Anil Pant

Imagine a place in the United Kingdom (UK) where you can’t use your mobile phone! It is in Skanda Vale Temple in a remote wooded valley of South West Wales. Wales is one of the four provinces (called Countries) of the United Kingdom. The mobile signal is not there in most of the main temple premise area- except in some limited places where the signal is stronger- thus if you want to use mobile you have to go to a certain higher places with good signal strength. The temple defines itself as ‘multi-faith ashram’ (refuge).
The ashram is five hours drive from London and is 20 miles from a small Wales town called Carmarthen. From Carmarthen, there is no public transport and only taxi hiring is available- thus the ashram is in a place from where you can’t go anywhere else. It is the end of the road route. The ashram website states that every year over 90,000 people come from all over the world to worship in its three multi-faith temples and at the Samadhi of the temple’s Guru. Skanda Vale covers over 300 acres of beautiful woodland and pasture. The ashram provides a sanctuary for animals, which includes a herd of 60 cows, numerous ponies, donkeys, birds and two elephants. The animals are raised in completely violence free environment.

Guru Sri Subramanium
The ashram was established in 1973 by a guru called Sri Subramanium, born in Sri Lanka in an aristocratic family. The guru later settled in the UK, pursued his spiritual journey and devoted his life to the service of humanity. The ashram’s three temples are that of Lord Murugan, Maha Kali and Sri Ranganatha. The ashram celebrates major Buddhist festivals and holds Christian Mass every Sunday and has about 25 monks and nuns who live there full time.
The monks and nuns are unmarried renunciants (sannyasi), dedicating their lives to loving and serving the Divine through karma yoga and bhakti yoga- thus the ashram is not a meditation centre but a place where pursuit of god is done through bhakti (devotion) and karma.
These monks and nuns have taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The ashram does not employ any staff. The monks and nuns in the temple are unpaid sanyasis who undertake all the daily chores as ‘seva’ or selfless service.
The ashram provides free vegetarian food and accommodation, with visitors advised to bring blanket for sleep. The accommodation has to be booked online in advance. People who visit the ashram tend to take with them uncooked food, fruit and other stuff like cooking oil. The temple every year sends 80 tonnes of excess food to the charities to be distributed to needy people. There are a lot of visitors who visit the temple and return on the same day, others stay overnight or a few days. But there are also a few people who spend longer. These people are expected to volunteer in cooking and cleaning and do other work for the upkeep of the ashram.
The ashram has a belief coming from its guru that there are many religions, but only one God. All life emanates from, and merges into, an underlying principle of non-dual timeless consciousness, expressing itself throughout creation in a myriad of different names and forms. One key belief of the ashram is that through selfless service, people can learn to overcome human egocentric nature and begin to experience the presence of the Divine in every facet of Creation. Thus, though at the first sight, the ashram may reflect more the Hindu ways of worshipping, it is not a single-religion place. The bhajans (hymns) sung there not only extol gods/deities found in Hindu scriptures, but also in other religions. So, it is common to find a hymn extolling Jesus, Allah or hear a Buddhist mantra!
Fundamental to the philosophy of Skanda Vale is that all life is sacred. Many of animals in ashram have been saved from neglect and slaughter. Their welfare is seen as an important part of the community’s discipline and training. One of the most popular animals of the ashram is ‘Valli’, the temple elephant. As a baby, she had been discovered by Sri Lankan villagers, sheltering with a herd of wild buffalo. She was taken to an elephant orphanage, and a year later, was donated to the ashram by Sri Lankan government in recognition of the ashram’s service to Sri Lankans living in the UK.

Free Hospice
The ashram also runs a free hospice. Over the years, the ashram monks, nuns and volunteers have developed a reputation for providing really wonderful care for the sick and dying. The hospice has cared for hundreds of families. In 2016 the ashram opened a brand new, six-bedroom inpatient hospice unit. This hospice is run by qualified, full-time volunteers. The hospice is one of the efforts of the ashram to demonstrate what people can achieve through selfless service – lives are enriched and made beautiful through self-less work.
I have had a chance to visit the ashram three times. As soon as I arrived in the temple in the first visit, the place provided an aura of serenity and divinity. A place where people use only what they need, not what they want. A place which can teach the modern human beings that food is the most important thing in our life, and not the internet! A lesson that human beings can live in harmony with animals without killing them for food.
A place where my mind was not so judgemental about everything I see, because I could see that there are monks and nuns who live austere life with selfless service to pursue what they believe in, not relying on electronics, not causing a lot of stress to the nature and loving not only other human beings, but all animals too. The place is evidence that money is not the thing to ‘die for’ but a useful instrument at the disposal of human being for its convenience- the ashram has a small shop where basic essential goods and souvenirs can be bought.
The temple’s main priest is British who told me in my third visit in 2018 that he is a sannyasi and has been living in the ashram for over 25 years. The priest had come to the ashram when he was in his 20s.The ashram runs several Bhajan and devotion sessions in a day, with one Bhajan session taking place in Mahakali temple uphill. It also does many pujas (sacred offerings). I had an opportunity to attend a Vishnu Mahabhishekam puja in Ranganatha temple. The puja lasted for about one and half hours. An English priest was chanting Sanskrit mantra for over one hour fifteen minutes but without looking at any book so I could see that he could remember the whole mantra verbatim.
The puja was done duly in Sanatan dharma ritual, by giving bath to Vishnu, applying honey, ghee, yoghurt and things like vermillion while the English priest chanted the mantra and several other sannyasis performed the puja diligently following the ritual. I have hardly seen such level of diligence to rituals in any other place.

Renunciation
The ashram provides evidences that renunciation of life is not about abandoning all worldly things and duties, it includes caring for the nature and people in different ways, not only seeking persona liberation through focus on one’s own mind and body. The best way to achieve god is by serving others selflessly. It is about living a simple life without causing a lot of distress to the nature, loving animals and living along side them and not to ask them to live ‘for’ human beings, it is about serving the poor people- whether by providing excess food or by providing service for people to die receiving love and care. The ashram is also an example that when people do self-less service, you can run a charity providing free food and accommodation through people’s anonymous donations: the ashram does not receive any grants and is run solely through anonymous donations.
It is an evidence that you can run a charity ashram that spans 300 acres of land with a need to take care of so many animals, people and nature without taking any money from government and solely relying on anonymous donations from people! If you are visiting UK and Wales, the place is a must-see: not only for those who follow religion but for others also to be able to see what being truly ‘religious’ should look like in practice!

(The author is a development and human rights practitioner who has lived in the UK)