Conversations With Ananda — Chapter 3: Nayaswami Sadhana Devi

Nayaswami Sadhana Devi

Sadhana Devi reports, “My husband Jaya and I now spend most of our time serving our work in India, with classes and spiritual activities, and enjoying the spiritual friendships that seem to grow easily, regardless of language and cultural barriers.” We spoke with Sadhana Devi in 2005.

Sadhana Devi: I’d like to tell you a story about the very early days at Ananda.

I came to Ananda in 1969 as a twenty-something. I was number ten of the people who came to Ananda, which was just the Ananda Meditation Retreat at the time.

I was on work exchange along with my nine compatriots, and we spent the summer doing whatever needed to be done to keep the retreat going. I loved it – it was the first place I had been that I wasn’t bored, because there was something to do all the time, and something new to learn, not only on the physical plane, with things to build and so on, but also spiritually, where there was always something new to be learning.

And so I was very happy to be at a place, at last, where I wasn’t bored and I had all my friends, my peers, who were in the same boat as me. We were all beginners on the spiritual path, looking for how we could find joy in life. We didn’t really put it that way at the time, but that’s what we were looking for.

And so the summer went by, and it became apparent that winter was coming, and we began to think about things like shelter. Because we’d been camping in tents all summer, and we didn’t know what we would do for the winter. We were all broke, nobody had any money, and we were on work exchange so we weren’t actually earning anything.

And then someone had the brilliant idea, and I think it may have been me, that we could make teepees to live in. I had a book on making teepees that was very good, with diagrams and blueprints and all kinds of instructions. So it looked like something we could do – let’s make some teepees, because they don’t cost much and they don’t take too much skill to make.

Okay, so that was our plan. And then we decided how we would go about doing this. The first thing we needed were teepee poles, and in the book we learned that you need a certain type of tree called a lodgepole pine, and believe it or not they grow in Nevada County. So we decided to get together and make a team effort, and see if we could make enough teepees to keep ourselves out of the rain and snow in the winter.

Photo: 1974 – Sadhana Devi ties macramé plant hangers, an early Ananda business. Their tiny house was built by her and Jaya, probably with help from Ananda friends. (It burned down in the 1976 forest fire that took 21 of the 23 homes in the community, after which – yes! – the community members rebuilt with many happy Ananda community volunteer workdays.) Photo by Nayswami Rambhakta.

We were inspired by the stories we’d heard about the Amish, and how they would all get together and put up a barn in a single day, and we thought that was amazing, especially now that we had gotten a little bit of building experience ourselves, and we’d found out how long it takes to make something like that. So we were very impressed, and we thought we would try it. We would get together and do it as a team effort, and we would get our lodgepole pine poles ready.

Somebody went to the Forest Service and got a permit to cut these poles, and there was a certain area where they told us we could go and cut the trees. So we got together in a truck and some cars, and we drove to this place and we camped out, and we had some people who offered to cook, and the rest of us divided up. Some people had chainsaws and the skill to use them, and other people just had lots of energy, and they were the ones who dragged the trees out to the clearing where those with less skill or strength would strip the bark off the poles, because otherwise the poles are much too heavy. We had learned about a special tool you need to strip the bark, called a draw knife, and we had found some of them at secondhand stores in Nevada City and Grass Valley.

So we camped out for several days at a place called Rock Creek, deep in the woods, and we had a wonderful time. We got all the poles we needed, and we got them prepared, and then we had to lean them against a tree so they would dry in the right way, and we had to turn them every day or two so they wouldn’t bend.

But we had a wonderful time, and we realized when it was over that, yes, we’d accomplished the job we’d set out to do, but the real thing we’d gained was that we realized how much we enjoyed working together, because we had a great time.

That was the very first Ananda workday, and it became the foundation of the Ananda community life, and from then on it was one workday after another.

This is how we built Ananda Village and all of our other Ananda communities, and we all understood on some level what a joy it is to work together.

Why? Because it affirms the spiritual truth that we’re not this person or that person, we’re not Bob or Catherine, we’re not separate people. We’re all part of something much greater. Not just in the sense of what you can see outwardly, “a great work” being built and so on, but we’re part of all that is, as it says in the Festival of Light. And when we work together it affirms that spiritual truth.

I recall a time thirty-six years later, in 2005, when Jaya and I were living in Rhode Island where we had an Ananda work that was gradually spreading. We had Ananda friends throughout the New England states, and as far away as Florida. In winter of that year we went north a bit, into the area between Boston and Maine, where we had two very active meditation groups, and we wanted to spend time there so we could get to know the people, and see if we could help those groups grow. And while we were there, we said, “Let’s have a Paramhansa Yogananda Mahasamadhi event. We’ll be here at the right time, and it will be a nice way for everyone to get together.”

So we began planning, with emails flying back and forth, and we were on the phone a lot. We found a really nice yacht club outside of Boston where we could have the event. We had a play that we put on, we had food, we had speakers, we had a choir, and we had a book table, and all the things you would need for that kind of Ananda event.

We had no idea how many people would turn up, but there were about seventy people in those states who were part of our spiritual family and we communicated with them as well as we could.

Hardly anyone lived close enough to anyone else to have regular satsang, and we’d planned to put on a play, so how are you going to do that? But they rehearsed on the phone, and we had a choir, which was a little easier, and a lot of people learned their parts over the phone.

So we had a few things planned in advance, with the play and the choir, but as far as the setup, that took place entirely on the day.

We showed up early to get everything together, and everyone was happy to do whatever they could, and it went off perfectly smoothly and it was beautiful. It was wonderful, a lovely mahasamadhi event, and it came together because everyone was so willing to say yes. Everyone wanted to work together, even if they had never tried it, knowing what the joy would be and what they would receive. Because, again, it affirmed the spiritual truth that we are part of something much greater than just you or I or the other one. We are, in fact, a part of all that is.

1 thought on “Conversations With Ananda — Chapter 3: Nayaswami Sadhana Devi”

  1. I loved reading this Sadhana Devi💙 I am Bhajana previously Nicky. Maybe you remember me. Lots of love to you and blessings and joy 🥰🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🙏🏻

    Reply

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