Sunday Service
Schedule for Sunday Service in Bothell:
9:15 am: Silent group meditation
10 am: Sunday Service
10:10am: Circle of Joy (Sunday School)
Sundays at Ananda Meditation Temple are the highlight of the week and are an excellent occasion for your first visit. Sunday Service is drawn from the ancient meditation tradition of the East and the mystical traditions of Christ, with scriptural readings from both the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita. Service includes music, chanting, a brief period of meditation, inspirational talk, and a beautiful ceremony called A Festival of Light.
Paramhansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi and guru-preceptor for the work of Ananda, encouraged respect for all religions and all forms of sincere worship, service, and meditation. His own line of guru-preceptors include Jesus Christ, Babaji (formerly Krishna), Lahiri Mahasaya, and Swami Sri Yukteswar. Therefore we show particular respect and reverence to Yogananda and these illumined souls who sent him to the West. But our devotion is essentially and always, as he taught us, to God alone, and to the manifest divinity in those whom God sends to earth in human form to teach and uplift others.
At Ananda, each person who comes and participates does so with his or her own, inner realization and recognition. No one form of reverence, belief, or personal relationship to God or the gurus is expected or assumed. All are welcome to the weekly services and meditations. The only suggestion we make is to come with an open heart and an open mind.
Families with children are welcome to come to regular Sunday Service at 10am. Shortly after the service starts, at around 10:10am, children will be dismissed to attend Circle of Joy (Sunday School) in the downstairs classroom. Circle of Joy is appropriate for children ages 4-10. One Sunday a month, parents are also invited to attend a parent support meeting. Read about Ananda’s full children’s offerings here.
Past Recordings
Sunday, July 6, 2025 | Abiding in God with Nayaswami Padma
Abiding in God. This topic is synonymous with Attunement. Attunement is perhaps the most important topic in our spiritual lives. Without it, we’re like a hamster spinning in a cage. With it, we feel ever closer to God and the bliss of our soul.
June 29, 2025 | The Redeeming Light with Nayaswami Jamuna
The question of light; its source and its purpose has interested man through the yugas. Because the night sky in every age is omnipresent, mankind has applied its mind to figuring out how the sun, moon and stars affect our wellbeing. Eventually scientists could measure the speed of light. Now we can understand that the physical world is only
Sunday, June 22, 2025 | The Eternal Now with Nayaswami Hriman
The last several weeks’ Sunday Service topics have include “how devotees fall (spiritually)” and “how devotees rise!” Now we come to the central point: here AND now. There’s no “time” like the present, which makes it a great gift (indeed, a “present’). The very essence of the eternal dharma (teachings) is that outwardly all is flux but inwardly and in
Sunday, June 15, 2025 How Devotees Rise with Murali Venkatrao
Bad moods are self-perpetuating. The trick, Swami Kriyananda writes, is to refuse to accept negativity as your reality. Even when in throes of fear, anger, melancholy, or grief, insist on seeing yourself as something greater. There is a deep spiritual reason why one should try to do this. The Bhagavad Gita says that the real cause of all suffering is
Why Do Devotees Fall? with Asha Nayaswami June 8, 2025
Asha is one of the spiritual directors at Ananda Palo Alto, an author and a popular speaker. She travels internationally sharing the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda and Swami Kriyananda.