Indian Yoga Monk in Finland

I have had a chance to work with Indian Acarya Bhavottarananda, a yoga monk of Ananda Marga, in Finland. He has been teaching yoga and yogic lifestyle here since year 2012. He is having lectures, yoga classes and meditation sessions almost every evening in library. He is speaking and singing occasionally on local radio, playing with sport people, and participating many other programs.

His smile never fails although he is working in a very different country than his warm and relaxed home country. India is in many ways quite opposite with its social and psychological outlook and political system than Finland. There are many examples how the Indian culture makes one to love it, but on the other hand one may feel more at ease in Finland. For example Finnish people are serious and take a meeting time exactly as it is, while in India one may end up waiting for 1-2 hours. https://youtu.be/s3LRt_ESvGE

As a child Ac Bhavottarananda spent a happy childhood in a remote Indian village Madhya Pradesh, in AMLA province, where his father used to drive trains. The whole family, including five elder sisters and brothers, were strict Hindus and vegetarians. He became well known in surrounding villages as a member of successful volley ball team, but still he was missing some more meaning in his life. He decided to follow renunciate’s spiritual lifestyle and surprisingly his parents were quite supportive. He met at the age of 20 Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, who became his Guru and who inspired him to dedicate his life for service to humanity.

In 1988 while he then was in Training Center for monks in Varanasi, a very dangerous virus attacked the training center and all the 47 trainees became deathly sick with swollen muscles. The doctors gave them handfuls of medicines, but nothing was helping. Finally their Guru-Baba sent them instructions what to do and also some medicines.

Baba also explained that the virus came from other planet and that it could have had devastating effect on humanity if it was not stopped. The training center was some kind of saving ground to stop the virus penetrating into earth. Their Guru´s medicines were applied on the trainees, and they started to recover. Ac Bhavottarananda, still a trainee, was lucky to overcome the sickness on its beginning stage. He was then taking care of all others and administering the medicines.

When he became a monk, his Guru gave him duty to run three schools with 250 children. Then someone else replaced him and he got another duty of taking care of a collective farm. When he had made the farm project productive, he was re-posted to run a children’s home with a school. He had 25 children to feed and many more to educate.

Ac Bhavottarananda’s touching story – when he went with three other monks to renew his passport, and to stay in his home village after him spending 12 years in different areas of India – a total about 3000 people came to see him within a week. Not only the relatives and his village people, but also people from 20 neighboring villages came to listen the talks, lectures and other programs that were arranged for him and other monks. People’s love and care was something he never could have expected. During that time the monks also gave mass initiations and many people joined the mission permanently.

After doing great job in India he was sent abroad, first to Korea, Japan and China and from there in 2012 to Finland in order to offer for western people a chance to become disciples of real yogic tradition. One of the principles of Ananda Marga is to practically learn how to deal with different cultures. Yoga monks work without salary and are posted on any corner of the world. Also other individual members are encouraged to get married with a spouse from different culture. One would think that such marriages would not last, but in reality they are often very successful, as the spouses are chosen according spiritual and psychic unifying qualities.

Ac Bhavottarananda loves to move around and meet all kind of people. One way also for him to do service is to cook and teach sentient cooking for others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSjZKTj2ISo&t=1s