Word: ashram
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...lined street about a half-mile south of the Harvard football stadium is the setting for the Maitreya World Foundation. Inside are purple soft carpets, pillows for meditation, incense, and pictures and statutes of Buddhas and Jesuses and elephant-faced Indian gods. The foundation used to be called the Ashram of the World Mother but "that looked too culty, so we adopted a broader name," Mata Maitreya, the ashram's teacher, explains. "I shouldn't be the only world mother. This is a symbol. I'll be happy if every woman in the world called herself that and did some...
...catalog puts its, "Mata Maitreya and specially trained students who reside at the ashram are co-workers and messengers of the Great White Brotherhood, thus called because it is dedicated to the pure White Light of Truth and Perfection." The Brotherhood, also called the Ascended Masters or the Spiritual Hierarchy, are the highly evolved souls who guide Earth's destiny, or so the theory goes. From time to time they enter the world as the great prophets and religious teachers, and sometime in the future one of these souls will return as Maitreya, the Buddha of salvation, sometimes equated with...
Mahan Singh, co-director, business manager and Singh Sahib of the ashram seems to have reconciled his faith with the demands of Western society, finding a happy niche like his fellow Sikhs. He sits in the underground Golden Temple Restaurant, munching on a sandwich of sprouts and avocado sauce, drinking yogi tea, and talking very matter-of-factly of his "process of spiritual consciousness" as cars and pedestrians rush overhead. He says he left school like most college graduates to pursue goals he though would bring him happiness; he found a good job and compassionate lover. But he felt incomplete...
...honestly. And he shares his possessions with others and attempts to serve as a model for the community, under the principle of Vanke Chakna. He admits the tenets, especially the last two, are fairly open-ended, and says that many take advantage of their simplicity, affilitiating themselves with the ashram but not devoting their entire spirits and lives to the faith...
Mahan Singh admits that the counter-culture yearnings of Americans in the late 1960s and early 1970s may account for the faith's early acceptance. But he adds that the growth of the Boston ashram from 15 devotees to more than 40 in its nine years of existence proves that the faith is expanding on its own merits and is not just the product of a rash of discontent and disillusionment with a materialistic and often spiritless society. In addition, Mahan Singh claims the commitment Sikhs must make to the faith discourages most people from seeing...