Farewell to Tushti and Surendra

The new year has been bringing its new changes, and last week we bid farewell to our dear friends Tushti and Surendra. They’re moving on to new adventures at Ananda Laurelwood, where they’ll help create and develop the new Education for Life campus there.

Over the nine years they’ve spent in Palo Alto, Tushti and Surendra have been managers of East West, shepherding it lovingly through trying economic times. They’ve also directed the yoga center, taught many meditation classes, led the Sadhaka training group, and been tireless examples of devoted service, inspiring everyone who met them.

Tushti and Surendra, with the Masters, 

as always, watching over them.

On New Year’s Day we held a going-away party for them at Chela Bhavan (photos here), sharing lots of food, stories, and expressions of friendship and gratitude. And, just so they could take a little bit of us along with them, we even presented them with 108 custom-made fortune cookies, each containing a personal note or a blessing from one of their many friends. At the following Sunday service, we also got to publicly acknowledge them and send them off with a chorus of Aums from the congregation.

Thank you, Tushti and Surendra, for everything you’ve given and shared with us here. We’ll miss you, but we wish you much joy and many blessings in your new roles. 

Master's Birthday

Last Thursday, January 5th, was the anniversary of Paramhansa Yogananda’s birthday, the day when we all wish each other “Happy Birthday” in joyful gratitude for the spiritual birth he made possible for all of us.

Of course, we wanted to wish Master a happy birthday as well, but what birthday gift do you get for the guru who has everything? Master used to say that he preferred a soul to a crowd, but he loved crowds of souls. And so, along with the flowers we brought to the altar Thursday evening, we brought crowds of souls before him to remind him (and ourselves) of our dedication to God and guru. From truth-seekers on other paths (or still finding their paths), to Ananda church members, to disciples, Sadhakas, and Sevakas, there was an appropriate vow and moment at the altar for everyone.

The choir sang a couple of songs (“O Master,” of course, a singalong at the end), and there were chants throughout the evening. But the full focus was on offering ourselves back to Master, who offered spiritual liberation to us. 

Aum Guru.

(See more photos of the evening here.)

New Year's Eve Ceremonies

As with our Christmas Eve service, we experimented this year with holding our New Year celebrations earlier in the evening, rather than doing a midnight service. Judging by the attendance at each, we have a lot of early birds in the community who appreciated it!

The evening began with a meditation, and a Nayaswami Order initiation ceremony, in which we welcomed in Adam, Joycee, and Amit as Pilgrims and a conditional (one-year) Brahmachari, respectively.

The initiation ceremony is very simple -- just an introduction from Asha and a recitation of the vows -- but incredibly powerful. Like a wedding, it has the power of human commitment supported by a loving community. But with God on the other end of each person’s vow the intensity is deepened immeasurably.

For the service portion of the evening we tried a completely new format, in which we got to go deeper into mantra chanting than we usually do. We began with 15 minutes of the Hring Kling mantra, for dissolving obstacles of all types, whether physical or spiritual. That was followed by 15 minutes each of the Gayatri and Mahamritunjaya mantras, more familiar from our Sunday fire ceremonies, which are chants for personal liberation, and for the upliftment of all beings. We ended with the Aum mantra, accompanying a purification ceremony -- an excellent way to set a spiritual intention for the new year.

Throughout the mantras and the purification ceremony, we had a large indoor fire, cleverly created out of candles fixed in the copper fire ceremony bowl filled with sand. This was very civilized for most of the hour and a half that it burned, but got much more exciting towards the end. The combined heat of all the candles (not to mention the burning purification papers thrown in with them) burned them down very quickly, until the bowl was one flaming mass of melted wax. It was actually quite dramatically beautiful, though it was also reassuring to have Nirmoha on hand with a lid, ready to intervene if it got out of hand.

Happy New Year!

Christmas Services

Our always-gorgeous Christmas services had some new tweaks this year.

Christmas Eve featured a live creche scene that built up throughout the Festival of Light. Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus were summoned “by the call of aspiring love” as it says in the Festival, embodied in the song “Cloisters” and Rita’s dance of a devotee. The family was then joined by angels, shepherds, and wise men, all accompanied by appropriate music. Having actual, living presences up on the stage, all so consciously holding the vibration deeply intensified the unfolding of the story. And it gave a powerful focal point for the audience’s devotion, when everybody joined in the arati and offered their candles to the baby at the altar. (See all the photos here.)

