

Happy 20 Year Anniversary Ananda Community (near) Seattle

Saturday, June 16, Ananda Community in Lynnwood, Washington (USA) celebrates its 20^th anniversary. Ananda Community is part of a network of independent but affiliated intentional communities around the world. The first of nine communities was begun in 1968 by Swami Kriyananda, direct disciple of the world teacher, Paramhansa Yogananda, whose life story, Autobiography of a Yogi, has become a worldwide classic. Yogananda was a strong promoter of the ideals of intentional community. He called them “world brotherhood colonies” and decades before the term sustainability came into vogue and into a compelling necessity and worldwide movement, he encouraged audiences to pool their resources, buy land in the country, grow food, and create a self-sustaining way of life. Did he foresee globalization, global warming, pollution, depersonalization of modern society, health hazards of processed food, economic disruptions, and so many other ills of modern life? One imagines so, for the simple reason that his advice fits so perfectly the needs and yearnings of high-minded yet practical individuals.

In July 1992, members of the Ananda in the Seattle area combined their individual resources and purchased a 32-unit apartment complex just outside the Lynnwood city limits (about 10 miles north of Seattle, just off Interstate 5, the main northwest freeway from Canada to Mexico!). Ideally located at the north end of the greater Seattle metropolitan area, near the junction of two major freeways, the property retains the feeling of its rural roots with an abundance of trees on five and one-half acres. It was in need, however, of a facelift and it would take time to renovate and relocate the existing tenants to make room for Ananda members and friends. Within a year, however, Ananda Community was fully engaged as Ananda’s latest intentional community.

There are three rural Ananda Communities: the first was established in the Sierra foothills near Nevada City / Grass Valley in California. It resides upon some 900 acres with some three hundred residents and many others in the surrounding areas. It has a wide range of activities and employment opportunities and includes community-owned businesses, member-owned businesses, professionals, self-employeds, school through high school, a college, a small village, publishing, yoga retreat and much more. A similar community exists in central Italy in the Umbrian hills just south of Assisi, Italy, and the newest community is being built west of the city of Pune in India along the eastern slopes of the so-called Western ghats (coastal hills). In addition, there is a new educational community east of Portland (Laurelwood Academy) and an ashram community in south Delhi, India (Guargon).

There are four urban apartment-style communities: Sacramento & Mountain View, California, Portland, Oregon, and Lynnwood (near Seattle), Washington. It is the latter community whose 20-year anniversary we celebrate this Saturday, June 16. The urban communities are owned by Ananda members in cooperation with the local Ananda organization. The rural Ananda communities are generally owned only by the Ananda organization, but members build their homes either as donations or in the form of an informal, unsecured loan.

For several years the Ananda (Lynnwood) Community has combined a Solstice Service with a Community Open House. We’ve added an art exhibit as the seedling for a Festival of the Joyful Arts which includes live music. We hope that over the years to come this will grow to include art and performances by members and friends whose art expresses a deeper connection with all life and a hope for a better world based on universal values and a Spirit-centered life. But this year we have our 20-year anniversary to celebrate.

It is commonplace among free and progressive thinkers, and people of good will and high ideals, to acknowledge the shortcomings of our materialistic and mechanistic western culture. It is commonplace to view the rising tide of popularity for eastern thought and spirituality as a natural counterpoint to our culture which seems hell-bent on self-destruction. But fewer have identified the human need and value for community. It’s important that we learn to seek quality of life, not just quantity of consumption and possessions. But quality of life cannot exist independent of people and of meaningful relationships with others. Good health, food, job, home, security and personal liberties are all important but, in fact, secondary to personal relationships. Even amidst the horrors of Nazi concentration camps the saving grace for those few who survived was a combination of personal, inner strength and cooperation and sympathy with others. You can achieve fame, fortune, wealth or beauty and yet be miserable, lonely and without friendship and love.

Traditional village or family life has the shortcomings of abuse, gossip, and narrow-mindedness. Intentional community has the advantage of being a conscious choice based on one’s ideals and shared interests. In an intentional community one can find a variety of skills, temperaments and points of view that can enrich one’s own life rather than narrow it. Of course, a community can become self-enclosed and cult-like, but it doesn’t have to be.

