Yoga Monasteries - Spiritual Retreats

Question: What is the concept or idea of a Yoga Monastery? What is the benefit of visiting a Yoga Monastery?

Answer: Yoga Monasteries project a very elevated vision. Our goal is that people have the possibility to purify themselves, they can learn the sacred Vedic scriptures, vegetarian cooking, eat prasadam, and many others of the 64 known arts of Vedic Culture, like flower garlands, the clothes of the deity, flower arrangements, organic agriculture, etc. In other words, one takes care and cultivates everything that the Lord gave us.

The Yoga Monasteries are places of peace, where one can redefine once again what the goal of his life is. Why are you here? What do you want to achieve in this stay on Planet Earth? We are all travelling souls, we came here just for a visit. We have to fulfill many things, we have to learn a lot of things, but we are travellers. The visit is temporarily, and later we have to continue our journey, and we have to take our wealth of consciousness, as well as the burden, or committed mistakes, with us.

In this way, the Yoga Monastery is a place of purification. It is a place to open your heart. It is a place where you can find yourself, and get to know which are your brothers and sisters in this world. A Yoga Monastery is an embassy of the eternal world. Simple living, high thinking; with relations in harmony, where one learns to serve. Spiritual science is being perfected when one learns to serve. Normally, in this material world, everybody is very expert in serving himself, but in a Yoga Monastery one learns to serve Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the Lord in the heart of everyone, the creator and maintainer of everyone; He, who makes us brothers and sisters, He, who gave us the chance to purify and get to know ourselves.

That is what our spiritual master tought us. In practice, these are places where one can participate and follow Vedic ideals. There is no need to be in anxiety. One can live a beautiful life, in a spiritual surrounding. Of course, in this world there are lots of duties to fulfill, to make oneself util in human society. But that is often also the cause of agitation and uncertainty in people. Therefore, in a Yoga Monastery one learns to live and to be happy as you are and with that what you have got. You will discover that happiness is something very important and distinct. It is not something you can buy in a supermarket. This security cannot even be found in material wealth, nor in beauty, nor in the health of our body. But it is an internal, superior wellbeing; unreachable by greediness, envy, lust, frevor and other negative impulses that keep us tied to this material world.

In this way, a Yoga Monastery is a school of preparation. Spending a week or a month in a Yoga Monastery, one learns to serve, one learns to give. And that is the most important thing one has to know. And nowadays persons do not know what to do when they have grown old. In that golden age, they can also come to Yoga Monasteries, or they can travel from one Yoga Monastery to another. That too is a very fortunate life. It is called the life of a sannyasi, of a renunciate; who travels and visits persons, knocking on their doors and reminding them of beautiful places, not so far away.

The Yoga Monasteries are places that exist so that people can learn the beauty of their being, the development of their individual consciousness. That is what we are trying; to create this kind of atmosphere in our Yoga Monasteries. And that is a model which can be repeated; hopefully infinitely. Because this world, its beauty, the sounds of nature, the sound of rivers and the waves of the ocean, the wind in the flowers and plants, all we see here, are places to be very close to the Supreme Lord in his universal form. Appreciate it, feel Mother Earth giving her benedictions. That is the way how we can find ourselves. Because in reality our life is exactly for this purpose: to learn about spiritual love.