The family service on Christmas Day featured the same live creche, but with an extended cast of smaller angels, shepherds, and wise men enacting Asha’s telling of the Christmas tale. This year also included a sweet new scene in which Asha donned a yarmulke and played the part of the rabbi marrying Joseph and Mary.

After the service was the Christmas banquet. The grand finale of the day involved a rendition of “The 12 Days of Christmas” that outdid even our enthusiastic attempts at the Christmas parties. The days were assigned to different tables, and the gifts were acted out with great alacrity and gusto!

More photos of Christmas Day are here. Merry Christmas to all!

Continuing Celebrations: Meditation and Caroling

This weekend we celebrated what may traditionally be known as “Duality Awareness Week,” in which we juxtapose our most inwardly-focused and outwardly-focused Christmas celebrations. Representing the inward direction, Saturday was our annual 8-hour Christmas meditation. Many devotees gathered in the temple for a day of meditation, interspersed with chanting and recordings of Master and Swamiji. A few lovely photos are here.

On Sunday, we directed our Christmas cheer outward again, with a huge caroling party serenading the neighborhood. Also, in complete contradistinction to last weekend’s party, rather than having a potluck followed by singing, we went out singing first and then ate. Well, to be perfectly accurate, we sang, then ate, then sang again. It was just that sort of a night. (And there was some lovely a cappella harmonizing toward the end of the evening.)

May you feel Christ’s presence within you and around you this Christmas season!

Carols and Calories at the Christmas Party

This weekend was the annual double-header Christmas party at Chela Bhavan. Having the party on both Saturday and Sunday evenings ostensibly allows people who can’t make it to one come to the other, though they’re enough fun that a huge number of people just came to both.  The many potluck dishes included such Christmas miracles as: orange-enhanced brownies that melted in your mouth and in your hand; pumpkin cake, a magical combination of cake and pumpkin pie; and what became known as Asha’s “Jesus Cookies,” that she spoke about in Sunday service. (If you weren’t there, she described the making of them in relation to Meister Eckhart’s quote, “I move my hand and Christ moves, who is my hand.”)

After the eating, socializing, and satsanging, came the singing (an excellent warmup for when we’ll take the carols around the neighborhood next week.) “The 12 Days of Christmas” was a particular winner, both nights. Helen got us organized into 12 groups to coordinate the singing of all the different gifts, and would have had us acting them all out as well, if we’d had any space to maneuver in at all. Shanti led the charge the second night, in what became an even more rousing rendition, thanks to our previous practice. A glitch in the very last verse tempted some people to start it over from the beginning but they were, luckily, outnumbered.

We did manage to get a group photo, but only on the second night. Imagine this times two. More photos can be found here.

Christmas Concert

On Sunday, the Ananda Palo Alto choir put on its annual Christmas concert, following service. Well, following lunch following service, that is, which is a very popular way to have concerts around here these days. Many volunteers provided the main dish of vegetarian chili and cornbread, along with numerous other potluck items. We probably fit over 100 people into the yoga studio with all our tables deployed, but the weather was nice enough for folks to spill out into the courtyard as well.

After lunch, we shepherded everyone back into the temple for the concert (much of which was videotaped and photographed). The festivities opened with a women’s ensemble marching in with a rousing rendition of “Alle Psallite,” complete with drum, tambourine, and kirtals. The rest of the program was arranged thematically, starting with songs to Divine Mother (Mary), and moving through the birth of Christ, the rejoicing, and culminating in His Power (you can guess which song that was).

One of the fun things about the Christmas concert every year is that the choir gets to add a few new songs to their repertoire. And lots of good Christmas music has been written over the centuries, so we always manage to find a few gems. Dambara’s spellbinding performance of “I Wonder As I Wander” in the middle of the program really seemed to shift the experience of the entire concert to a deeper level. An ensemble sang Bach’s arrangement of “In Dulci Jubilo,” in a mix of Latin and English. And the whole choir plus numerous audience members sang the tremendously glorious — you guessed, right? — Hallelujah Chorus.

Inspired to start singing yet? Join us for Christmas caroling on the 18th!