Word: ashram
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Bhajan emigrated to Toronto, later that year moved to Los Angeles and eventually started his own ashram-spiritual commune-in a garage. Although India's Sikhs are renowned as meat eaters, Bhajan has insisted that his followers be strict vegetarians. While yoga is not part of Sikhism, Bhajan teaches the practice, and not the mild form widespread in the U.S. but Tantrism, a strenuous, mystical variety practiced by men and women in pairs. Claiming to be the only living master of Tantrism, Bhajan stresses Kundalini yoga, which supposedly releases secret energy that travels up the spine. He reveals breathing...
...woman who had been decried as the would-be empress of India, it was a highly effective act of expiation. After a terse announcement (which guaranteed widespread publicity), Indira Gandhi last week set off on a pilgrimage to the ashram of Acharya Vinoba Bhave, 82, spiritual heir to Mahatma Gandhi. For three days, Mrs. Gandhi squatted on the floor, shared ascetic meals and soaked up the saintly Bhave's wisdom. The retreat was a brilliant political re-entry vehicle for the former Prime Minister...
Five thousand fervent admirers turned up at the airport in Maharashtra state to greet Mrs. Gandhi en route to Bhave's ashram. Three times her cavalcade halted as she delivered her first political speeches since March. She warned that Prime Minister Morarji Desai's government could not deliver on its promise to reduce unemployment and poverty in a decade. "The Congress has a program to help the poor and the weak," she cried. "The country cannot make progress until their economic conditions improve...
...even if it's the fattest, richest third." Jerry Bender, 38, was making $50,000 a year in Los Angeles as the chairman of two small film corporations when he began to feel unhappy about his high-pressure existence. "Now," he says of his sojourn at the ashram, "I'm in love for the first time in my life. I'm in love with life. Before this I was in business. Today I am more creative. When I go back to my business, I'll probably earn $200,000 a year...
Sometimes the changes are small indeed. A number of disciples report having donated a pack of cigarettes to the guru and thereby been freed from the desire to smoke (others, even after the guru has touched them with his sheaf of peacock feathers, still sneak out of the ashram for a quick puff). But many testify that the guru has genuinely helped them to cast off "negative emotions" and achieve a certain tranquillity. Says Muktananda of his own mysterious powers: "I am however you see me. If you see me as a saint, I am a saint...