Once Upon a Time in Bloomington There Was an Ashram and a Place Called the By Peter Dorfman & Olivia Dorfman Note: Michael Shoemaker changed his name to Swami Chetanananda in 1978. In this story, he is called “Michael Shoemaker” in references prior to that name change. He is called Swami Chetanananda or simply “the Swami” in references after that and in quotes from his recent interview with Bloom. 100 Bloom | December 2018/January 2019 | magbloom.com he brick-fronted build- encountered—not just in Bloomington but ing at 519 E. 10th St. sits anywhere in southern Indiana. deserted. Acquired last Often, there were lines leading out the year by Indiana University door and up the street. “The first time I from the owners of Yogi’s ever saw real maple syrup was at the Tao,” Grill & Bar, it awaits its fate as the site of a recalls Carol Gulyas, who worked as a wait- pending university expansion. But Blooming- ress there in 1975 and ’76. “It was the first ton old-timers insist that if you look carefully, time I had granola. It was the first place inside you can still see the bones of an earlier I ever had soy sauce and toasted sesame incarnation: the Tao Restaurant. seeds on broccoli.” For those who lived in Bloomington in the 1970s, the Tao was an icon. “Bloomington Bloomington’s awakening had a few Chinese places, but the Tao was the The Tao was a 1970s’ phenomenon, but it (top, l-r) Swami Chetanananda (Michael first gourmet, artisanal restaurant,” says Guy was the product of America’s 1960s’ political Shoemaker) and Swami Rudrananda Loftman, a retired lawyer who frequented the and cultural awakening. In the middle of (Albert Rudolph), better known as Rudi. Tao with his family. Many remember it as the that decade, despite the influence of Indiana (above) The exterior of Rudi’s Bakery and first gourmet vegetarian restaurant they had University, Bloomington culture was homo- the Tao Restaurant. Courtesy photos magbloom.com | December 2018/January 2019 | Bloom 101 Swami Chetanananda. Courtesy photo Spyridon “Strats” Stratigos. Courtesy photo geneous, inward-looking, and steeped in Shoemaker would go on to have a ise on which Swami Chetanananda says the conservative, white, Christian tradition. significant impact on Bloomington culture university reneged after the semester ended. Social life on the IU campus was focused and its business community after undergoing “I feel the one thing that the student on parties at fraternities and sororities. a profound personal, political, and spiritual strike and the anti–Vietnam War movement In 1967, Spyridon “Strats” Stratigos transformation in the late ’60s. He devoted accomplished was that we taught the insti- arrived in Bloomington from South Bend, himself to a lifetime of practicing and teach- tutions in the United States how to deal with Indiana. Strats was to become one of ing Kundalini yoga, founded a yogic ashram, dissent effectively,” he ruefully recalls. Bloomington’s leading entrepreneurs and and built a succession of businesses to sup- By 1970, demoralized by the failure of the restaurateurs, but at that time he was an port it—including the Tao Restaurant, which protests and strikes to achieve real change, IU student. He joined a fraternity, but he co-founded with Strats. By 1978, Shoe- Shoemaker went through a period of depres- quickly became disillusioned with what maker had shed his middle-class Hoosier sion. He grew increasingly alienated from he saw as racism and elitism in frat life, persona and become Swami Chetanananda, American traditional culture and looked for and with the conservative, pro–Vietnam a teacher and initiate into a religious order, alternative sources of meaning. One of those War attitudes of the fraternity brothers. through rigorous study in the U.S. and India. alternatives was Eastern spirituality. By then, unrest over the war and the “My math TA [teaching assistant] had state of race relations in the U.S. had Unrest and disillusionment a yoga class,” he says. “I started taking the reached IU. Guy Loftman was part of a Shoemaker had grown up in a devout class with him. For the first time in my life, I group of radically minded undergraduates Catholic family in Connersville, Indiana. really felt connected to myself, to my body, to who formed a chapter of Students for a Disillusioned with small-town life and with my heart. I just dug into yoga.” Democratic Society and organized demon- Catholicism, he made up his mind to go to Urban counterculture had latched onto strations. “Some of us formed the Progres- college in Bloomington. “My parents op- Asian Buddhist and yogic traditions decades sive Reform Party,” Loftman remembers. posed my going to IU, which they considered