
Tom Taylor managed Master’s Market, a small health foods store at Ananda Village. Under Tom’s sure hand the market steadily improved its services, adding a baking business that delivered fresh breads, cakes, and cookies to stores in the local area, and remodeling and expanding the premises to include a deli and indoor seating. Tom eventually left to start a construction business.
Q: How did you get started in business?
Tom: My dad was a small businessman for twenty-three years. He had a hamburger stand where he’d be working at his grill, frying his hamburgers and talking to people.
Q: He was a sociable man?
Tom: He was. It was like a ministry. We were open from one in the afternoon until three a.m., so people would come in after the bars closed, or after their night shift at the mines. This was in northern Minnesota, and people knew my dad for hundreds of miles.
I started working when I was eleven. I think the first job I had was peeling onions and potatoes and running potatoes through a French fryer. We made a mint in French fries. I swept and mopped the café in summer, and in winter I would work behind the counter for two or three hours after school.
I had a paper route, and then I worked in a gas station. I enjoyed that type of service work. I wasn’t very talkative, and it was a way to meet people. I worked forty-two hours a week the last two years of high school, and in summertime I sometimes worked sixty to eighty hours. I had responsibilities, and I enjoyed it. I wasn’t very good at school, and it was a way to excel and feel like I was doing something worthwhile.
Q: You must have come out of high school with a bankroll.
Tom: I didn’t. I spent it all on cars and girlfriends! When I got out of school, I went to work at Stevens Buick in downtown Minneapolis, but I found I didn’t care for cars that much – it was more the people that I enjoyed. So I stayed there for six months, and then I went into the Marine Corps for four years.
I had learned to be responsible through all the work I had done, and in the Marines I found I was valued for it, because they knew they could rely on me. The Marine Corps was a good experience in some ways. I ended up being a brig counselor, a job with a lot of responsibility.
After the service, I worked for three years at a boys’ home in Sacramento while I took classes at the university. I enjoyed working with the boys, but I didn’t care for the administration, so I left and did some logging and tree planting.

Q: Did you return to Minnesota?
Tom: Yes. And then I bought a small dairy farm, two hundred acres with pasture, and a few acres of wooded pasture. I learned to farm by doing it – that’s how I’ve always learned, by just doing it and taking classes at the agricultural extension. I would probably still be there if it wasn’t for my ex‑wife, who was really against it, so we moved back to California in 1979, and I started a gardening and landscaping business in Winters, near Sacramento.
What I enjoyed most about gardening was getting to know the people. I would see them regularly, and I got a chance to develop their gardens over time, which was much more gratifying to me than just putting in a yard and leaving. I think that, all along, my jobs have helped me understand that even though I could do lots of things really well, what would help me to grow was people.
I moved to Ananda in 1983 and began commuting to my gardening business for a while, as well as doing some construction work and landscaping. Then one day Seva said, “How would you like to work at Earth Song and manage the café? (Earth Song was an Ananda-owned health food store and restaurant in Nevada City.) And I kind of laughed, because I had been wondering what I’d do next. So I managed the cafe at Earth Song.
Q: Was there a change in how you did business after you came on the spiritual path?
Tom: Most of the businesses I’d started fell apart after I left. One of the things I noticed about working for Ananda’s businesses is that the energy you put into it isn’t wasted. For example, after I left Earth Song, it just kept getting better. Working in a spiritual community, you have a feeling that it’s going to last, because it’s helping people and it’s serving a spiritual work.
Q: Does it do something different for you personally?
Tom: Yes. When you’re trying to make a business grow, you’re always looking for areas to expand into, or areas that you can make better. You’re putting yourself on the line, and you’re asking others to do the same. A business is either growing or dying, one or the other, and I’m always trying to look for ways to keep it alive so the people will be stimulated and the work can become their service. To me, that’s what business is all about – having a place to put your energy on the line, and see how you can grow in the process. That’s what makes business fun for me. I can’t imagine doing a business that would always stay the same.
There’s something about small business, and developing a business, that has always interested me. It’s a way to explore myself, more than anything else. That’s something a spiritual seeker can use a business for, to see where he’s really at. You can sit and meditate, but how will you do when you’re on the firing line? How will you deal with someone who’s complaining? Are you serviceful? Are you really just working for God, and unattached to how it turns out? Everything the devotee strives for can be brought out in work. It’s like family life, which stretches you to the point where you can see how you’re doing. Without those reflectors, without those people coming back at you, you can’t see as clearly the quality of what you’re doing.

Q: Do you think a business has a soul?
Tom: A soul? I think it takes a while to understand a business. When I farmed, lots of times I would go out to the barn because I could sense that something was wrong. I’d walk into the barn and look down a row of cows, and I’d see that one of them wasn’t doing too well. It’s almost a sixth sense. I think that’s the intuition of the soul at play.
