In this deeply heartfelt episode, we sit in sacred conversation with Swami Sankalpananda, reflecting on her journey from a quiet childhood in Hungary to a life devoted to God, Guru, and selfless service. Swamiji shares tender memories of her early spiritual stirrings, the teachers and texts that guided her, her first encounters with Kriya Yoga and the ashram life, and the profound surrender that led her to monastic vows. Woven throughout is a gentle teaching on balance—between meditation and seva, creativity and discipline, inner joy and outer service—offering listeners inspiration, reassurance, and a living example of walking one’s dharmic path with determination, humility, and love.
About Our Guest
Swami Sankalpananda Giri was born in Hungary. A spiritual seeker from a young age, she eventually found the path of Kriya Yoga and was initiated in April 2004 in Hungary. Soon after, in June 2004, she met her Master, Shri Guruji Paramahamsa Prajnananandaji, at the Tattendorf Ashram in Austria. Guided by her sincere aspiration for monastic life, she joined the Tattendorf Ashram in February 2005 and later participated in the 3rd Brahmachari Training Course from December 2005 until May 2006 in Balighai, India. Afterwards, she continued to reside at the Tattendorf Ashram, deepening her sadhana while engaging in seva. In 2016, she was ordained as a monk in the Giri monastic order by her Master, who gave her the name Sankalpananda, meaning “the bliss of strong determination.”
Episode Transcript
Marydale Ma
Om and pranam, dear friends, and welcome to you. I’m so glad that you’ve chosen to join us today to be a part of this sacred conversation. Before I introduce our beautiful guest, let us pause and truly arrive in this moment. Begin by silencing your phone, and if you can, turn away from any distraction, and begin to bring your full attention just here, right here, into the now.
Allow your body to soften, your breath to slow, and if you wish, gently close your eyes and begin to feel the sweetness of your own breath, the quiet rhythm of your breath moving through you. Settling, softening, opening.
Heavenly Father, Divine Mother, Beloved Lord, to our Divine Gurudev, Paramahansa Hariharananda, our Beloved Guruji, Paramahansa Pragyanananda, our Paramguru, Paramahansa Yogananda, and the majestic masters of the entire Kriya Yoga throughout time, we bow to you all in reverence, in respect, in honor, in surrender.
We are so grateful for this moment in time to come together to share the wisdom and delight of the women that are on the path of Kriya Yoga near and far. We thank you for this auspicious privilege, and at the same time ask that you will be with us and let only truth be spoken here, moving through our hearts, one to another, around the planet.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Father, Mother, God.
Aum Shanti, Aum Shanti, Aum Shanti. Amen.
And thank you, thank you, thank you.
We’re so delighted on this day to welcome Swami Sankalpanandaji to our humble home here at our Living in Joy podcast. Swamiji, thank you for carving out time to be with us on this beautiful day. I know you’re in Vienna. I’m in Los Angeles.
And so it’s a phenomenon that we’re able to all come together in real time to celebrate you and our path together. So welcome.
And I’d like to start, if you don’t mind, from the beginning. Can you tell us a little bit about your early life in Hungary and what it was like growing up in a small town surrounded by your family and nature?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
Thank you, Ma. So happy to be here with you and with all. And it is really the grace of God and Gurus that we can join together, although quite different environment and two different continents, and it came together.
So my childhood was—I really had a nice childhood. Whenever I think back, I feel I was fortunate to some extent. Because it was a small town, and although my parents divorced, I had wonderful grandparents, and I spent a lot of time, especially with my grandmother, in nature and being in their orchard and in their farm.
And I loved to be with animals and plants, to help her. And she was a real grandmother who was teaching me cooking and also handworks like embroidery and knitting and such things. And I spent all my holidays there with her.
They had a bakery in the town, so I was, as a young child, already there around helping. She taught me how to be polite, how to greet the people, how to be nice with the people, how to give out the bread and like this.
And so I really had a happy childhood, I must say.
Marydale Ma
Oh, that’s so wonderful. And what a great blessing to be so close to your grandparents. And as you look back on those moments, Swamiji, they were quietly preparing you for your spiritual life.
