Yogaville Library

The Satchidananda Ashram-Yogaville library established in 1989 to serve the Yogaville community and ashram residents has some 20,000 holdings in all material types including: books, periodicals voice & video recordings. The library, officially called Vidya Bhavan (Abode of learning), provides a quiet, peaceful place for study.  It is open 6 days a week and is available to all our guests, and program participants.   We have books in some 30 languages including: French, German, Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Hindi, Sanskrit and Tamil etc.. While having books on all subjects we specialize in books on religions and spiritual practices.

We are especially rich in the areas of Hinduism & Buddhism as well as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikh, Native American, and all other religions –  (see partial listing below). It is an extensive collection worthy of graduate level scholarly study. These include: the complete Pali Cannon in Pali,  a complete set of Tibetan Buddhist scripture in the facsimile from the original palm-leaf writings, all the Hindu Puranas, many editions of the Ramayana but our most extensive is the Tamil collection which has no equal anyplace outside of Chennai in Tamil Nadu, India.

There is also a complete collection of Sri Swami Sivananda’s writings; a collection of over 400 books, including some of the very earliest dating back to the 1930’s.   In addition to this we also have extensive collections in:  Hindu astrology,  & Western art and art history.   We invite scholars, graduate students in Buddhism, SE Asian Studies and Tamil to come research and study as special guests.

Our chief Librarian, Swami Murugananda, who single-handedly created the library, cataloged and classified the entire collection is here to serve you in finding books on whatever subject you are interested in researching.