Swami Satprakashananda

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Swami Satprakashananda
BornApril 1888
Died15 November 1979[1]: 393 [2]
Alma materUniversity of Calcutta
Occupation(s)Monk, writer, and teacher

Swami Satprakashananda (April 1888 – 15 November 1979) was an Indian

philosopher, monk of the Ramakrishna Order
, and religious teacher.

Biography

Swami Satprakashananda was born in

Swami Shivananda in 1927. Satprakashananda served for a time as an associate editor of Prabuddha Bharata, an English-language monthly journal of the Ramakrishna Order published since 1896,[4] and for six years directed the Ramakrishna Mission Center in New Delhi.[5]
: 114 

In 1937, Satprakashananda was sent to the United States of America. He gave lectures for a summer in Washington, D.C., but decided not to start a center in that city "for two reasons: the central focus of the city is political, not spiritual, and its population is transient."[1]: 391 

Satprakashananda subsequently went to

Saint Louis, Missouri where in 1938 he established a permanent Vedanta Society which he directed for the next forty years.[5]
: 114 

Satprakashananda was a scholar and wrote a number of books on Vedanta and Indian religious scriptures and commentary. He taught Huston Smith, an influential writer and religious studies scholar. Smith stated that "Swami Satprakashananda first introduced me to Hindu psychology... [and] was perhaps the only person I know who was truly a saint".[6]: 78 

In American Veda, Philip Goldberg reported that after moving into the area, Huston Smith sought out the Saint Louis Vedanta Society, "took up a meditation practice and probed deeply into Vedanta, meeting with Satprakashananda for tutorials virtually every week for ten straight years."[7]: 104  When the St. Louis Vedanta Society grew and was ready to purchase its own building, Smith placed the deed in his own name, having served "as front man for the transaction,"[7]: 104  because "someone—the owner, the realtors, or the city—refused to sell to a dark-skinned heathen like Satprakashananda,"[7]: 104  an incident described by the American Vedantist as an occasion when Swami Satprakashananda "faced racial discrimination."[8]

Thought

Historian Carl Jackson noted the similarity of Satprakashananda's presentation of seven principles of Vedanta with a presentation almost fifty years earlier by the Vedanta Society of San Francisco, remarking that "there is a uniformity... that suggests that in nearly a century there has been almost no deviation from Swami Vivekananda's original formulations"[5]: 68 

Goldberg reported that when Satprakashananda was asked whether Vedanta would take root in America, he replied "Yes, but the source will not be recognized" — a reply that Goldberg described as "prescient."[7]: 24 

Written works, selected

  • Satprakashananda, Swami (2001). Vedanta for All. Chennai, India: Sri Ramakrishna Math. )
  • Satprakashananda, Swami (1977). The goal and the way: the Vedantic approach to life's problems. Vedanta Society of St. Louis. .
  • Satprakashananda, Swami (1965). Methods of Knowledge: Perceptual, Non-perceptual, and Transcendental. London: George Allen and Unwin.
    OCLC 912068500
    .

References

  1. ^
    ISSN 0032-6178
    .
  2. ^ "On 15 November 1979 Swami Satprakashananda passed away" (p. 393)
  3. ^ a b Swami Satprakashananda (biography page at Ramakrishna Mission, Delhi), accessed 15 March 2019.
  4. ^ The saga of a journal The Hindu, 4 January 2009.
  5. ^ .
  6. .
  7. ^ .
  8. . Retrieved 16 March 2019.
  9. .
  10. .
  11. .

External links