Middle East, Mediterranean and Balkans

Malta

The Sunrise Centre continues its after school and holiday learning program. Read the latest news from the center here.



Dada Shantimaya and Didi Ananda Samprajina conduct many meditation and yoga classes with high levels of participation. Dada Shantimaya also runs a homeopathic clinic, and recently published a vegetarian cookbook:

The main Malta yoga center (jagrti) has just been renovated. The occasion was marked by a house warming ceremony and lunch.

A new branch of PCAP (Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Plants) was launched in Malta. PCAP Malta is working in coordination with other animal rights NGOs, including recently in an animal-circus protest in which more than 400 people participated.


Croatia

The master unit (retreat center and agriculture/service project near Zagreb) will now become the main Ananda Marga center in Croatia. Dada Subuddhyananda, newly assigned to Croatia, will use his knowledge of permaculture to help define a vision for the project and implement a phase-wise work plan. An MU study group was started in November.

Also in Croatia, the PCAP dog asylum in Karlovac continues its good work, and the My First Book Contest was conducted successfully again this year.


Cyprus

After many years of effort, Ananda Marga is finally registered as a non-profit organization in Cyprus. Didi Ananda Uttama shifted her base there from Greece, but she continues to visit Greece regularly to conduct classes and workshops. Dada Nityashuddhananda spent some weeks in Cyprus recently, and collective meditations are well attended.


Turkey

Regular classes are held at the yoga center in Besiktas and Dada is often invited for lectures and workshops in various parts of Turkey.


Albania

Our primary school in Tirana continues under the supervision of local margiis.


Jordan

Ananda Marga members conduct regular art and yoga classes for Palestinian refugee children. A retreat and public lecture were held in November, and collective meditation sessions are held regularly in margiis' homes.


Lebanon

A new full-time volunteer has come to work in the Smart Academy project, which is a school, yoga center and kids' after-school coaching center located in the mountainous Chouf region of Lebanon currently teaching 60-plus children and twenty-plus adults.



Also at Smart Academy, a new day school section was added, teaching children aged 10–13, and a public lecture on Ayurveda was held in November, with 80 people attending and fifteen of those receiving followup treatment.

We are slowly introducing more elements of Neohumanist Education to both students and teachers. Niramaya, a very successful NHE school in Taiwan, kindly donated some excellent teaching materials which we are now using in the curriculum. Along with yoga classes for the children we have also started collective singing, chanting, meditating and story-telling sessions with all the students and teachers together. This creates a nice collective flow and I am pleased to see the teachers benefiting as much as the students.

For more info, visit www.yogalebanon.com


Some background of Ananda Marga in Lebanon
 
Ananda Marga has had a full-time presence in Lebanon since 2005, when Dada Ganadevananda went there to establish a homeopathic clinic serving war victims and the poor. The clinic closed after Dada left in 2008 and there was a short period where we had no resident acarya although Dadas and Didis, including myself, were visiting regularly. In November 2009 I moved to Lebanon permanently handing over my work in Syria to Dada Shantashubhananda who was returning there after a five year absence.
 
Before deciding to move here I had been visiting Lebanon periodically and we had a good network of new margiis and interested persons. There was a lot of interest in Ananda Marga and in September 2009 we organized our annual Sectorial Conference in Maaser Shouf, a picturesque mountain village about an hour and a half from Beirut. Over 80 people attended the conference from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan with the largest number of new people coming from Shouf, the region where I have now chosen to start a project. Encouraged by the good response I decided to move here permanently last November.
 
Over the last three months we have started small weekly meditation groups in five places: Beirut central, north Beirut, Bakaata (commercial center of Shouf), Baakleen (old capital of Shouf) and Kabreshmoun, a mountain village closer to Beirut. I now divide my time between Beirut and the mountains. In Beirut we have an apartment provided by one of my students free of charge (now looking a little better and no longer feeling haunted) and in the mountains I am staying with a newly initiated brother in the main street of Bakaata.
 
I have chosen Bakaata as the location for a project combining a yoga and meditation center with after-school tutoring for kids from the age of 5-17. Soon after coming to Lebanon I was fortunate to meet Radha Hassaniye, who was running a small tutoring school and looking for ways to take it in a more spiritual and holistic direction. When she heard about my interest to make a center in Shouf she offered to cooperate and make a joint project suggesting that we relocate to larger premises which would include enough space for both activities. She had already begun trying to teach meditation to the kids but told me she had been praying to God to show her the way to integrate spirituality more into the program of her school as well as into her own life. Radha is an incredibly selfless person whose main motivation is to provide a genuinely holistic education for the kids and to introduce progressive ideas into the community. She is extremely happy with the philosophy, practice and activities of Ananda Marga and she considers her meeting with Ananda Marga as God's answer to her prayers.
 
