Intersections: Finding universality in the hills of La Crescenta
Up in the hills of La Crescenta, there’s a space that seems even farther away from urban life than this city that forms the balcony of Southern California.
Secluded, winding pathways covered by trees from which deer occasionally emerge will lead you there, a 120-acre property engulfed in the San Gabriel Mountains, at an altitude of 2,000 feet. Since its founding in 1923, it has been dedicated to all of the world’s religions, a place where followers of all faiths have come through its doors to find the similarities, instead of differences, in their daily worship.
This is the Ananda Ashrama, a spiritual retreat created by Swami Paramananda that has existed in these hills for more than 90 years, following teachings rooted in the ancient Hindu philosophy of Vedanta. The residents of the retreat, which is also a nonprofit organization, share daily routines of worship, prayer and meditation at the property.
Swami Paramananda, a strong believer in the equality of the sexes, passed his leadership down to his niece, the Rev. Mother Gayatri Devi, who became the first Indian woman to teach Vedanta philosophy to Americans.
When Devi passed away in 1995, Rev. Mother Sudha Puri took over leadership, dividing her time between La Crescenta’s Ashrama and the Vedanta Centre in Cohasset, Mass.
“Vedanta does not seek to convert,” reads a brochure from the Ashrama. “Instead, it emphasizes respect for one another’s faith and understanding.”
This simple statement is perhaps why I have been fascinated with the Ashrama my whole life.
I had driven by it for years, and it often made me slow down my car to get a closer look at what the retreat’s mystical-looking entrance was doing on a hill among residential properties. It was completely out of place, yet it also completely belonged — as if it was always meant to be there.
On Sunday, some strange energy called me there. As I made my way up to the Temple of the Universal Spirit, built on the property in 1928, for a service that is open to the public, I heard a bell that signaled the start of the day and with it an overwhelming feeling of peace.
I have attended services in places of worship across all faiths, but this one was wholly different. There were no expectations, no rules, no need to explicitly try and understand. It was just enough to be there and exist, to listen to the music and the message.
The Temple of Universal Spirit is unlike any other place of worship, in that it has stained glass windows and small shrines dedicated to all of the world’s religions. You’ll see symbols and sayings pertaining to Buddha, Jesus, Islam and Native American spirituality all around the Temple.
The feelings of connectivity expressed in the sermon that day, that we are all, in our own way, trying to find some truth and understanding of the world, that we are all searching for something to believe in, that fear is overwhelmingly debilitating, that we are just one small speck in a vast universe of living organisms around us and inside us, were refreshing.
At a time when everything feels more polarized than ever before, where we feel divided by so many things — politics, race, gender and society — it was a relief to experience universality and belonging in the most unexpected of places, a refuge deep within a balcony many Angelenos don’t even know exists.
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LIANA AGHAJANIAN is a Los Angeles-based journalist whose work has appeared in L.A. Weekly, Paste magazine, New America Media, Eurasianet and The Atlantic. She may be reached at liana.agh@gmail.com.