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Vedānta Society
Vedanta Societies refer to organizations, groups, or societies formed for the study, practice, and propagation of Vedanta, the ancient religion based on the Vedas. More specifically, they "comprise the American arm of the Indian Ramakrishna movement", and refer to branches of the Ramakrishna Order located outside India. Carl Jackson in his book, ''Vedanta for the West'' stated that, "Vedanta came to America in the form of Vedanta societies", starting with the appearance of Swami Vivekananda at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 and his founding of the New York Society in 1894. Branches of the Ramakrishna Order located outside India are under the spiritual guidance of the Ramakrishna Order.''The Life of Swami Vivekananda'', Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama, 2000, Vol 1 p 514. The work of the Vedanta Societies in the west has primarily been devoted to spiritual and pastoral activities, though many of them do some form of social service. Many of the Western Vedanta societies ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swami Vivekananda-1893-09-signed
Swami ( ; sometimes abbreviated sw.) in Hinduism is an honorific title given to a male or female ascetic who has chosen the path of renunciation (''sanyāsa''), or has been initiated into a religious monastic order of Vaishnavas. It is used either before or after the subject's name (usually an adopted religious name). The meaning of the Sanskrit root of the word ''swami'' is "e who isone with his self" ( stands for "self"), and can roughly be translated as "he/she who knows and is master of himself/herself". The term is often attributed to someone who has achieved mastery of a particular yogic system or demonstrated profound devotion (''bhakti'') to one or more Hindu gods. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' gives the etymology as: As a direct form of address, or as a stand-in for a swami's name, it is often rendered ''Swamiji'' (also ''Swami-ji'' or ''Swami Ji''). In modern Gaudiya Vaishnavism, ''Swami'' is also one of the 108 names for a sannyasi given in Bhaktisiddhanta Sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swami Paramananda
Paramananda (1884–1940) was a swami and one of the early Indian teachers who went to the United States to spread the Vedanta philosophy and religion there. He was a mystic, a poet and an innovator in spiritual community living. Biography Birth and early life Paramananda was born on 5 February 1884 as Suresh Chandra Guhathakurta, the youngest son of a prestigious Guhathakurta family, in the village of Banaripara. The village is in Barisal District, which was then part of East Bengal in British India and is now part of Banaripara Upazila, Bangladesh. His father, Ananda Mohan Guha-Thakurta, was well known as a progressive, a champion for women's education, a legacy he was to pass along to his sons. His mother, Brahmamoyee Basu, bore eight children before dying of cancer in her early forties, when Suresh was nine years old. Suresh was known for his affectionate nature and cheerfulness. When Suresh was sixteen, his father began to lose his eyesight. As a result, Suresh read d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perennial Philosophy
The perennial philosophy ( la, philosophia perennis), also referred to as perennialism and perennial wisdom, is a perspective in philosophy and spirituality that views all of the world's religious traditions as sharing a single, metaphysical truth or origin from which all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine has grown. Perennialism has its roots in the Renaissance interest in neo-Platonism and its Theory of Forms, idea of Neo-Platonism#The One, the One, from which all existence emerges. Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) sought to integrate ''Corpus Hermeticum, Hermeticism'' with Greek and Jewish-Christian thought, discerning a ''prisca theologia'' which could be found in all ages. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94) suggested that truth could be found in many, rather than just two, traditions. He proposed a harmony between the thought of Plato and Aristotle, and saw aspects of the ''prisca theologia'' in Averroes (Ibn Rushd), the Quran, the Kabbalah and other sources. Ag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerald Heard
Henry FitzGerald Heard (6 October 1889 – 14 August 1971), commonly called Gerald Heard, was a British-born American historian, science writer, public lecturer, educator, and philosopher. He wrote many articles and over 35 books. Heard was a guide and mentor to numerous well-known people in the 1950s and 1960s, including author Aldous Huxley, Henry Luce, Clare Boothe Luce, and Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. His work was a forerunner of, and influence on, the consciousness development movement that has spread in the Western world since the 1960s. Early life The son of an Anglo-Irish clergyman, Heard was born in London. He grew to be an earnest, disciplined, resolute young man. Heard studied history and theology at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, graduating with honours in history. After working in other roles, he lectured from 1926 to 1929 for Oxford University's extramural studies programme. Heard took a strong interest in developments in the scienc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with an undergraduate degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine ''Oxford Poetry'', before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962. Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include '' Goodbye to Berlin'' (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel which inspired the musical ''Cabaret''; ''A Single Man'' (1964), adapted as a film by Tom Ford in 2009; and '' Christopher and His Kind'' (1976), a memoir which "carried him into the heart of the Gay Liberation movement". Biography Early life and work Isherwood was born in 1904 on his family's estate in Cheshire near Stockport in the north-west of England. He was the elder son of Francis Edward Bradshaw Isherwood (1869–1915), known as Frank, a professional soldier in the York and Lancaster Regiment, and Kathleen Bradshaw Isherwood, nee Machell Smith (1868–1960), the only daughter of a successful wine merchant. He was the grandson of John Henry Isherwood, squire of Marple Hall and Wyberslegh Hall, Cheshire, and he included ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swami Prabhavananda