And I know that when we spoke, you kind of referred to yourself as being introverted as a child. How did all of this lead you more towards spirit?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
To be honest, I think, you know, as our Masters also say, that spirituality something comes from previous samskaras, like it just doesn’t come just from nowhere. But of course, there is need for a befitting environment.
And although my family was not particularly religious, but they were spiritual in their own way, as I told, like the peace of the old people or my grandmother, and the closeness of nature.
And I really loved to be silent and just read my books, be quiet. So it was sometimes also surprising for my environment—to my mother, and later on even to my classmates—that I was not like them. You know, not so outgoing or not like how a modern Western young woman would live. So I wasn’t like that.
But nobody could understand, but I knew there was something within.
And when I was an early teenager, I started reading spiritual books, and then as it was like a dawn in my life, I understood that that is the one thing I really missed, or that is my path really. That it is not the way as usually people live, but this is something more.
So I spent more and more time reading. And I had a very good God and Guru’s guide. Even directly I didn’t have my Guruji yet, but it happened to be that in school my physics–math teacher, she was spiritual.
And so we spent most of the math classes listening to her advice on spirituality. And she had an extended library of books about spiritual topics, so I could borrow her books, which was wonderful.
So this is how it all started.
Marydale Ma
Oh, that’s a beautiful story. And I know that at this point in time you shared that something inside of you was beginning to stir pretty much, and your teacher was highly influential.
Do you think that there was something about her presence or words that actually started to awaken something in you? Was she that important on your path?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
In a way, yes. Because it is now impossible to imagine, but if you think, I was—I think I was in my early teenage, so like around, I would say, almost 30 years back, 28 years back.
And that time in Hungary, we didn’t have a lot of—Hungary maybe, but not in my town—a lot of resources where you could get information. It is unimaginable now, but that time it was not there. Also no internet as is now.
And I know we had one bookshop in the town that I used to visit, and maybe once in a month or once in a few weeks they had one piece of spiritual book, and that I always purchased. Just that you see the conditions.
And in that desert, I would say, like this, you know, you find someone who speaks about spirituality and who has a lot of books. So it was really a fountain of information for me, and also who guided me then further.
And yes, essentially, because after I graduated from high school, I was really perplexed what to do, because not really any college interested me. Like I didn’t feel the call to study something which doesn’t interest me really.
And then I didn’t know what to do. And then this teacher, who became my friend later on—we became friends after school and we met a lot and talked—she told me that she enrolled to a college of, let’s say, it was called the College of Natural Sciences.
More about spirituality, religion, and like that. And I enrolled there. It was a private institution, and I spent there two years.
And that was the place that I got to know about Kriya Yoga. Because again, I had a teacher there also, an elderly lady, very sweet one, who was my teacher of comparative religion in that college.
And she told us that she has a lot of experience and she has seen many paths. She has been in India. And she said she tells from experience that one can count on one hand today in Europe or in the West how many masters are there who are really realized or paths that really lead to the goal.
And she said one is Kriya Yoga.
Later on I got to know she was initiated. And of course later we became also friends with her.
And so it was anyhow—it was very instrumental. One teacher and then the next teacher and my classmate then gave me the book. You know which one.
And then I found my path.
Marydale Ma
That’s wonderful that you had two very influential women there to guide you. Because your early days, you were in a Christian school, and yet through your reading and insatiable appetite for knowledge and spirituality, it led you to Eastern philosophy, which was very powerful for you, and landed you in the arms of Yoganandaji and Autobiography of a Yogi.
What was it like the first time you read that book?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
It was like coming home. Because I have been reading books of spirituality since I was, I think, 12. You know, like everybody on aura and chakras and reincarnation and many types of esoteric things.
And then I went to this high school, college later on, as I told you, but still I felt it was not what I really wanted.
And then my friend gave me this book and told me, I give you this book to read because you always want to speak about realization, and this is about that.
And when I read it, I felt this is mine. This is—I can’t say—it is not just that this I want. I felt I came home. This is the one which is mine. There was no doubt about it.
