An ashram ( Sanskrit : आश्रम , āśrama ) is a spiritual hermitage or a monastery in Indian religions .
5-732: Tolstoy Farm was an ashram initiated and organised by Mohandas Gandhi during his South African movement. At its creation in 1910 the ashram served as the headquarters of the campaign of satyagraha against discrimination against Indians in Transvaal, where it was located. The ashram, Gandhi's second in South Africa (the first was Phoenix Farm, Natal, in 1904) was named after Russian writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy , whose 1894 book, The Kingdom of God Is Within You , greatly influenced Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence . Hermann Kallenbach ,
10-412: A Gandhi supporter, allowed Gandhi and seventy to eighty other people to live there as long as their local movement was in effect. Kallenbach suggested the name for the community, which soon constructed three new buildings to serve as living quarters, workshops, and a school. Sjt. Pragji Desai also helped in this programme. There were no servants on the farm, and all the work, from cooking down to scavenging,
15-510: The princes receive martial instruction from the sage, especially in the use of divine weapons. In the Mahabharata , Krishna , in his youth, goes to the ashram of Sandipani to gain knowledge of both intellectual and spiritual matters. Boarding schools , especially in the tribal areas of Maharashtra and elsewhere in India , are called ashram shala or ashram schools. One such school is
20-598: The various forms of yoga . Other sacrifices and penances, such as yajnas , were also performed. Many ashrams also served as gurukulas , residential schools for children under the guru-shishya tradition . Sometimes, the goal of a pilgrimage to the ashram was not tranquility, but instruction in some art, especially warfare. In the Ramayana , the princes of ancient Ayodhya , Rama , and Lakshmana , go to Vishvamitra 's ashram to protect his yajnas from being defiled by emissary-demons of Ravana . After they prove their mettle,
25-703: Was done by the inmates. Ashram The Sanskrit noun āśrama- is a thematic nominal derivative from the root śram 'toil' (< PIE * ḱremh 2 , cf. śramaṇa ) with the prefix ā 'towards.' An ashram is a place where one strives towards a goal in a disciplined manner. Such a goal could be ascetic , spiritual , yogic or any other. An ashram would traditionally, but not necessarily in contemporary times, be located far from human habitation, in forests or mountainous regions , amidst refreshing natural surroundings conducive to spiritual instruction and meditation . The residents of an ashram regularly performed spiritual and physical exercises, such as
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