Hinduism in Los Angeles made its first significant impact in the late 19th century when wandering Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda (1863 –1902), a disciple of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, came on his second visit to the United States. Swami Paramananda, a disciple of Swami Vivekananda, founded the Vedanta centres in Los Angeles and Boston.
Hindu temples have emerged in the US in the urban areas in the same manner as in India. Los Angeles has witnessed the building of new temples in its suburbs, as the result of a significant community of Hindus living in Los Angeles County and the surrounding counties. The Los Angeles Hindu Society is based at the Pasadena Hindu Temple, which claims to "promote the religious, social and cultural activities and the spiritual well-being of the Hindu community in the U.S. state of California.
History
Background
The earliest history of awareness of Hinduism in the United States was in the early nineteenth century through the translated books of Bhagavad Gita from the Sanskrit text of the Hindus, which were very well received by noted scholars like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the field of transcendentalism. This was followed by the visit of P. C. Mozoomdar, a scholarly teacher from India, to Massachusetts in 1880. When he returned along with Swami Vivekananda to attend the 1893 World Parliament of Religions, he was overshadowed by Swami Vivekananda with his great oratorical skill. The beginning of Hinduism's influence on the US is attributable to Vivekananda who established the Ramakrishna Mission (a non-sectarian organization that does not subscribe to caste distinctions) in India after visiting New York and Los Angeles in 1895.
19th century
During his first visit to the US, Vivekananda established the Vedanta Society in 1894. His urge to live as a sanyasi (renunciation of worldly pleasures) made him convert two of his disciples as sanyasis, Madame Marie Louise and Herr Leon Handsberg, and changed their names as Swami Abhayananda and Swami Kripananda respectively so that they could continue the work of the mission of the Vedantha Society. This society even to this day is filled with foreign nationals and is also located in Los Angeles. He then traveled in August 1885 to Europe for the next few months and returned to the US in 1985. Vivekananda became the catalyst for establishing the Vedanta Societies, the first Hindu group in America in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Vivekananda sent Swami Saradananda from India to assist him in the work of his Vedanta Society and deputed him to New York first and then toured many places in the US giving lectures. In Los Angeles, Vivekananda delivered a series of lectures at several notable locations, and gave lectures on the concept of “The Way to the Realization of the Universalization of a Universal Religion” and others. He spent a month at the "Home of Truth" and noted that of all Americans, “Californians are specially fit to understand the raja-yoga of intuitive meditation which he labeled Applied Psychology”. Thereafter, many Vedanta centers were founded in California under the stewardship of C.F. Patterson. To keep up with the pace of development he recalled Turiyananda as one of his disciples to California. During this period of his stay in Los Angeles, Vivekananda was gifted a large area of land by one of his devotees, which was a forested hilly terrain about 12 miles from Lick Observatory, an area of 160 acres, to build a retreat to house Vedanta students. He called it a Peace retreat or Santi Asrama. Turiyananda trained students here in the art of “meditation and austere monastic life of India.” After the death of Vivekananda, it was Paramhahamsa Yogananda who took over the control of the Vendantha centers from 1920 and stayed in the US permanently. In 1925 he instituted the Yogananda Satsang. The American headquarters of the Vedantha Society (one of the twelve) in USA is located in Los Angeles. There is a Vedantha Press in Hollywood which publishes Hindu scriptures and translates texts to English.
20th century-present
The renaissance of Hinduism was followed by Baba Bharati, a hermit who lived in the US for five years from 1904 to 1909 and established his cult in various parts of the country. He established the Rama Krishna Temple in Los Angeles, which had 5,000 followers. His teachings centered on the theme of preaching "eternal Hinduism unadulterated by the West".