Marydale Ma
So after reading, you immediately felt this is my path. And what did that recognition feel like inside your heart, finally?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
It was very nice. You know what I did?
Because it was the Hungarian translation of Yoganandaji’s book—it is translated even into Hungarian—and on the back side there was the contact of the Hungarian Kriya Yoga group. Very practical. And I called them up and I told them, when is the next initiation?
And they said, well, we don’t know if somebody is coming in the spring from Tatendorf to initiate and like this. And I said, I don’t mind. I can go to India. I go anywhere. I want to get initiated.
And then there was the grace that they told me after some time, you don’t need to go to India because we got the news that Swami Mangalananda is coming to Budapest, to the capital of Hungary, so you can come here to take initiation.
And then there was no doubt anymore that it was my path.
Marydale Ma
So you met Swami Mangalanandaji and later Guruji for the first time. What was that encounter like to you? Did you know right away you had found your spiritual home?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
You know, when I was in Budapest before initiation, the Friday public lecture, introductory into the Kriya Yoga, we say like this in Europe. And right on the public lecture I saw Mangalanandaji, and I saw a monk living in an ashram.
I heard about her, and I got so excited. I said, oh, this is possible. Because I wanted so much a spiritual path and also to be a monk.
I was really attracted to monastic life, but not in the Christian way. Not that it is bad, but it just didn’t feel that it was mine.
And then it was something, you know, like an ashram and quite near. And I asked her, oh really, and you are a monk and living in Tatendorf? And how can one come? I also want to stay in ashram.
And then she was surprised, because I was just there to get initiated, you know, fully new.
And she said, no, no, you know, Kriya Yoga is teaching to live in the world. You can have a family. You can do everything in God consciousness. One does not have to be a monk and does not need to stay in ashram.
And she was talking like this because I was very new and of course she didn’t know how determined I am.
And I was listening to her politely, and I went away, and inside I was thinking, well, she says like this, but still I’m going to come to the ashram.
Marydale Ma
And you found your way there. And you’re still there. That’s very wonderful.
And you alluded to a beautiful story about your first meeting with Guruji and how he finally permitted you to stay at the ashram. Can you take a few minutes and share that story with us?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
That is very nice.
So I got initiated in 2004, April. And the Hungarian group was very active. And that year Guruji was to come to Tatendorf to our ashram in June for a seminar.
And the Hungarian group was already preparing and discussing to come out together because one of them had a summer house in a nearby town, still in Hungary, near the border of Hungary and Austria. So it was cheaper and we got accommodation there.
They were discussing to come together by car, share the car, stay in that summer house, and come daily to the program.
And of course, I was full of ears. I was very excited. They’re going to the ashram, and I want to come.
So I came with them.
And at that time, I didn’t know much about Guruji. I just came with the people.
When I came, Baba was here, and I saw He was intensely looking at me.
Perhaps He felt that one of His child maybe is going to come home or something. But I was very surprised and a little bit afraid. I was very reserved and shy.
By the end of the program—also my English at that time, I had studied English before and passed good exams, but I didn’t have practice speaking—I managed to collect myself and say a few sentences to Guruji in my own way.
And I said that I want to come back.
And then He said, OK, like just for the program, you know, for some program or something.
Then I went away, and I was in Hungary, but I was not in peace. I was thinking of Tatendorf all the time. I wanted to come back to ashram.
I wrote to the office. At that time, I had to write to Nisanganandaji—then Anneli Zéma—she was the Secretary General here. Guruji had to permit it.
I wrote about my desire and that I have no desire for worldly life and want to join.
But Guruji was in India, so she replied that Baba is not here and later He will give reply.
So I had to wait a couple of months.
Then after some time, I got a reply that I should come to Tatendorf and keep in touch with Tatendorf and Mangalanandaji.
Guruji was to come to Hungary in November for a short program, so I should come there and see Him.
I came in summer already with other Kriyavans to help around the ashram, just to spend a few days with seva.
And in November, when Guruji came to Hungary, I went there, bowed to Him, and told Him I want to come to ashram.
And Baba asked me, very gently, as if asking a child, to which ashram you want to come? Where do you want to come?
And I said, Baba, Baba, I want to go to India.
And Baba said, first you come to Tatendorf, then you go to India.
For me that was enough.
Then some time passed, and I didn’t really have a reply yet.
Then it was Christmas time, and I came to Tatendorf again. That was the first Christmas here and also the last Christmas Guruji spent here.
It was announced that there would be a third Brahmachari course in India next year, and I was very interested.
At that seminar, Swami Swatantranandaji was also there, then Daya. She just came back from India. Immediately we became friends, as if old karma returning.
We both wanted to go to the Brahmachari course.
I told Guruji I would like to go, and He said, did you register?
I said, not yet.
He said, at least you should register.
So I felt it was okay from His side.
I registered, and then I said, Baba, till then I want to stay here in ashram.
And He said, look, you are already here.
And I said, oh, but I didn’t tell my mother, so I have to go back and tell her and come back.
He said, OK. You go back, tell your mother, and come back.
So this is how it started.
I was supposed to come back in March, but I came back already in February after my birthday.
My mother brought me by car.
And it happened that Guruji was here just for a few days in between.
So when I arrived, He was here. It was a very special blessing.
Marydale Ma
What a beautiful story. And your mom bringing you—what a powerful surrender of a mother.
What was it like for you to leave your home and step into ashram life and later into India?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
I was very happy. Not because leaving my home, but because I found my path.
I dreamed of this from a young age, to find an ashram or monastery where I could live for God.
My mother’s surrender was interesting because she struggled. She was a very caring mother, wanting family, grandchildren.
One night I had a dream and felt blessings of the Masters. Somehow they helped her understand.
The next day she told me, you know how much I would love to have grandchildren, but I see how happy you are. And if you are happy, I am happy.
Marydale Ma
That’s so beautiful.
How did you adjust to ashram discipline and seva?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
I was used to getting up early, from my grandparents and family.
The only thing I had to learn was office work and computer tasks. Slowly, everyone helped.
Marydale Ma
You were initiated as a Brahmachari in 2012 and as a monk in 2016. How did these milestones transform you?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
It was confirmation from God and Gurus that this is the right path.
After monastic initiation, I felt complete surrender.
Monastic life is not just initiation. It is obedience, simplicity, maintaining this life.
I feel that Masters protect. They take care.
Whenever I followed, I benefited. Whenever ego came, I had trouble.
So my experience is just to follow.
Marydale Ma
Guruji named you Sankalpananda. How has that guided you?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
When He said Sankalpananda, I felt, yes, this is it.
Sankalpa means pledge, promise. It is a challenge to be more determined.
As Guruji said, the name is the direction you follow.
Marydale Ma
Your creativity has become seva through Hand in Hand. Can you share about that?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
Hand in Hand helps children in India. It was founded to support orphan and semi-orphan children.
My creativity came naturally. I love handicrafts. We have herbs and flowers in the garden.
Processing them into soaps or products helps Kriyavans and supports children.
After office work, creative work refreshes me.
Marydale Ma
How do you keep balance personally?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
Balance between seva and sadhana.
Only meditation brings dullness. Only seva brings restlessness.
I need daily meditation. I couldn’t live without it.
Also changing types of work helps—mental and physical.
Marydale Ma
What words would you offer women longing for something more?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
Be honest with yourself.
I remember sitting with college books, crying, realizing I wanted none of them.
At crossroads, choose what truly calls you.
It is your life.
Marydale Ma
What would you say to your younger self?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
Don’t waste time. Come to Kriya Yoga directly.
Marydale Ma
What brings you the most joy today?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
Sadhana.
Joy comes from within. It doesn’t matter what work you do.
I love cleaning toilets the most. It relaxes the mind.
Marydale Ma
How do you see your journey unfolding?
Swami Sankalpanandaji
More responsibility, more service.
Along with sadhana, to be there for others.
Universal motherhood.
Marydale Ma (Closing)
Thank you, Swamiji, for sharing your light, your story, and your devotion.
To our listeners, thank you for joining us. May God and the Gurus bless you and guide you always.
Om Shanti. Om Shanti. Om Shanti. Amen.
