Like water in a mountain brook traveling towards the ocean, our soul is the expressive movement of life towards something divine and eternal. Whether we recognize it or not, our heart beats the song of the eternal heart, our mind hums with the song ofomnipotence, and our body breaths the celestial breath of life and nature.

Eat Pray Love Ashram is about our most essential quality of life; uniting our little individual-self with the eternal-self. This holistic union is an expression of theinherent desireingrainedin the universe that stimulates bliss, joy, and everlasting life.

Eat Pray Love Ashram was created with the hope of providing a source of illumination for spiritual seeks who have come to the internet in search ofknowledgeand information about the joys of spiritual living and the beauty of ancient India.

About The Author

Dr. Susan Goodrich is a curiously adventurous soul who has spent the last 10 year of her life in search of liberation for her mind, body, and spirit. After exploring the various spiritual traditions of the west, Susan began her inquisition into eastern traditions which seems to posses a more universal understand of the inner-world. Upon reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert Susan embarked on an adventure to India where she met her life teacher Guru Tureya at the Tureya Ashram in Southern India. Today Susan teaches meditation classes and Chakra healing in her home town Portland, Organ.

More:
Eat Pray Love Ashram | Ashram in India About Us

The Mother had once called the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry a veritable laboratory to work out the future society. Its counterpart in the capital of India, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Delhi Branch, can best be understood as an extension of the centre of sadhana at Pondicherry. What is being done in this spiritual endeavour is the overcoming of the ascetic phase of the Indian tradition, which in a lopsided way equated spirituality with outer renunciation. In the Vedic times, integral life, prosperity, equality of sexes and a life-affirming attitude were cultivated by spiritual seekers. This integral approach was lost in later epochs when Mayavada (Illusionism) prevailed.

According to Sri Aurobindo all life is Yoga. In the Integral Yoga, the integral life down to the smallest detail has to be divinised : an inner illumination that does not change the outer life leaves the world as it is. The object of our Yoga is self-perfection and world-perfection.

From an early age The Mother had dreamed of a place where seekers of the Divine could completely dedicate themselves to spiritual life. Earth needs a place where men can live away fromsocial conventions, self-contradictory moralities and contending religions, a place where human beings, freed from all slavery to the past, can devote themselves wholly to the discovery and practice of the divine consciousness that is seeking to manifest itself. By providing a congenial environment and field of activities the Ashram seeks to be such a place. With the needs of the body provided, each one takes his work in the spirit of service and unselfishness, in the spirit of Karma Yoga as an offering to the Divine.

The Delhi Branch was officially inaugurated on 12 February, 1956, with the Blessings of the Mother. To the great joy and gratitude of spiritual seekers in Northern India, the Mother graciously granted the very first Sacred Relics of Sri Aurobindo to be enshrined here on 5 December, 1957. Since then the Ashram has been growing at a steady pace. The shrine and the Meditation Hall continue to be the centre of life and the teaching of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother the guiding light. The Love and Blessings of the Master and the Mother and their Grace are always available to their disciples living here.

All live and work here as equals. No distinctions of sex, creed, religion, race, caste or national origin are observed: all are looked upon as souls and children of the Mother. There is no hierarchy of officials and subordinates. All work in association and as a unit under the general supervision of one or more sadhaks.

See the rest here:
Sri Aurobindo Ashram-Delhi Branch

It started under a fig tree on the other side of the world thousands of years ago, but the words and practices of Buddhism have filtered down through the centuries, touching the lives of countless people, finding a growing audience in the United States - and inspiring a new centre for worship and meditation in Central Massachusetts.

Some three million Americans have now embraced Buddhism and its ancient approach to ending human suffering. Thousands more find themselves attracted to a Buddhist way of life based on love, kindness and meditative practice.

Buddhist teachings stretch way back to the fifth century before the Christian era. The story began in today's Nepal where Prince Siddartha was born into a royal family and expected to eventually become ruler of the Shakya clan. Shielded from the trials and tribulations of the world for the first 29 years of his life, the privileged prince one day came face to face with the normal reality of human suffering. That personal confrontation with worldly pain and dissatisfaction so upset the young prince that he left the royal life in search of a way to overcome the misery of human suffering.

Four Noble Truths

Six years later, while sitting under a fig tree which is today known as the Bodhi tree or the "tree of enlightenment," Siddartha achieved his goal of transcendence, and he was thereafter known as the Shakyamuni Buddha, the "awakened one."

Happiness can be achieved, taught the Buddha, by cultivating the mind in a variety of ways. It begins with an awareness of Four Noble Truths, which follow a pattern. For life is often filled with suffering, pain and beset with sorrow and trouble. Even at its best, life is never completely fulfilling because people always seek more happiness and less pain.

This leads to a craving that itself becomes problematic because people cling to selfish attachments in search of ever more pleasure. Yet, this is also never completely fulfilling. However, while people continue to search for still more pleasure and less pain, Buddhism breaks the circle of human frustration by teaching that it is possible to be completely released from such attachments through the discipline that comes from following a Noble Eightfold Path, which leads to Nirvana and the utter eventual extinction of the pain of existence.

For the next 45 years, the Buddha wandered the northern part of India, teaching freedom from suffering, until he died at the age of 80. Then, after his death, a number of Buddhist schools of thought developed which attracted adherents within the borders of India. In the third century the Emperor Ashoka of the powerful Mauryan dynasty decided to rule his kingdom according to Buddhist principles and sent missionaries to promote Buddhism beyond India.

The mission to Sri Lanka met with particular success. Even today, Buddhism is dominant with 70 percent of Sri Lankans practicing Buddhism.

It is also from Sri Lanka the Buddhists came to Framingham and have now moved to Grafton, where they have established the New England Buddhist Vihara and Meditation Centre on a wooded estate at 162 Old Upton Road.

More here:
Mazzaglia: Finding peace at a Buddhist retreat