February 15th 2024 | Guru Kripa Forest Hermitage

Dear Friends,

In 2006, soon after he finished writing The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita, Swami Kriyananda declared at a public talk in Gurgaon:

“There are four things I still want to do here:

One is to start a community in India.
Another is to start an institute, a Yoga Institute of Living Wisdom. . . .
And a third is a monastery.
. . . the fourth is an inter-religious temple.

These things I hope to do.”

The Ananda India monks are finally ready to start building Guru Kripa Forest Hermitage on 5 ½ acres of land in north India. This will be the fulfillment of one of Swamiji’s four unfinished legacy projects. Swamiji wrote and spoke of a completely new type of monastery he wanted for his India monks. He described the monastery as a Hermitage, where monks would live separate from society in kutirs, while serving together and spreading Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings.

Just two days before Yogananda’s birthday (5 January) this year, we received the formal government approval of our proposed site plan, shown below. We’ve also signed a contract with two local architects and are designing the first buildings for Swamiji’s monastery. We hope to begin construction in the next 2-3 months.

Our Progress So Far

It has been only three years since our India monks shifted to Chandigarh to look for land to build a monastery. In that time, with persistence, patience, and Guru’s Grace (Guru Kripa) we have been able to:

find a parcel of extremely fertile land, with abundant water and fertile soil
receive donations to fully purchase the land on behalf of Ananda Sangha India
receive a Change of Land Use (CLU) converting the land from forest/agricultural to institutional land
drill a borewell to pump water and to power the pump with solar panels
build a large storage/construction shed in preparation for construction
plant over 100 trees, including native windbreak trees and many fruit trees
improve the soil with twice-yearly cover cropping
plant vegetable beds that are now producing food for the monks and others

The Next Steps

Swamiji wrote about the benefits of living in houses with rounded corners, which he saw in the adobe earth buildings in the American Southwest. He also spoke highly of the spiritual benefits of living in homes with dome shaped ceilings, rather than flat ceilings. We are now working with two skilled architects with years of experience in natural earth design and construction. The monastery buildings will be modern but simple, constructed with rammed earth and having the rounded walls and ceilings that Swamiji praised.

Water, electrical, and sewage infrastructure are being designed and engineered right now. Once they are in place construction will begin. Phase one will include:

all of the infrastructure services mentioned above
a kitchen and dining area with a living room
a connected courtyard that will have four kutir-like bedrooms on the perimeter
a meditation temple
the first prototype kutir

Later phases will include fourteen kutirs and office space. Because Phase 1 includes all of the infrastructure, design, and startup costs, we estimate it will cost close to 2.84 crore rupees (about $341,000 in U.S. dollars). Completion of Phase 1 is estimated to take 18 months.

Our Monks

The India monks support three of Ananda Sangha India’s main outreach departments: the Hindi Sangha; English Home Study Course (preparing students for initiation into Kriya); Ananda India Kriya Sangha. The monks also support Ananda Centres, help to lead retreats and kriya initiations, and travel all over Southeast Asia to lead Ananda programs. Guru Kripa Forest Hermitage will provide support, inspiration, and training for generations of Ananda monks as they spread Yogananda’s teachings in the coming decades.

Most recently, our monks traveled to Kolkata to help the Ananda Centre there with a weekend of programs. The time included a ground-breaking event: a one-hour chanting procession with over 100 Ananda devotees in the neighborhood of Yogananda’s boyhood home. It ended at 4 Garpar Road, when we all went into the attic meditation room where the young Yogananda “found God.”

The monks also helped to organize and lead a kriya initiation. This is the group of initiates after the ceremony: