July 4th Reflections

This note was first given as a note to residents of Ananda Community in Lynnwood. It has been adapted for the larger audience of members and friends of Ananda Sangha in the greater Seattle area and is reproduced in its entirety here in this blog.

Dear Friends, Students, Members and Ananda Supporters:

Padma and I are at Ananda Village: Ananda’s very first and largest community founded nearly fifty years ago: 1969.  On July 4^th each the community here celebrates its anniversary for it was July 4^th that the first parcel(s) of land in Nevada County (northeast of Sacramento, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, just under 3,000 feet elevation).

The early years of Ananda World Brotherhood Village (its formal name) were in the height of the back-to-land movement at the dawn of the Age of Aquarius (so-called). Oh, how the movement of Ananda has grown: 9 communities including India and Italy! Yoga and meditation students by the thousands!

Padma and I are here on “leave” to help our daughter Gita with her two young children. Gita (and her brother, Kashi) were born and raised here at Ananda Village. She now directs the Development Office for Ananda nationwide. Her husband, Badri Matlock, is at our community in Italy (outside the medieval and sacred town of Assisi) at the first conference of future leaders of Ananda. He is involved with the management of the Expanding Light Retreat at Ananda Village and is the understudy lead trainer for Yoga Teacher Training. So Gita asked if we might come and give her a hand. Two little ones are a handful! “Early to bed, early to rise, run around until your demise!” 

On Saturday, a panel of speakers from the early “pioneers” of Ananda (which includes: Jyotish and Devi Novak who were recently visiting us in Seattle, and others) spoke of the challenges and joys of the early days of Ananda. It was quite fun and inspiring. Our Ananda "story" is a story of faith, will power and attunement accomplishing the impossible: "banat, banat, ban jai" (doing, doing, soon done)

The “good ‘ol days” are recreated with each generation. In Seattle, in the last few years we’ve started the Camano Farm, finished the temple, constructed the Yoga Hall, moved East West Bookshop, started the Thrift Store, and are now in the process of moving the Living Wisdom School. We already have lots of stories.

The committed members of Ananda worldwide have access, by attunement, to the power and grace of one of the spiritual giants of the new age: Paramhansa Yogananda. Ananda is blessed to have been given birth by one of Yogananda’s most prolific and committed disciples who, at the Beverly Hills garden party, July 30, 1949, was the only one (of 800 present) so stirred to his depths at Yogananda’s powerful message of the need for intentional communities to have actually manifested not just one, but nine (so far).

Our biggest challenge hasn’t, then, been the energy and courage to do what we are asked (internally or externally) in our service of Yogananda, it's more likely to remember that God is the Doer. Our frustration, self-doubt, and stress arises only to the degree of our own self-involvement.

Surveying the craziness around us in America and in the world, we either also become crazy with frustration, worry, or despondency, or we affirm and feel that this is God's world; we agree to do our part, such as it is, but that we have to let the drama unfold in its own mysterious, and sometimes cuckoo, way.

It's difficult to hurrah much about July 4th this year. Yogananda says our country has good karma, despite our not so good karma. The craziness we see in the body politic can only help wake up snoozing souls of goodwill, the silent majority of good hearts, to resurrect our nation's ideals. We must do our part, too. Skepticism and giving up will not help. This is a time, more than ever, for each one of us to make our “ideals practical:” these are Yogananda’s words when training the young monk whom he called “Walter” (aka Swami Kriyananda).

Ananda represents and symbolizes both in our communities and in the ancient but timely precepts of “Sanaatan Dharma” (the ancient name for the Vedantic ideals) the unifying principles so needed in the world today: cooperation, respect for all, and the intuitive understanding (especially based on regular meditation) that we are One: children of our One, Father-Mother, Beloved Friend, God! While far from alone in today’s world among the millions of individuals and other organizations espousing peace and freedom, each of us should feel the inspiration and obligation to align ourselves with others of like mind. Believing is not enough!

Krishna in the “Bhagavad Gita” reminds us that doing nothing will not free us, nor bring us happiness. We are compelled by our very bodies and very nature to act. Only by action can we become free from the compulsions to act; only by action (which includes the act of meditation) can we achieve the transcendent state of the soul. One saint in “Samadhi” pours more peace and enlightenment into thirsty hearts and souls than all the books and lectures combined. (Of course, BOTH are needed in this relatively unenlightened world.)

