Today is the sesquicentenary (150th year) of Swami Vijnanananda's advent on earth. He was born on 30 October, 1868. It is a momentous occasion and we ought to with its due celebration pay our respectful homage to this great disciple of Sri Ramakrishna.
Hariprasanna Chatterjee qualified to be a civil engineer from the Poona College of Science in 1892. He then took up employment as district engineer of Gazipur. But his early association with Sri Ramakrishna and innate tendencies quickened the fire of renunciation within him and he joined the Order in 1896 at the Alambazar Math.
In 1899 Hariprasanna took up the formal vows of sannyasa and was accorded the monastic name Vijnanananda. By then the Belur Math had come into being and Vijnanananda set himself to the task of remodelling the existing building and constructing new buildings to provide for increased space to accommodate the large number of inmates. He also constructed the old shrine.
The Belur Math being situated on the bank of the Ganga, the river water eroded the banks and ate into the land area of the monastery. This concerned Swami Vivekananda much and he commissioned Vijnanananda to redress the situation. Accordingly, the latter built a massive embankment along the river edge of the monastery that has ever since withstood the onslaught of erosion and protected the monastery from this hazard.
At the express commandment of Swami Vivekananda, Swami Vijnanananda established a new centre of the Order at Allahabad and stayed the rest of his life there, an illumined sage of rare spiritual attainments but completely hidden from public gaze till he was unwillingly brought into the limelight when he was appointed Vice President of the Order after the demise of Swami Shivananda. Thereafter, with the passing away of Swami Akhandananda, he became the fourth President of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission in March, 1937 and it was during his Presidential tenure that he oversaw the construction of the new Ramakrishna Temple which he consecrated on 14 January, 1938.
As President of the Order Swami Vijnanananda initiated many disciples including the last President of the Order, Swami Atmasthananda, and the present President of the Sri Sarada Math and the Ramakrishna Sarada Mission, Pravrajika Bhaktiprana. Swami Vandanananda and Swami Swahananda were two other noted disciples of Swami Vijnanananda.
This leonine monk returned to Allahabad while he was President of the Order and entered mahasamadhi on 25 April, 1938.
An interesting episode about Swami Vijnanananda was that he was specifically instructed by his master, Sri Ramakrishna, to be careful about feminine company. This instruction so got into his head that he observed it to the letter all his life, even as President of the Order. One of his senior brother disciples used to joke about him that Vijnanananda would not let even a female mosquito enter the precincts of the Allahabad Math, let alone women. In this regard Swami Vijnanananda must have played a specific representative role of the Master in exemplifying his dictum of absolute renunciation of female company for the monastic.
Swami Ranganathananda was fond of recounting his experience with Swami Vijnanananda. When the young monk went to Allahabad to seek the sage's blessings for his intended work among the youth, the venerable old man allowed him merely to touch his feet and then summarily dismissed him by asking him to drink water from the tap and be gone for his work. The blessing, for sure, was given silently but there was no outward expression of it. Such was the austere Hariprasanna Maharaj, Swamiji's adorable Pesan, a man of few words and much work who spent a lifetime in silent service for humanity with little or no outward show, a sage immersed in contemplation of the Divine and in realisation of the highest principles of the scriptures.
Yet another singular episode I am being reminded of what I had heard from the lips of Swami Lokeshwarananda in a lecture class of his. The story goes like this. It was a hot summer day at Belur Math and Swami Vivekananda was feeling very thirsty. He asked his attendant to serve him a glass of ice-cold water which he presently drank off in a gulp or two. Having emptied the glass tumbler of its contents, Swamiji sent his attendant brahmachari to offer the same to Swami Vijnanananda who was toiling away in the adjoining field overseeing the work of construction of the embankment by the masons. It was a hot and sultry day and Vijnan Maharaj was himself feeling mighty thirsty when in stepped Swamiji's emissary to offer the empty tumbler and exhorting him to drink off the water in it as he had been commanded by Swamiji to say. Perplexed and vexed at this strange request to drink from an empty tumbler, Vijnan Maharaj reflected for a moment and then complied by pouring off the one or two drops of water that still lingered on the walls of the tumbler. As he was doing so, he thought to himself what a practical joke Swamiji was cracking on him in this sweltering heat of summer but no sooner had the drops of water touched his throat than he felt a cooling sensation all over his body that completely took his tiredness off and refreshed him almost magically. He then understood Swamiji's grace on him and the love he bore his brother disciples.
The above episode is a classic illustration of the Mahabharata shloka 'tasmin tushtey jagat tushtam' (Lord, if Thou art satisfied, the world is satisfied as well).
This is our Vijnan Maharaj, the incarnation of Jambavant, Sri Ramachandra's divine associate, as identified by Sri Ramakrishna, who had at the Master's exhortation wrestled with him and who was so defeated by the Master's divine contact that he remained in his bond of love for ever after. As an aside to this may be cited Swami Vijnanananda's great affinity for the Ramayana which he read up thoroughly and also which he authored afresh in his advanced years. I have heard from Swami Vamanananda, Adhyaksha of the Baranagar Math, that Vijnan Maharaj would write the episodes as he saw them with his own eyes in spiritual vision. Such are the children of Thakur, beyond our faintest conception bound in time and space.
Just as I was about to sign off from this narrative came to mind another episode from the Swami's life which is of momentous significance for he history of the Order.
On 14 January, 1938 Swami Vijnanananda consecrated the new temple of Sri Ramakrishna at Belur Math. He, thus, fulfilled the wish of Swami Vivekananda of erecting a memorial to the Master on the banks of the Ganga, an aspiration that had remained unfulfilled during the life of the Swami but which he had entrusted his beloved Pesan to accomplish when times would be propitious for the fruition of such an expensive project. Swamiji had further said that he would watch the proceedings from above on the appointed day.
After the consecration was over, Swami Vijnanananda retired to his room and was seated there with some of the monks of the Order among which was Bharat Maharaj who now promptly asked him whether Swamiji had fulfilled his promise made to him years earlier. And Vijnan Maharaj admitted that he had indeed seen Swamiji, Raja Maharaj, Baburam Maharaj, Sharat Maharaj, Shashi Maharaj and a host of them all lined up near the ceiling of the temple and witnessing the consecration of their Master's shrine. Swamiji had kept his word after all. This narrative was reported by Swami Atmasthananda and was caught on television. Atmasthananda, an 18 year old lad then and already a disciple of Swami Vijnanananda, was on that fateful day standing by the doorstep of Swami Vijnanananda's room in Belur Math and listening to his Guru's narration of the event to Bharat Maharaj.
So, this is the story of Thakur's wrestling playmate, Swamiji's beloved Pesan and the hidden Brahmajnani of Allahabad who would hide his identity by wearing the weird attire of multiple cloaks with massive side-pockets and a cap to boot even in the hottest summer months such that street children would jeer at him and he would laughingly brush them off saying that he was Ramji's bandar (monkey). Jai Ramakrishna!
Written by Sugata Bose
No comments:
Post a Comment