The Ananda communities have been established and guided by Swami Kriyananda to be inclusive, not exclusive. While these particular communities are comprised of individuals who are (generally) disciples of Paramhansa Yogananda, they are, nonetheless, open to all who are sincerely interested in the way of life that has evolved in these communities. Residents may invite parents who are in need of assistance and otherwise at least neutral to the ideals of the community. In the urban (apartment-style) communities, there are typically residents who are friendly but not necessarily involved in Ananda as such. It so happens that at Ananda Community in Lynnwood the residents are all members of Ananda, but it is not a requirement, though it is an obvious preference for the sake of harmony and magnetism.

If you were to survey the backgrounds and ethnicity of Ananda residents in the nine Ananda residential communities you would find every race and ethnic background in residence. You would find among the residents a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds, education, interests, skills, and temperaments. Some are more hermit like; others, more gregarious. Some deeply involved, or leaders, while others are retired or engaged in their own occupations or businesses.

Think of what this world faces: globalization means that your job can be outsourced to another country and all the efforts and education you’ve invested in can evaporate forever. Who can accept such serfdom? Intentional communities are not an effort to go back to an agricultural way of life and abandoning all technology. Rather, it is to establish a cooperative lifestyle that engages the creative commitment of a wide variety of individuals for a greater good. There may be some communities that are self-sustaining in an agricultural context but we haven’t seen that happen at Ananda. We have computer programmers, writers, dramatists, publicists, teachers, and so many skills. That makes more sense to me.

This takes me to a slight but important detour. Paramhansa Yogananda, before his death in 1952, repeatedly warned his audiences and students that great calamities (war, depression, and cataclysms) awaited America and many other nations before there could be an era of relative peace. Just as importantly, it is not possible to separate his warnings from his advice and prediction about communities. The two are inextricably linked. Not permanently, but practically, in terms of what will motivate some people to form such communities in our present age.

Mind you, too, that neither Yogananda nor Ananda foresee that the rapid spread of communities will necessarily have anything to do with Ananda or with disciples of Yogananda. The motivation and inspiration behind the communities movement and the necessity for them is far broader than that. Even to this date, Swami Kriyananda has counseled the Ananda communities to remain independent from each other, cooperating in many ways but not interdependent or under any central control.

So, this Saturday we celebrate our twenty years of cooperative living. We also celebrate the communities ideal and have invited other communitarians to celebrate with us. As guest speakers we have Nancy Lanphear, co-founder of nearby Songaia Community, and John Hoff, co-founder of the well known Goodenough Community based in Seattle. Two other virtual communitarians and guest speakers are Krysta Gibson (founder of the New Spirit Journal) and Brenda Michaels, co-host of Conscious Talk Radio. (See www.newspiritjournal.com and www.conscioustalk.net )

We have two free yoga sessions, tours of homes, gardens, and the subscription farm (“CSA”). There will creative and fun activities for children, an art gallery, live music, and refreshments. At 5 p.m., we will conduct the Solstice Celebration with our guest speakers and at 6 p.m. a dinner (free) for all.

So please come and celebrate this important movement in consciousness. You don’t have to live in an intentional community to live in a virtual community of like-minded friends. There are many forms of communities but the residential form is easier for people to see and to experience, and, by extension, to establish for themselves in whatever form inspires them.

For directions to Ananda Community (20715 Larch Way, Lynnwood, WA 98036), visit www.AnandaSeattle.org and go to the contact info page. Then see the “directions to Ananda Community in Lynnwood.” Or, call (425) 806-3700.

Blessings to you,

Nayaswami Hriman

Do I Need a Guru?

This question and subject is far bigger than a blog article can do justice to but I had a few thoughts. Tomorrow we conduct a discipleship initiation for about a dozen souls taking discipleship to Paramhansa Yogananda through Ananda and my mind is dwelling on the subject for the purpose of sharing a few remarks on that occasion.

There is, on this subject, much talk of gurus but little, if any talk, about disciples. The first sentence of Paramhansa Yogananda's famous "Autobiography of a Yogi" refers to the "disciple-guru" relationship as the "concomitant" aspect of the Indian culture's search for eternal verities. The question has to be "What is and am I a good disciple" of life, of truth, of God (in whatever form I aspire to know)?