earlier. While these traditions were gener- “We were going to ‘Berkeleyize’ Blooming- a den of iniquity,” Swami Chetanananda told ally considered eccentric and were lam- ton, according to the explicit allegations of Bloom in a recent interview. “So I paid my pooned in Hollywood films, many stopped the Dean of Students.” own way through school, and I ended up liv- laughing when, by 1967, the Beatles, Rolling In the spring of 1967, Loftman ran ing in the Beta House fraternity.” Stones, and other young arbiters of culture successfully for student body president For a time, Shoemaker became involved had adopted Transcendental Meditation against the candidate of a party repre- in conservative politics on campus. But and fallen under the spell of its most famous senting the fraternities and a third party contemporaries remember him undergoing proponent, an Indian guru named Maharishi called “Try Us.” The campaign chairman a radical shift. He was one of the organizers Mahesh Yogi. for the fraternity party was a charismatic of the 1969 campus strike that shut down the Strats had undergone a similar disillu- young man named Michael Shoemaker. university for six weeks over various issues, sionment. A period of experimentation with “The campaign was cordial and friendly, including an impending tuition increase. psychedelic drugs gave way to an interest in and we talked about issues,” Loftman The strike ended when the acting chancellor, Eastern mysticism. He became involved with says. “Michael was more interesting than John Snyder, announced the university was a group of American Sufis (adherents to a the candidate he was supporting.” acceding to the students’ demands—a prom- mystical strain of Islam). Shortly thereafter— 102 Bloom | December 2018/January 2019 | magbloom.com Swami Chetanananda remembers it as New “I looked at Rudi and realized in less “In between the meals and meditations, Year’s Eve, 1970—he and Strats and their Sufi than a minute that this was what I was sup- Rudi was walking around and hugging his friends decided to throw in together. posed to be doing,” Swami Chetanananda devotees,” Strats recalls. “He came up to They rented the former Phi Kappa Theta remembers. “I instantly loved him and real- me on this gravel road and hugged me, and fraternity house at the corner of East 8th ized he was my teacher.” he put his forehead to my forehead, and Street and North Fess Avenue and turned it Another way Rudi defied the stereotype then he touched me very gently on the base into the Sufi House. Shoemaker taught yoga of an Eastern guru was in his pragmatism. of my spine and I swooned. I just fell over. and meditation there twice a week. “We had He was no ascetic—meditating alone, living He caught me and he laid me down on the 25 of our closest friends living there, and we on alms, and drinking rainwater. Rudi was gravel. It was an extraordinary out-of-body had a meditation center,” Swami Chetanan- both in and of the world. He was one of the experience. I was lying there in an ecstatic anda recalls. world’s leading dealers in Asian art, main- state and thinking, ‘I can’t get up.’ I remem- It was at the Sufi House that Strats taining a shop in lower Manhattan and sup- ber him saying to me, ‘Just lie there and and Shoemaker met David Komito, an IU plying other dealers. He was friendly with absorb it.’ Gurus have these little powers; graduate student who had come under the many of Manhattan’s leading gallery owners apparently his power was he could manifest influence of a New York–based teacher of and abstract expressionist artists. “Rudi what they call shakti, which is energy. I Kundalini yoga known as Swami Rudranan- owned the building where Willem de Koon- don’t know the clinical explanation.” da—Rudi for short. ing’s studio was,” the Swami says. “When Strats joined Komito and Shoemaker in Kundalini is a Tantric yoga practice de Kooning moved out to Long Island, Rudi upstate New York for the rest of the sum- that provides a feeling of enlightenment moved into that studio and that’s where I mer. Then Rudi advised them that it was through deep meditation, focused breath- lived when I stayed with him in New York.” time to return to Bloomington and start an ing, disciplined posture, and chanting. Rudi’s assets also included 525 acres in ashram of their own. “I remember us say- Shoemaker was intrigued. “I was starting the Catskill Mountains north of New York ing, ‘What do you mean, we don’t have any to have experiences in my yoga practice City, a former resort in the town of Big In- money,’” Strats says. “And Rudi replied, ‘Any that made me think I was in over my head,” dian, which he renamed the Shree Gurudev shmuck can do it with money.’” he says.