For the market, too, I definitely know when it’s not doing well. It doesn’t always have a lot to do with the financial picture. It’s more a matter of energy, and whether people are working harmoniously. When we’re working well, and we’re all meditating, the business takes on a certain aura that’s inviting. If there’s not a lot of harmony, if someone’s having a problem in their work, the business can go through a period where it’s not so magnetic. I’ve been running the market for seven years, and it suits me primarily because there are so many different facets. There’s the people, there’s the ordering, there’s the growth, and there are areas that help people grow.
When I was fifteen, I worked at a Piggly‑Wiggly Market, a small grocery store in northern Minnesota. The part I liked was being a box boy, but sometimes I would have to stock shelves, and I didn’t like it at all. Now, at Master’s Market, I do a lot of shelf stocking, but what I do is not only stock the shelves, but I’m aware of everything that’s going on in the store while I’m doing it. For example, I try to be aware of the customers. If I hear somebody ask for something, I’ll tune in and get involved, and if somebody comes in, I’m talking to them. So I’ve made stocking shelves more than what it is.
Another thing that’s made stocking shelves good for me is that I want to make sure everything is lined up perfectly. I do the best I can with every little thing I try to do, even if it’s just stocking shelves, so I end up enjoying it. It isn’t difficult to enjoy something if you’re putting your energy into it. If you’re always resisting, of course it’s no fun at all. I think that’s the thing you start to realize as a devotee, that everything can be fun if you’re really there with it, and it doesn’t really matter what you’re doing.
That’s a challenge for lots of people. They come from a job where maybe their ego was gratified, and they start working at Masters’ Market where they’re stocking shelves or waiting on customers, and they have to find ways to be fulfilled. Doing service is the way to be fulfilled.
When I worked at Earth Song, there were lots of people that didn’t do very well because they didn’t want to be there in the first place. I remember a woman who’d been around Ananda for many years and had done various jobs, and when she was at Earth Song, she was there to serve. She’d come in and say, “Here I am. What do you want me to do?” Whereas with some people you’d hear, “Well, I’m here to serve, but I don’t really want to do this, and I don’t want to do that.” They had their little list, and you might as well go on down the road and work somewhere else.
When I’m working with new people, I try to allow them space to grow. I’ll get a new person, and people will start complaining that he’s rude, or she doesn’t do this or that, and I usually don’t say anything. I just let them have time to grow and learn by example. Because you’ve got probably sixteen people working there, and ninety percent of them have a great attitude, and it doesn’t take long for those attitudes of a devotee to rub off.
Most people are observant and want to change. They don’t want to be unhappy, and in time they’ll realize what’s making them happy and what’s making them unhappy. If you don’t do that introspection every day, you never learn what’s bothering you.
There are lots of people who want to come live at Ananda and work in the ministry office or at The Expanding Light (Ananda’s guest retreat and teaching center). And that’s great, but if you want to serve God, there He is, right across the counter from you. He may be two feet high, or He may be six feet high. He may be giving you a bad time, or He may be hugging you, and we get them all right there at Master’s Market.
To me, that’s much more real. Around food, people are able to be themselves, and that’s how I want the market to be. It should be an embracing place that allows people to be who they really are. Maybe you feel you can’t do that when you’re someplace else, but you can do it at the market. And if you want to complain about the kind of frozen yogurt we carry or something, go ahead.
You have to find someplace where you don’t always need to be dressed up and on your best manners, because I think it helps people to see where they’re at. We can live in the clouds, or we can be on this earth, struggling like most of us are. Having a place like the market helps people feel accepted just as they are. It’s like Swami Kriyananda said at a ministers’ meeting, “Just be natural with people and allow them to be that way, too.”
There’s a lot more going on in a business than just talking shop. Because my natural inclination is to be an introvert, I found while I was working at the cabinet shop that because I wasn’t being drawn out, I would go deeper in myself, but not in a positive way. I would shut down, so for me, a business that draws me out is real important.
I think working with people, and serving, and trying to help the staff has been good for me spiritually. I look forward to being a hermit someday, but I think that will come much later in life, if at all. There’s a sense that what I’m doing right now is exactly what God wants me to do, in all aspects of my life. I only want to do my dharma, not somebody else’s. Having a family and running a small business, I couldn’t think of a better way to serve God.
Sometimes I don’t enjoy it, but I feel I’m where I’m supposed to be, and there’s no doubt in my mind. I feel like riding my bike to the Market every day is a pilgrimage – going across the ridge and looking over the vista and feeling the air blowing by me while I go on my pilgrimage to the market every day to serve. It’s where God is. Whether it’s Swami walking in the door of the market or a little child, all of these wonderful souls are coming in, and it’s a joy to be able to serve.