It is only when we have struggled and aspired to know God that we come to discover two inextricably linked realities of that search:  1) it is very, very difficult, and 2) the aspiration presupposes the desire and possibility of becoming one with God.

Until a person has made a sincere and sustained effort one cannot possibly achieve these two discoveries. And, not only sincere and sustained but an intelligent and intelligently guided effort, rather than something random and halting in fits and starts.

When God is "wholly other" we are free to imagine just about anything, including how great we are for imagining it. Then we can say we speak to God and that our ideas and impulses are surely God-ordained inspirations and no one is the wiser, including us!

But when we strive arduously and intelligently towards perfection and ego transcendence then not only do we see what herculean challenge we face but we also get glimpses of that very same divinity and realizations of our own potential. It is then, and only then, that the "guru appears." It has been well and frequently said that "When the disciple is ready, the guru appears."

This appearance of guru includes the appearance in our thoughts and in our heart that we "accept" our need for a guide. For as we begin to see our Self, then, and yes, only then, can we "see" the guru. The guru is a flawless mirror of our own, higher Self. We must have this twin epiphany that we need help and yet at the same time we see the possibility of divinity in human form. Until then we are like Don Quixote, jousting windmills of our own febrile imagination about what is God, what is the spiritual path, and what it is all about.

When I returned from India in 1976 after over a year of spiritual searching and sat in the darkened and nearly empty airplane somewhere over Tehran, there arose in my heart the silent acceptance that I could not do this on my own. It was soon thereafter that I discovered Yogananda's autobiography and the existence of the fledgling Ananda Community, founded by a direct disciple, Swami Kriyananda.

Returning to the guru's appearance, then, it may come through a book, such as "Autobiography of a Yogi." It may come more dramatically in meeting one's guru. I have had some aspiring devotees proclaim that "I am ready to meet my guru and be guided." But I can easily, sometimes at least, perceive that they would collapse like a house of cards at one tiny poke at their ego. Most have no idea of what it is like to not only be in the presence of a true guru but to live and serve under his guidance on a day-to-day basis. Disciples there can be many, perhaps far and wide, but close disciples are always very few.

So to those taking discipleship tomorrow I say "Congratulations" for you have seen the "promised land." On some level you have seen what it takes and where it goes. What it takes is help and where it goes is to freedom and true happiness.

A guru seeks only to be our friend and guide, nothing more. How sad or simply ignorant are those who resent, resist and repudiate the concept all together on the basis of their independence. They have no idea of what it takes. They have no idea how bound they are to their own karma, likes, and dislikes. And that's ok, too. But for those who are inspired to open their hearts and minds to the intelligent, sometimes stern, but always seeking only our own highest good, divine friendship of a true guru (whether in human form or cosmic form), I say to you, "blessings!"

Nayaswami Hriman

Memorial Day - What is self-sacrifice?

Yes, ok, so Memorial Day was just the other day! Well, I was a bit busy but that didn't stop me from thinking about it. Now if you think this piece is about soldiers sacrificing their lives, well, it's not. But the theme of Memorial Day made me think of this topic: self-sacrifice.

Students and devotees of the Bhagavad Gita (India's most beloved scripture) are aware that the theme of sacrifice appears throughout the "Gita." The term used (from Sanskrit) and (crudely) transliterated is yagya.


The idea of sacrifice went out with sinning and hair shirts just a few years ago. Nowadays nobody talks about sins (or wears hair shirts). We just look for our bliss: it's more fun, besides. Sinning is, like, so passe. Besides, I think we got that sinning bit all wrong. "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!"

We do seem to pay lip service to servicemen (and women) who have in fact sacrificed their lives or health (physical or mental) in wartime. How many go into battle to honor and serve their country and willing to give their lives for it is difficult to say. There are as many reasons to be in military service as there are soldiers and by no means all of them do so with honor, dignity or conscious intention. That's not a criticism, it's a fact. Think of all the soldiers  and sailors down through the ages that were "inducted" (perhaps against their will), or enlist for economic or social reasons, or, even, out of complete ignorance of what they are getting into! Well, anyway. I said I wasn't going to talk about that.

My point remains that self-sacrifice is about as popular as wanting to catch a cold. On the other hand:

Few question the instinct and rightness of self-discipline for recovery from addiction, losing weight, regaining one's health, saving for retirement, going to night school to get a degree, practicing meditation, exercising and any number of other obviously useful acts of personal self-discipline.