Swami Prabhavananda (December 26, 1893 – July 4, 1976) was an Indian philosopher, monk of the Ramakrishna Order, and religious teacher. He moved to America in 1923 to take up the role of assistant minister in the San Francisco Vedanta Society. In 1928 he was the minister of a small group in Portland, OR, but in 1930 he founded the Vedanta Society#Vedanta_Society_of_Southern_California, Vedanta Society of Southern California. The Swami spent the rest of his life there, writing and collaborating with some of the most distinguished authors and intellectuals of the time, including Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, and Gerald Heard. Biography Born in India, he joined the Ramakrishna Order after graduating from Calcutta university in 1914. He was initiated by Swami Brahmananda, the spiritual son of Sri Ramakrishna, and the first president of the Ramakrishna Order, headquartered in Belur, West Bengal. The reviewer stated that "throughout the book breathes an air of relaxed simplic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vedanta Temple In Hollywood
''Vedanta'' (; sa, वेदान्त, ), also ''Uttara Mīmāṃsā'', is one of the six (''āstika'') schools of Hindu philosophy. Literally meaning "end of the Vedas", Vedanta reflects ideas that emerged from, or were aligned with, the speculations and philosophies contained in the Upanishads, specifically, knowledge and liberation. Vedanta contains many sub-traditions, all of which are based on a common group of texts called the "Three Sources" (''prasthānatrayī''): ''the Upanishads'', the ''Brahma Sutras'' and the ''Bhagavad Gita''. All Vedanta traditions contain extensive discussions on ontology, soteriology and epistemology, though there is much disagreement among the various schools. The main traditions of Vedanta are: ''Advaita'' (non-dualism), ''Bhedabheda'' (difference and non-difference), ''Suddhadvaita'' (pure non-dualism), ''Tattvavada (Dvaita)'' (dualism), and ''Vishishtadvaita'' (qualified non-dualism). Modern developments in Vedanta include Neo-Vedan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swami Ashokananda
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). Life Yogesh Dutta was born in the village of Bekiteka. He spent his childhood days in Durgapur, a village seven or eight miles west of the town of Habibganj in the Sylhet district of Assam (now part of Bangladesh). After attending his uncle’s elementary school, which covered the first five grades, he entered junior high school at Shayestaganj, two or three miles from Durgapur. He attended Murari Chand College in Sylhet, for two years, followed by two years at City College of the University of Calcutta where he won a gold medal for English literature. After graduating, he joined the Beanibazar High School in the town of Panchakhanda in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1906 San Francisco Earthquake
At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity shaking was felt from Eureka on the North Coast to the Salinas Valley, an agricultural region to the south of the San Francisco Bay Area. Devastating fires soon broke out in San Francisco and lasted for several days. More than 3,000 people died, and over 80% of the city was destroyed. The events are remembered as one of the worst and deadliest earthquakes in the history of the United States. The death toll remains the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California's history and high on the lists of American disasters. Tectonic setting The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that forms part of the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. The strike-slip fault is characterized by ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swami Trigunatitananda
Trigunatitananda (30 January 1865 – 10 January 1915), premonastic name Sarada Prasanna Mitra, was a direct disciple of Ramakrishna, the 19th-century Indian Hindu mystic and sant. He established the monthly Bengali magazine Udbodhan of Ramakrishna Math and later, at the behest of Vivekananda, went to America in 1902 and took charge of the San Francisco centre. Early life Trigunatitananda was born as Sarada Prasanna Mitra, on 30 January 1865. He was born to an aristocratic family in the village of Naora in Bhangar I, (now in South 24 Parganas) near Calcutta. Sarada was enrolled in the Metropolitan Institution at Shyampukur, Calcutta. This was a school of Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, a social reformer, educator and scholar of 19th century India. The headmaster there was Mahendranath Gupta, better known as "M", the author of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (or ''Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita'' in Bengali). Sarada did not do well in the school-leaving "entrance examination".'' The Di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
