Dhyanyoga Center Focuses Charity Efforts in India

	GOOD WORKS: Dhyanyoga Centers help fund a free medical clinic that provides treatment and medicines to people near the small village of Nikora in India.

By Shaye Moore

The large-scale relief efforts that arise at times of natural or man-made disasters deservedly receive a good deal of media attention. Equally important, however, are the ongoing humanitarian efforts that seek to benefit lives on a day-to-day basis. One local Antioch organization, Dhyanyoga Centers, Inc., (DYC) considers such charity to be a part of the spiritual directive under which they work.

DYC is a non-profit center dedicated to building energy for world peace. By offering workshops and retreats, classes in meditation, and weekly public meditation programs, DYC serves as a resource for individuals seeking to live peaceful and more fulfilling lives. The teachings and meditation techniques help individuals reach their full potential in body and mind, leading them on a path of spiritual evolution to inner harmony, integration, and unity in diversity, and thus contributing to world peace.

The programs and classes also open another level of world service. They provide funds and donations to underwrite DYC's charitable projects in the small village of Nikora in the state of Gujurat, India. Centered at Dhyanidham, the ashram led by DYC's spiritual teacher, Shri Anandi Ma, these activities provide a number of needed services to the surrounding community.

First, Dhyanidham helps to meet the medical and educational needs of local residents in a number of ways. Every week at the ashram, a free medical clinic provides treatment and medicines to people from the villages. Once each year a more comprehensive medical camp staffed by volunteer physicians sees nearly 1,000 patients. Since 1992, DYC has also sponsored an "eye camp" where free cataract surgery is provided. In addition, Dhyanidham supports the basic needs of the community's children so that they can attend school. These needs include everything from supplies such as notebooks to a good pair of shoes so that the child's feet are protected from hot roads on the way to school.

Other projects at Dhyanidham include helping to feed pilgrims who pass the ashram on their 800-mile walk around the holy river Narmada. The ashram also keeps a small group of cows, who provide not only milk but also the positive spiritual energy representative of motherhood in nature, a factor especially important to Shri Anandi Ma.

As valuable as these charitable works are to those who receive them, Shri Anandi Ma emphasizes that those who donate in support of such works also benefit greatly. "Performing acts of charity—especially actions that help others in both material and spiritual ways—is a powerful part of spiritual practice," she says. "The blessings you receive as a result of a donation are beyond the contemplation and understanding of the mind."

People who donate may choose to honor a loved one, living or deceased, in which case the merits of the charity will flow to the person so honored. As Shri Anandi Ma states, "Charity is a part of spiritual practice. If that charity supports the spiritual evolution of another soul, then it is the most beneficial gift of all.

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