Violinist Robert Gupta, a member of the Vedanta Society of New York and the youngest member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, snatches time from his very busy schedule to serve the homeless and mentally ill on L. A.’s skid row in a unique way.
This is a very readable history of Hinduism’s influence on the United States. Beginning with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s discovery of the Bhagavad Gita in the early 1800s, Philip Goldberg traces what might be called “the Hindu Connection” to American life and thought right down to the present time.
When you look through a telescope
far out into the universe,
you are still looking for you.
Siddheshwarananda’s essay entitled “From anxiety to union, or, Ramakrishna’s spiritual experience” contains a number of interesting insights and observations, some of which seem to me to be startlingly original.
Many years ago I asked my guru if I should pray that the way be cleared for me to enter the monastery. After a moment’s pause, he replied, “No. Don’t pray for that.” The import was not to pray for another position in life. I had recently emerged from a somewhat painful divorce. The message to me meant: remain single, live alone, and associate with sadhus and devotees.
Readers of Romain Rolland’s biographies of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda may have noticed that Rolland compares Vivekananda to Beethoven more than once.
We must not cease to strive for the highest even though it seems unattainable. We must keep God as our ideal and aim; that will pull us on. If a man aims at the sky, at least he may strike the top of a tree. If he aims at the top of the tree, he may not get above the ground.
In our last issue we reproduced a painting on page 2. We asked if any of our readers knew its source. We now know that it was painted by the illustrious artist N.C. Das of Kolkata. Here is the story behind the painting:
2011 marks the centenary of the passing of three stalwarts of the early Ramakrishna Vedanta movement: Swami Ramakrishnananda, Sister Nivedita, and Sara Bull.
Swami Ramakrishnananda stands as a towering figure in my Indian life. He was an inherent part of it from the moment when he waited on the station platform to greet me as the in-coming train brought me to Madras, until he leaned through the railway carriage window to give a parting word of counsel as the out-going Bombay mail carried me westward. There was always a bigness and a majesty about him that impelled.
