How Ashrams traditionally supported Students in Need

Friends who visited the Ashram in the years around 2005 always noticed a group of teenage boys dressed in long, yellow, Indian shirts sitting around and talking or walking busily from there to there in the Ashram. ‘Who are they?’ they asked.

They were ‘the Ashram boys’. They had been already there when I was in the cave. It was not the same boys throughout the years, they always changed and whenever a friend would come again, he or she would meet other people living with them at the Ashram. For Indians, it is a normal sight to see at an Ashram – for westerners of course not.

So we explained this old Indian tradition. An Ashram is a place to share and you will always find all different kinds of people there. Young people who have interest in spirituality, in Hinduism and the scriptures know that they will be welcomed in an Ashram during their studies. In order to read the scriptures, they need to learn Sanskrit. While many of the Sanskrit schools take no fees or only a nominal amount for their examination, the students still need a place to live and that they find in the Ashrams near their Sanskrit school. In exchange for living and eating there, they help with the chores around the house.

It was always nice to have them in the Ashram because they were young and happy – it contributes to the joyful atmosphere in a home if you have young people there! Additionally, it is nice to be able to help them on their way, help them get educated in a certain field where they would later find a job and be able to earn money and support their families. We even paid their examination fees as a gesture of support.

In 2003 we decided to offer Sanskrit classes at our Ashram, too. We hired one of the best and most known teachers of the area to come every morning and teach Sanskrit at our Ashram. We did not reserve this class to those boys who lived with us though – we opened it to everyone willing to learn. That is how in the years to come there would always be about a hundred people walking into the Ashram in the morning for the daily Sanskrit class.

Obviously, the students who were living with us had a big benefit from that! When you live together with someone, you get to know them a bit better and an emotional bond grows, even if the other one is only there for a certain time, leaving when his studies are completed or he found another place. We thought about ways how we could support these students even more and my sister, who had a master degree in English language, decided that she would personally help them by teaching them English.

People who came to visit us in 2005 thus witnessed how those teenage boys who lived with us could learn English and Sanskrit as well as all the basics for living. It was a good time, a nice way of sharing with someone whom we could over the years then see settling in their own lives.