Swami Ashokananda, a disciple of Swami Vivekananda Speaking at the Hollywood Vedanta Temple 1949

Описание: Swami Ashokananda (23 September 1893 – 13 December 1969), born as Yogeshchandra Dutta, was a disciple of Swami Vivekananda of India and a monk of the Ramakrishna Math. From 1932 until his death in December 1969 at the age of 76 he was in charge of the Vedanta Society of Northern California, San Francisco (founded by Vivekananda in 1900).


He joined the Ramakrishna Order in 1920, at the Madras center. In February 1923, on the birthday of Sri Ramakrishna, he was ordained into Sannyasa by Swami Shivananda, second President of the Order. After serving in the Ramakrishna Math, Madras till May 1925, Swami Ashokananda returned to Belur Math. In October 1925, he was assigned to the Advaita Ashrama at Mayavati, which was established by Swami Vivekananda. He served as an editor of the Prabuddha Bharata, English monthly journal of the Ramakrishna Order, from 1926 to 1930.


Swami Ashokananda took over as the editor of the Prabuddha Bharata in June 1926. From 1926 though 1930, he was in correspondence with Romain Rolland, the French historian, novelist and mystic who was writing the biographies of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. Rolland's view was that the spread of Vedantic ideas in the Western world was due not to the modern-day diffusion of Vedantic thought but, rather, to “the unity of thought and laws that govern the [human] spirit.” In reply, Swami Ashokananda wrote The Influence of Indian Thought on the Thought of the West.

In 1931, Swami Ashokananda left India for serving in the Vedanta Society of Northern California. He reached San Francisco on the 4th of July 1931 and would spend the rest of his life there.

In the early 1930s, when he arrived, Eastern Religions were still looked upon with suspicion in the Western world. Under his leadership the Vedanta Society of Northern California built three temples (in San Francisco, Berkeley and Sacramento) and bought two thousand acres of land in Olema that became the largest Vedanta Retreat in America.



Ashokananda rendered great service to the cause of the Vedanta movement in the West by his clear and thorough expositions of Vedantic teachings through lectures and classes for nearly four decades. A pioneer on the Vedanta frontier, he established new Vedanta Centres in Berkeley and Sacramento, developed the 2000-acre Vedanta Retreat at Olema (still the largest in the western hemisphere), and built the large New Temple in San Francisco to accommodate the Society's growing membership and activities. His contributions to the Vedanta Movement in America are well known, as are his lectures in print, which have become a popular source of inspiration since the first collection was published in 1970.


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