Daily Life

The ashram gong sounds at 6:00 a.m., awakening the students and community to morning meditation, which begins at 6:30 a.m. in the Meditation Temple. The kitchen cooks rise early too, and the dining room prepared with soft music and candles to greet the day. Breakfast is always in silence, to hold onto the inner peace gained through meditation.

Classes begin at 9:00 a.m. and are held Mondays through Thursdays. Some classes are held in the evenings. Most of the classes are held here at the main campus and some are held in Ananda Village, the larger community 5 miles from the college. A van shuttle transports students, or we ride-share.

Field trips in the local area and Northern California are not uncommon. Students welcome the chance to venture to nearby Ananda Village, into Nevada City or Grass Valley for entertainment or a change of pace. Those who’ve lived in cities usually need a period of adjustment to the quiet and isolated beauty of our forest campus.

Once or twice a year, the college goes on 3-5 week study abroad trips, incorporating what we’ve been studying into the field. In the past, these trips have included travel to India, Egypt, Peru, the American Southwest and the Sonoma Coast. You can read more about these in our “study abroad” section.

Fridays and the weekends are reserved for study, play or working. The college offers work-study scholarships to help students with tuition, room and board costs. Lunch is at 12:30 and dinner is at 6:30 p.m. All the meals here are delicious vegetarian.

Dinner is usually the most energetic time of day, when college students, staff, residents, faculty and older high school boarders have a chance to come together in the dining room. Socializing ranges from interactions with other young people from the village, having a group kirtan, putting on a play together, volleyball or basketball, going out for a movie, watching a video, hiking one of the many nearby trails, or cooking an international meal together.

The kitchen has a small bakery that makes homemade granola, a variety of cookies and breads. There is also a small catering business that the students may help with. As our campus is located within a Meditation Retreat, students with a work-study scholarship may work by cleaning cabins, working in the kitchen, chopping wood for the wood stove in our retreat lounge, working in the gardens or greenhouses, maintenance, or a variety of small jobs that keep the guest retreat operating smoothly.