Swami Sarvapriyananda, the modern Voice of Vedanta in the West. After Swamiji such clear articulation of the Vedanta has hardly been as we witness today in this young monk of affable manners and sweetened personality. Swamiji truly is today a voice without form as he works up his lieutenants in now a Ranganathananda, now again a Sarvapriyananda to keep advancing his unfinished work down the ages as he had foreseen and himself prophesied. The spiritual wave that has struck the banks of Belur, he had said, would roll on for 1500 years and in due course inundate the world.
Swamiji had bled to found the Vedanta work in America and had said that in future others would come to continue with the great spiritual mission of spreading the message of the Rishis of yore that India had for ages held close to her bosom for universal dissemination in the unborn future. Such a one thundered in the West for decades in the form of the redoubtable Ranganathananda, and now it is the turn of this fairest flower of humanity, this supremely civilised monk, the genial Sarvapriyananda. His discourses in easy lucid English replete with allusions and cross-cultural references, his elucidation of our ancient scriptural texts, his simplicity, ease of bearing and cordiality as he answers the perceptive questions posited by his audience, all mark him out as not only an erudite monastic of some realisation but also as a supremely civilised human being of no spiritual vanity or pride to mar the sanctity of his scriptural discourse. And the spiritual discourses where he traces out the philosophy of the Vedanta in delightful detail, verse by verse -- oh, what wondrous clarity and his power of easy communication ! Even the diligent layman can understand. Vedanta, indeed, in its highest flight is coming home to the West.
Such is the saga that is Sarvapriyananda, the sage of the times, the कस्चित घीरा of the days of yore who we see in the Shvetashvatar Upanishad rising in the assembly of the Rishis to announce the glad tidings of the Atman thus :
श्रृन्वन्तु विश्वे अमृतस्यपुत्रा आ ये घामानि दिव्यानी तस्थु
वेदाहमेतं पुरुषं महान्तं आदित्यवर्णं तमसपरस्तात
त्वमेव विदित्वायतिमृत्युमेति नान्यःपन्था विद्यते अयनाय ||
Swami Sarvapriyananda is one such.
Written by Sugata Bose
Photo : Swami Sarvapriyananda (courtesy, Debkanti Moitra)
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