Let us celebrate the ideals of our nation’s founders. It is our nation's destiny to spread of the higher aspects of a new age of freedom: liberty balanced by enlightened self-interest (cooperation), respect for the rights of all, and a sincere interest in the greater good of all.

Not a year goes by when I don't appreciate ever more deeply the significance of these intentional, spiritual communities as models of integration of all races and nations in harmony and cooperation. If you visit Ananda Village in California or Ananda in Italy, you will find every imaginable race, religion, and culture represented there. The significance isn’t that all people should live in such communities but, rather, it is the example that it is possible (indeed, necessary for our survival as a race).

America was founded in the name of freedom. There is no greater spiritual principle and destiny than this. It does not matter that freedom has been defined primarily in terms of personal self-interest because ours is an ascending age of greater awareness. Spiritual growth and human evolution towards maturity is always directional, never absolute.

So let us celebrate the ideals of freedom for all souls; equality of all souls as children of the One, Father-Mother, Beloved Friend, God.

Hriman and Padma  

…

A Day of Thanksgiving!

Here in America we have the excellent and inspired tradition of a day of giving Thanks to God for the bounty of life. The (perhaps) apocryphal story of the Native Americans bringing food to the settlers in New England expresses the essential theme and ideal of America as a place where all can live in harmony. An affirmation, mind you, but one that has brought millions of immigrants to this continent and nation and has inspired untold others to dream of freedom from oppression.

It isn’t necessary that that America and its citizens and government express this ideal perfectly or imperfectly. Do not you and I but imperfectly do so in our personal lives? It does matter that we as a nation and a people aspire to the best of our ability to do so, however.

Many, including myself, feel that America has lost touch with the ideals upon which it was so grandly founded. I suppose our very success undermined our commitment and understanding. I for one and only one among millions both here and throughout the world, feel that the need to uphold these principles of liberty, respect, equality, and justice is greater now than ever before.

My prayer today and everyday is that America and its citizens may someday re-establish our connection with these high ideals. For now, however, I doubt this is possible until or unless we are reinvigorated by the compelling necessity of challenges and tragedy. Such is the stubborn and somewhat perverse nature of habit. But I still believe it is America’s destiny to do so and if it takes strong medicine than “what doesn’t kill us will make us stronger.”

I won’t say I am “grateful” on this day of Thanksgiving for our national loss of idealism, but I accept that it, too, can be used by the Divine Wisdom and Will for a greater good because there are sufficient numbers of us who are open to being instruments of that will — however imperfectly may be our efforts.

The best way to express, energize, and uplift our national consciousness is to live it in our own, daily lives. This means to be accepting of others and their rights and opinions; to be willing to dialogue with them when appropriate; to participate calmly and responsibly in your civic duties, to be a visible and willing participant in your local community (and church or other such forms of fellowship), to be a caretaker and steward for our natural resources and environment, and generally to live these ideals in thought, word, and deed. Honesty and integrity in your work, applying your talents and intelligence productively and creatively, to mentor and help co-workers as appropriate, to be a peace maker and not a gossip or negative influence at work (or school etc.), and to live within your means, to be generous and charitable with your material resources, to be prepared to help yourself and neighbors in the event of natural or other disasters, grow your own food, and generally to live simply and with contentment!

Paramhansa Yogananda, the renowned teacher from India whose life story, “Autobiography of a Yogi” has been read by millions, championed the future spread of small intentional communities outside of the cities. In such environments with like-minded people, he predicted, the negative influences of unhealthy city life and the pressures of globalization could be mitigated by simple living and high ideals. I believe that time is fast approaching. Ananda’s founder, Swami Kriyananda (1926-2013) and the members of Ananda worldwide have established nine such communities on three continents. Countless other communities ranging from co-housing to spiritual communities exist and flourish on every continent. Such is the natural instinct of human nature to seek others of like-mind. In this new age of universal education, advancing technology, communication, and travel, this tendency is necessary to balance the scales of global and impersonal forces, of galloping consumption, and a tragic and threatening disconnection from the world of nature and the world of other people as equals and individuals.

Let us give thanks, then, for the Divine wisdom that appears in hearts and minds seeking truth and harmony. Let us give thanks to those divine messengers who, in every age, race and nation, come to trumpet the “truth that shall make us free.” Finally, let us give thanks for our own efforts and those of others who strive to live by high ideals of honesty, integrity, compassion, creativity, and devotion to the Supreme Giver and Creator!

Joy to You, my very Self,

Swami Hrimananda, Thanksgiving, 2013