The program for the kids which we are now implementing includes meditation, breathing, yoga exercises, chanting, affirmations, songs, stories and games together with guided study (helping the kids with their homework) and some special techniques known as accelerated learning and ac mas (Japanese abacus system). As soon as we are able we will introduce other Ananda Marga programs such as involving the children in service and environmental projects, introducing Neohumanist values, etc. There are also programs for the parents and teachers including communication skills and parenting skills along with meditation and yoga classes. We are receiving requests from parents to start a kindergarten and will begin plans for this once the new center is established and running smoothly.
 
The kids are great. Although I don't have a lot of experience working with children I am enjoying the learning process and the kids are responding well. Some of them started practicing meditation at home and became vegetarian after our first class! Some of the kids are already saying that the meditation is helping them with their personal lives as well as their school work. They are feeling happier. One of them came to me the other day and told me she was writing a book and wanted to have a whole chapter about meditation.
 
The new local margiis are also enthusiastic. One of them has agreed to prepare courses for the parents on communication skills and parenting as this is an area of great need in the community. Others are eager to work as teachers and I am planning to take a group of five to the Ananda Marga teacher training program in Holland next month. Another has offered to do the accounting work and so on.
 
Over the last couple of months, as well as conducting regular programs with children, teachers and adults (including parents), I have been participating in planning and development meetings for the school and also involving new margiis in the project. Didi Ananda Rainjana and Didi Ananda Rama (two diodes with a lot of experience in education) have also visited and are supporting the project by giving training to the teachers, Radha and myself. A few weeks ago we began the process of registering a company. The company will be called Center for Neohumanistic Studies, making it part of a network of such centers for Neohumanist Education around the world. A surprisingly large number of our new margiis are teachers and some weeks ago we decided that education would be the most suitable approach for developing Ananda Marga in Lebanon. Unlike Syria, the education system in Lebanon is primarily private and there are virtually no legal complications in setting up a school. Our new company will be able to act as an umbrella for starting similar projects with margi teachers living in other parts of Lebanon.
 
It is due to the connection with Radha that we are in a position to start such an ambitious project in such a short time. I have just been going with the flow – following up the opportunities which presented themselves seemingly on cue one after the other. Radha and her husband are both respected members of the local community. This and the fact that her school already existed are making it easier for the community to accept my sudden appearance in their midst. Radha is also a personal acquaintance of Waliid Joumblatt, the political leader of the Lebanese Druze. His house is ten minutes drive from Bakaata and the margiis already took me to meet him with the purpose of bringing the project to his notice. We had another unexpected positive development: the father of one of the margiis is the general in charge of national security. We were invited to dinner a few weeks ago and the meeting was very friendly. On the way there I discovered that I had my own machine gun in the front passenger seat – a sobering reminder of the situation in Lebanon.
 
Bakaata is the commercial center of the "Shouf" region of Lebanon (primarily Druze population). It is above 1000 metres in elevation and it snows in the winter. The region is very picturesque and an attractive location for people to come to practice meditation and yoga. The local people have sympathy for the path of yoga due to a large component of Indian philosophy in their traditional Druze ideas. Also one of their leaders, Kamal Joumblatt (father of Waliid) was a practicing yogi who went regularly to India and founded a local party known as the Progressive Socialist Party which promoted a kind of spiritual socialism very similar to Prout. Kamal Joumblatt has many devotees in this area which gives us a sympathetic environment for the work of Ananda Marga in the country. Radha herself is a strong admirer of Kamal Joumblatt and for that reason very attracted to Ananda Marga because of its similarities.
 
The project is already running in smaller premises with 60 students and 11 teachers and is popular, though not very profitable due to the limited financial means of the parents. Due to the increasing number of students and the lack of a large space for yoga and meditation we decided to move to the new building. We have set an opening date of March 21 for the new center.
 
We have found a large 400 sq. meter building with plenty of space for our activities in a nice quiet location with great views of the surrounding mountains. The building also has a second floor (a further 400 sq. metres) which is not finished but could be developed later if we need to expand further. The building is near to several other schools making it easy for students to come to the center once their day classes are over. Interestingly, the building belongs to a widow who has not rented it out or lived in it since her husband died twelve years ago. However, when she met Radha and heard of the proposal to make a meditation center there, she liked the idea and agreed to rent it out. Since writing this I have visited the owner and taught her Baba Nam Kevalam meditation, which she enjoyed very much.

Dada Krsnasevananda