By Dharini (Centre Coordinator) and Bhavadharini
The Sri Premananda Centre of Koszalin is located in a yoga school run by Dharini, the Centre Coordinator. The school is situated near the city centre in the highest building in town. It is very fortunate that our Centre is in a yoga school, because many different people appear here every day – most of them are interested only in the physical aspects of yoga, but some of them seek something more, a spiritual path, and we can introduce them to Swamiji and his teachings.
Our temple
Swamiji’s chair
In our Centre we have a small temple with Swamiji’s big picture standing on his chair and
a small shrine where we keep the statues and perform abhishekams. We have a Centre lingam from Swami and Centre statues of Amman, Krishna and Ganesha.
We celebrate many festivals throughout the year, such as Premananda Day, Mahashivaratri, Guru Purnima, Krishna Jayanti, Ganesha Chaturti, Diwali, and Swamiji’s birthday. Usually, we perform an abhishekam to one of the Centre statues or to Swamiji’s padukas, sing bhajans, read satsangs or meditate. After rituals, we share prasadam and fruit, cakes or food brought by the members of our Centre.
Also, we gather together every Wednesday evening to chant Om Namah Shivaya for an hour. Each Thursday we perform Guru Puja and each Friday we do an abhishekam followed by
a satsang reading and bhajan session. We all feel that Swamiji’s divine presence and love dwell in this temple.
The shrine
A small group of people from our Centre went to India in February to celebrate Mahashivaratri in the Ashram and explore Tamil Nadu. After they returned, we organized
a nice little Indian soirée. Everyone who was present at this meeting had a chance to taste some Indian dishes and sweets, see pictures of Tamil Nadu and admire one of our friends, who is a professional dancer, performing different kinds of Bollywood dance. It was a lovely evening, with a lot of pictures, music, stories, interesting facts about India and its people and of course a lot of laughs. Since there were people among us who had never heard about Swamiji, we spoke at length about the Ashram and its residents, the orphanage children, school and Swamiji’s mission and teachings. Swamiji’s divine energy was there with us.
Yagam
The sacred fire
In July, our spiritual friends from the Sri Premananda Centre of Szczecin paid us a visit and together we performed a yagam and chanted mantras. Many people from our school and Centre took part in this ritual. Everyone brought a bowl filled with rice, spices, fruits and seeds to offer to the sacred fire. Although the wind that day was unbelievably strong and kept on blowing away the tent under which we were sitting, we managed to please Swamiji and the Divine with our offerings and prayers.
A sannyasin’s visit to Koszalin
On 26th November we were pleased to have a sannyasin in our yoga school and in our Sri Premananda Centre. This meeting was attended by many people and began with the Guru Astotra. Mataji gave a satsang about the basics of yoga and the nature of the mind. We ended the meeting with a meditation practice and arati to Swamiji. The next day we had an abhishekam class with Mataji. We performed an abhishekam to Ganesha, while Mataji corrected our mistakes. Fortunately, there were not many of them! Mataji explained the meaning of abhishekam very clearly; thus, it became approachable to people who participated in this ritual for the first time. This class was a very precious time, because Mataji shared her funny memories about how Swamiji used to correct her or other devotees for their imperfections in the preparation and performance of abhishekam. After a coffee-and-biscuit-break, Mataji gave another, but this time shorter, satsang and led a meditation practice that brightened everyone’s face.
Jai Prema Shanti!