It has been well said by others more informed and intelligent than I that our society (America and others) inclines more to indulgence than delayed gratification. I just heard today repeated on National Public Radio the relatively well known study that documented that children who postponed for fifteen minutes having a marshmellow now so they could have two of them a little later did better as young adults in achieving their goals and happiness.

It is commonplace to bemoan excessive spending and lack of savings, and, an embedded sense of personal entitlement and on and on. And I guess I'm be-moaning along with the rest of them.

But this concept of yagya, self-sacrifice for a higher good, intrigued me since long ago when I first read of it in the Bhagavad Gita. Now, being raised Catholic, I was big into sin and into Jesus' sacrifice on the cross for our sins. And I knew the story of Abraham being tested by God by being asked to sacrifice Isaac, his son (in the end, he didn't have to: "Just testing you!" God said. "What, my intelligence?").

The Bhagavad Gita talks in terms of how all worthwhile things, including material life itself, is achieved by offering oneself in gratitude to a higher Source, to God. Krishna encourage us to see all things as coming from God and seek all fulfillment in attunement with God. Jesus put it this way: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."

In other words, understand that true happiness comes from living for a greater reality (by whatever name) than self-gratification. Rather than eat for pleasure alone, eat healthy and vitality giving foods for nourishment  (lest through a junk food diet it later "eats" you!) Sex enjoyment, too, becomes perverted the more we seek it for its own sake rather than as an expression of love, friendship and commitment (and as a means of bringing to earth through love, other souls). Rather than to see your work as merely for personal gain (income or status), see it as a service to God through your fellow man. Rather than to see the earth's bounty as ours for the taking, for exploitation, see our access to it and dominion over it as a gift from God to be stewarded and sustained for all generations to enjoy in harmony. And so on.

Yagya, then, means, among other things, to live in the consciousness that we are all One. Thus to behave selfishly is to be short-sighted and to seek ephemeral, sensory or egoic satisfactions at the expense of long-term happiness. Ice cream tastes good "going down" until, after a few years, it stays down (and around the stomach and arteries, so to speak).

In the happiness of others we find freedom from ego. What we give or share with others freely opens our heart and affirms our security in a larger reality. What we receive in return is a hundredfold.

Some would say self-sacrifice is also manifested in what so many bemoan as having disappeared: the good 'ol fashion work ethic. Well, all I will say is that willingness, generosity, a creative and noble spirit, an attitude of wanting to serve and to help others appeals to me more than a good "work ethic." How much of this term came with grim sacrifices which resulted in resentments?

It is only the ego, the small and selfish self, that balks at the expansive attitude of yagya. Think of yagya as an  investment: in our long term happiness and that of others. Only a hard hearted spirit can pretend to be happy at the expense of others, or in the face of their travails.

So you see, it IS BLISS that we are talking about. The difference is that sacrificing to avoid sin is how the ego sees it, but investing in one's happiness (by investing in the happiness of all, e.g.) is just good sense and an investment in BLISS.

Of course if you are watching carefully you might just see a rat scurry by. That rat is the ego perhaps getting a little smarter and going for what we used to call "enlightened self-interest." The golden rule requires no belief in heaven, in God, or bliss eternal. So, you are right, There's a catch and you caught me.

You see the rat of ego remains. So long as we think we are the doer, being good (for a change) instead of being selfish, it's still just us. We might indeed be happier and more self-satisfied, have more friends, and better health, but it's still just me and I am as mortal and frail as before. My selfishness has just gotten more refined. But, it IS an improvement.

To truly understand and reap the rewards of God's creation, it is ultimately for our own eternal satisfaction that we understand that the essence of yagya is to offer oneself into the higher Self of All. For when we say "We are One" this means, as Paramhansa Yogananda put it, "When this "I" shall die then will I know "Whom am I."  The more the sense of doership and separateness dissolves into the greater reality of an ever expanding awareness of self, the closer to real bliss we can come. One lifetime or many lifetimes, it doesn't make much difference because "living for God" is it's own reward and if we focus too much on measuring we defeat the purpose which is to go beyond all measure.

Yagya to you,

Nayaswami Hriman