The Ashram Way of Life

           Life in an Ashram is no new way of spiritual asceticism in India. It was traditionally the place where a hermit lived where his disciples gathered around him. One reads in history that Indian sages pursed their spiritual search in this way for centuries in the past, and in recent times the classical example of Swamy Vivekanand may be cited in the  non-Catholic Indian context, who after his concept of God and the ideal of Ramakrishna’s work founded an order of monks. The monk who was previously known as Naren initiated 140 spiritual centres, where more than 600 members were obliged to religiously meditate, to study philosophy and serve humanity.

            It must be admitted that the form of the ashram in India has undergone changes. As against the beginning when ascetics sanyasis renounced the world, went into the forest, lived in solitude and contemplation with the Almighty in prayer and penance, to today’s ashrams which vary from single men living in caves or one room huts to others like the Ramakrishna Mission and the Divine Life Society, where the disciples undergo a formal religious training. Some centres, like the Belur Mutand Sivananda Ashram, have more than a hundred sanyasis living in a community. They run colleges, hospitals, and printing press and send their members even to Europe and America to propagate their ideology.

            The quest for the Almighty has always been part of the Indian mind, even several centuries before St. Benedict wrote his rule describing the purpose of monastic life as being to seek God there were hundreds of ashrams throughout the length and breadth of India, where men and women lived in the greatest simplicity under obedience to their guru spiritual guide, and dedicated themselves totally to this yearning and longing for the Almighty. Their spiritual yearning drove them insatiably to plunge into the interior mystery and to seek the inaffable presence of the Almighty.

            Life in an ashram demands tapasya penance, which is the basis for ascetic living, making a basic option for a simple way of life, in food and clothing, and maintaining a meaningful silence. It demands a personal study and understanding of the Holy Scriptures swadhyaya to absorb its contents and make it one’s own.                                 

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Names and Year of SVD (Directors) worked / working