Last week Dennis and I vacationed in Carlsbad, California, and had the opportunity to visit the cliffside Self-Realization Fellowship Meditation Gardens in Encinitas. My daughter took me to the beautifully landscaped and peaceful gardens before the pandemic, and ever since then I have been looking forward to taking Dennis to experience them. While the gardens are in springtime’s full bloom now, it is lovely and open to the public throughout the year.

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Strolling through the paths is a visual delight. Benches are provided for people who want to meditate or just sit for a time. The individual gardens are connected by small waterfalls and koi ponds that are full of the large, multi-colored, and clearly very old fish. I was curious, and at home read that koi are actually carp that have been selected or culled for color. Their main colors are white, black, red, orange, yellow, blue, brown and cream, all of which can be seen at the Meditation Gardens. Judging by how they swam in languid circles throughout the ponds, occasionally bumping into each other, they seemed very serene and content to have a home there.

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The gardens overlook the Pacific Ocean, adding expansive views to their setting. Near the cliff, there is a striking Monterey pine that is over 75 years old, called the “Ming Tree” because it is shaped and cultivated as a bonsai tree, which is, like the koi, a Japanese art form with Chinese origins.

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Beginning in 1937, there was a temple overlooking the ocean, where thousands came to meditate and learn from its founder, Paramahansa Yogananda, but in 1948 the temple had to be relocated due to bluff erosion. The current Self-Realization Fellowship temple is on South Coast Highway 101, two blocks from the Meditation Gardens. It has three large lotus-shaped towers, the lotus being a symbol of spiritual unfoldment. A lotus’s roots are in the earth, but rise above the mud to blossom, thus the phrase “No mud, no lotus,” which has symbolic meaning to my daughter, my granddaughter, and me. We each have the same small lotus tattoo, representing how we came through and “bloomed” after some traumatic years together.

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Dennis and I enjoyed an uplifting sunny day at the Meditation Gardens, and appreciate the gifts it bestows on all who visit there.

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Billie Rogers

April, 2022

 

 

 

NOTES:

Paramahansa Yogananda taught that we can apply the spiritual principles in all the great religions to awaken our full potential.

 

The Self-Realization Fellowship is an international nonprofit religious organization founded in 1920. Its teachings center around methods of meditation that allow each individual to realize the one Truth underlying all religions and all life.

 

The Self-Realization Fellowship Meditation Gardens are open to visitors Tuesday – Saturday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and Sunday, 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.