Swami's bridge with West :

(From left) Swami Bhajanananda, Swami Atmarupananda, Michael Pelletier, deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Delhi, and US consul-general Craig Hall at American Center on Thursday. Picture by Sanat Kr. Sinha


Swami Vivekananda's bridge with the West, particularly the US, comprised four lanes - intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual, Swami Bhajanananda said at American Center on Thursday.

Vivekananda's address to the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago, in 1893, was a recognition of the plurality of religion that Ramakrishna Math and Mission embodies, Bhajanananda, the assistant secretary of Ramakrishna Math and Mission, said.

"Sri Ramakrishna had arrived at three conclusions about religion. There are as many paths as faiths, service to mankind is service to God and the essence of religion is direct transcendental experience of the ultimate reality," the monk said in his speech, the first by a senior functionary of the Math and Mission at the American Center.

In the audience were US consul-general Craig Hall, representatives of the civil society and politicians, such as the CPM's Sudhangshu Seal.

Religion and politics are two topics that Hall said are avoided "during light social conversations" in the US. "But the two remain most important topics," he said amid applause.

The importance was evident in what Bhajanananda and another senior monk of the order, Swami Atmarupananda, a US citizen, said about Vivekananda's role in creating a bridge between the East and the West while representing India at the World's Parliament of Religions.

"Swami Vivekananda loved everything about America while being very critical about the country. Even his mahasamadhi through meditation happened on July 4, the US independence day," said Atmarupananda.

"Swamiji offered a democratic view of God when he said He resides within us and life is an experiment with divinity.... Americans are gradually realising what he has contributed for them and for the world vision."

Last September, Hall had visited Belur Math, the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, and followed it up with a visit to the ancestral house of Swami Vivekananda in north Calcutta. Belur Math sources said the number of American monks in the order had impressed Hall.

"The interaction at the American Center was a sort of reciprocation of the bonding that had begun with the consul-general's visit to the Belur Math," a Math insider said. "We have proposed a similar interaction on September 11, the day Swamiji addressed the Chicago conclave."

Sri Ramakrishna Mission