Visit by Brother Martin and his students from the Disentis monastery grammar school.
Somaskanda Ashram received special visitors on the last Sunday of January. Brother Martin from the Monastery of Disentis brought a group of about 14 students from their boarding school to visit us. Disentis is a town in Canton Graubünden located about an hour from the ashram. Brother Martin had read about the temple in the newspaper. He was planning to make an excursion to the Fideriser Heuberge with his students and had the idea of enriching it by a multi-faith experience at Somaskanda Ashram. The students, who were all very polite and interested, arrived during the morning and were given a warm welcome by Swami Govinda and us all. Swami Govinda told them about the origins of Skanda Vale and the philosophy of the ashram and monastic order. In turn, Brother Martin shared with us the history of the monastery of Disentis and presented some offerings which they had brought with them. Prior to the lunch time puja, the visitors were shown into the temple. This gave them the opportunity to talk about all the new and unknown aspects of temple worship. After the puja, we all sat together, ate and shared our experiences. It was then already time for our visitors to leave and race down the mountain on their sledges. We said our heart-felt goodbyes and promised to honour Brother Martin’s kind invitation of visiting the monastery in Disentis.