Part 4

Part IV

SACRAMENTO

The story of Sacramento Center is one for the ages. I think it will be difficult for people of the coming years to believe that selfless dedication in a project of this kind was ever possible. I tell here what I experienced, and what I heard from others, as well as I can recall.
We begin with an excerpt from a 1982 letter to me from Swami Shantaswarupananda:
"It was started in the house of Mr. Martin. Swami Ashokananda and myself were giving lectures in alternate weeks in the evening. Due to indisposition Swami Ashokananda could not go after a time. So I only used to go. The audience consisted of only the families of the two Martin brothers and another 2 or 3 of their friends, in all about 9 or 10 people. Few of them were deeply interested in religion. Our monks from Olema were constructing the center in the new site. When the foyer was ready we shifted our lectures there. The audience increased a little; 14 to 16 or 17 as far as I remember. Later Swami
Shraddhananda came and took up the work... In the beginning it is hard, patient work."

When the seven acres on Mission Ave. was purchased for/by the Sacramento group of devotees there was not a living thing on it but weeds. Swami Ashokananda had assured them that some of his monks would come and settle on the land and begin to build a Center. The first men raised a tent and slept on the ground and began their construction plans. The climate was not easy—very hot in midsummer , below freezing sometimes in winter. Kerosene stoves were used to heat the spaces, for a number of years. I was not present, so am not sure who all worked there for the first few years, but Del Liechty (Ananda Chaitanya) and Clair Scott (Shanta Chaitanya, later Asitananda ) were in the vanguard. What you see at Sacramento Center today represents the life-work of these two, aided by Fran Chambers (Bhaktimayananda), Adolph Gschwend (Tarakananda), John Dobson, myself, and many others who came and went, plus visitors of temporary stay. The whole place was built brick by brick, tile by tile and tree by tree, by the men themselves, from scratch. And by the women of San Francisco, who came on certain weekends, led by Dorothy Peters, who had worked out with Swami the plans for soil conditioning and planting. The lath-house was built largely by a Sufi visitor of some months, named Muzawir.
When I arrived the basic building had been constructed, that is some indoor quarters for monks and a small shrine room (the future foyer of the auditorium), utilities, kitchen and baths. Can anyone who didn't see it imagine what an enterprise this was: to remove all the clayey soil around this building for yards and yards, to a depth of 4 ft and 6 ft and to mounds on the boundary of the property, till the whole acreage was surrounded by this hill, which was promptly planted to ground cover. All the engineering knowledge and experience of these men was called upon in operating the big bulldozers and shovels needed for this undertaking, which went on for several years. There were just big chambers dug in the ground, like archeology projects, for a while. I have photos to prove it! Then the filling-in began, with new soil-mix a combination of sawdust, rice hulls and sand, loads and loads of each, being delivered by dump-trucks and having to be mixed as they went into the spaces. At one point Ananda, who was operating a conveyor belt for the mixing got his arm caught in the machine and broke his hand. What a day that was. Every conceivable skill and talent we had was put to use in Sacramento—painting, tiling, carpentry, cabinetry, cooking, canning, gardening, horticulture, ritual worship—almost the only thing I can recall for which professionals were engaged was the final asphalting of the roads and paths. The removal of soil and building of the "mound" was further complicated by the instructions which came from San Francisco sometimes contradictory, sometimes reversing an order given only days or weeks before. It is very difficult to construct something in Sacramento by instructions from someone living in San Francisco!
John Dobson's special project was the Italian Cypress trees. Look at them now! When I arrived in 1958 they were little slips, planted in sand. His work was to plant all these and nurture them to make a barrier between us and the swimming club. On a lighter note, history may like to record that the manager of the swimming and tennis club permitted swimming free in his pool in the early morning. Adolph and John were the two who took him up on it. John and Adolph and I knew little of building, but we had to help with that too, all the time. Those outer walls of adobe and wire were raised by all of us in a summer. Fran would paint things as soon as they were finished. Swami Shraddhananda would occasionally don work clothes and help out too, even though he had to travel regularly to Olema and S.F. In this he was assisted by the man who has lived like a member of the Northern California monasteries all these years, without ever having been an actual member, Mr. Robert Reed. He began living this life in about 1950, I think, and still has the same car in which he drove the Swamis back and forth for the last half-century. At Sacramento he has done gardening in his "retirement".
Services on Sunday began in the Chapel almost as soon as they could, with Swami S. speaking, and there was a little music (I played harmonium or reed-organ for hymns and for a time directed a small "choir"). A bit later Swami began doing public ritual worship at the shrine before the Sunday service. Before we opened to the public an electronic organ was purchased and installed. Work on the property began in 1948 (?) and the Center was dedicated and opened in l964.
All these activities required constant attention and analysis of detail. In addition to all of this we had a morning class, for some of those years, five days a week when Swami was in residence. Ananda continued, for the ensuing years, to be the manager of the Center, taking from Swami's shoulders innumerable responsibilities for accounts, business contacts and legal affairs. To be the Manager of a center is an undertaking which only persons like Ananda, Chidrupananda and others can report on.
This will give some idea of the ways in which these men gave their lives to the Vedanta Society.

(Further details on the Sacramento story may be found in material on Swami Shraddhananda which is in the keeping of Pravrajika Vrajaprana of Santa Barbara, and in the Letters of Swami Shantaswarupananda.

Part IV SACRAMENTO

Part IV

SACRAMENTO