• Table of Contents
  • Bhakti, Meditation and Guru by Swami Veda Bharati
  • Source of Positive Emotions by Swami Rama
  • 40 Day Spiritual Festival
  • The Gurukulam Library by Elisa Parigi
  • Chariot of Sadhana by Joanne Sullivan (Divya)
  • Breath Seminar October 2016
  • Firewalking by Joanne Sullivan (Divya)
  • International Day of Yoga
  • Dear Yoga Mentor, My Question Is…
  • 2016 Events and Beyond
  • Full Moon Meditation Dates
  • Location of our SRSG ashram
• AHYMSIN Newsletter Archive

The Gurukulam Library

by Elisa Parigi

Our tradition offers much to those who feel themselves inclined towards the path of jñana (knowledge), as such it often attracts aspirants who like to study. That's one of the reason why all Gurukulam students really like the Gurukulam library. The students themselves volunteered for keeping it open daily, and almost everyone has been happy to spend some time in its fecund silence. But, we must admit, it was quite chaotic when we first arrived in October. Apart from Swami Veda and Swami Rama texts, lots of knowledge was hidden in disorganized piles of books. To find a specific title, luck or intuition was needed. We were lucky enough to have our senior student, Ahimsa, close by: she was the only one who knew more or less what was where.

So when we discovered that Amrita, a former Gurukulam student, was going to reorganize, with the help of Swami Prayag Giri, all the library, we were very happy and helped as much as we could. Amrita used her vacations to come and help the ashram with this task. She is a professional librarian so she really did a perfect job categorizing and giving codes to all the books.  There are so many different text's subjects: from Sacred texts to Ayurveda, from Language Learning to History, from Philosophy to Astrology, and much more.

For the resident Gurukulam students, cutting, taping, tagging and reorganizing the shelves was our karma yoga for days. We really enjoyed working all together with Amrita's music in the background. It was incredible how the team work payed off: we entered the room with the table so full of books that we could hardly find space to work, and at the end of an hour all books were tagged and back in the shelves. I found it very meditative, a calm awareness accompanied every tagging. Now our library not only is full of amazing books, but is also user friendly. Is good to see how Karma Yoga can merge into Jnana Yoga!

Editor’s Note:

The Swami Rama Dhyana Gurukulam, Institute of Meditation, is a 3 to 5 year residential program at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama (SRSG) in Rishikesh, India.