One day 22 years ago, a former hippie threw her shorn hair into
the Ganges River (in India), said her final monastic vows, and never looked back. Swami Mangalananda describes herself as "a WASP from
Wisconsin," but she's also a Hindu nun and the secretary of the Badarikashrama Temple (15602 Maubert Ave., San Leandro, CA).
"My interest in
non-Western philosophies began in high school and continued through the
Sixties," she said. "I became a vegetarian. I listened to Indian
music. By dressing in Madras clothes and Indian jewelry and living communally,
a lot of us in those days were imitating the people of Eastern cultures without
completely realizing it. I went through a very strong Christian phase, then an
agnostic phase. I was disenchanted with religion, yet I had spiritual longings
and altered states of consciousness and a lot of spiritual experiences — not
just from drugs."
A devoted peace activist and
civil-rights campaigner, "I developed a very strong attachment for Mahatma
Gandhi, and that attachment stayed with me," Mangalananda said. "I
didn't become a yuppie. Sometimes I actuallychose poverty."
While living in San Leandro and
studying health education at San Francisco State University, she wandered into
Badarikashrama one day. It was the first Hindu temple she'd ever visited.
Immediately inspired by its founder, Swami Omkarananda, she began working at
the ashram, taking classes, and becoming first a student monk, then a full nun. She
stuck with it. In 1997, Omkarananda transferred her to Badarikashrama's
fifty-acre sister ashram in Madihalli, India.
