Vedanta Society of New York

Last updated • 2 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Vedanta Society of New York
Emblem-Ramakrishna-Mission-Transparent.png
Location map United States Manhattan.png
Red pog.svg
Location in Manhattan
General information
StatusActive
TypeHeritage place, religious organization
Address34 West 71st Street
Town or cityNew York
CountryUnited States
Coordinates 40°46′33.6″N73°58′40.8″W / 40.776000°N 73.978000°W / 40.776000; -73.978000 Coordinates: 40°46′33.6″N73°58′40.8″W / 40.776000°N 73.978000°W / 40.776000; -73.978000
InauguratedNovember 1894
Owner Ramakrishna Mission
Website
vedantany.org

Vedanta Society of New York (VSNY) was the first Vedanta Society founded by the Indian Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda in New York in November 1894. [1] [2] [3] In 1897, Swami Abhedananda, another disciple of Ramakrishna, came to the United States and took charge of the society. He was the president of the society until 1921. Currently, the Vedanta Society is affiliated with the Ramakrishna Math religious monastic order and the Ramakrishna Mission.

Contents

History

Establishment

In 1893, Vivekananda went to the United States and joined the Parliament of the World's Religions held in Chicago. He was a delegate representing Hinduism and India. After the conclusion of the Parliament, he travelled to many American cities including Minneapolis, Memphis, Detroit and New York. Almost everywhere he went he received a cordial welcome. On 16 May 1894, he delivered a lecture at Harvard University. In November 1894, Vivekananda established the first Vedanta Society in two rented rooms at 54 West 33rd Street in Manhattan, New York City. [4]

1894–1921

Vivekananda travelled to many other places in the United States and England and returned to India in 1897. Abhedananda, another direct disciple of Ramakrishna, went to the United States in the same year and took charge of the society. He was its president until 1921, when he returned to India. As president, Abhedananda helped structure the society and had it incorporated under New York law. [5]

1921–present

Vedanta Society of America jeh.jpg

The society initially operated out of a rented house and was relocated several times. In 1921, the society established settled headquarters at 34 West 71st Street, which remains its address. [3] [6]

The society has had six presidents since inception. Swami Tathagatananda was the president since 1977 until his death on 25 June 2016. [3] Swami Sarvapriyananda was appointed as Minister and Spiritual Leader of the Vedanta Society of New York, and assumed his duties on January 6, 2017.

Activities

The society is affiliated with the Ramakrishna Math religious monastic order and Ramakrishna Mission, and houses a library, bookstore and prayer hall. They conduct weekly lecture classes on The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Seminars and conventions are also regularly organised. [7]

Related Research Articles

Swami Vivekananda Indian Hindu monk and philosopher (1863–1902)

Swami Vivekananda, born Narendranath Datta, was an Indian Hindu monk, philosopher and author. He was a chief disciple of the 19th-century Indian mystic Ramakrishna. Influenced by Western esotericism, he was a key figure in the introduction of the Indian darsanas of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world, and is credited with raising interfaith awareness, bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion during the late 19th century. He was a major force in the contemporary Hindu reform movements in India, and contributed to the concept of nationalism in colonial India. Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission. He is perhaps best known for his speech which began with the words "Sisters and brothers of America ...," in which he introduced Hinduism at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago in 1893.

Ramakrishna Mission Religious organizational movement related to Indian spiritual guru Sri Ramakrishna paramhansa

Ramakrishna Mission (RKM) is a Hindu religious and spiritual organisation which forms the core of a worldwide spiritual movement known as the Ramakrishna Movement or the Vedanta Movement. The mission is named after and inspired by the Indian spiritual Guru Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and founded by Ramakrishna's chief disciple Swami Vivekananda on 1 May 1897. The organisation mainly propagates the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta–Advaita Vedanta and four yogic ideals– Jnana, Bhakti, Karma, and Raja yoga.

Sarada Devi Spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

Sarada Devi, born Kshemankari/ Thakurmani/ Saradamani Mukhopadhyay, was the wife and spiritual consort of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a nineteenth-century Hindu mystic. Sarada Devi is also reverentially addressed as the Holy Mother by the followers of the Sri Ramakrishna monastic order. The Sri Sarada Math and Ramakrishna Sarada Mission situated at Dakshineshwar is based on the ideals and life of Sarada Devi. She played an important role in the growth of the Ramakrishna Movement.

Swami Yatiswarananda

Swami Yatiswarananda was a vice-president of Ramakrishna Order, whose headquarter is in Belur Math. He was a disciple of Swami Brahmananda, a brother disciple of Swami Vivekananda and a direct disciple and spiritual son of Ramakrishna. He served in Philadelphia propagating the message of Vedanta. He was the president of Bangalore centre of Ramakrishna Math. He founded an ashrama in Switzerland.

Swami Nikhilananda (1895–1973), born Dinesh Chandra Das Gupta was a direct disciple of Sri Sarada Devi. In 1933, he founded the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, a branch of Ramakrishna Mission, and remained its head until his death in 1973. An accomplished writer and thinker, Nikhilananda's greatest contribution was the translation of Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita from Bengali into English, published under the title The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942).

Swami Virajananda

Swami Virajananda, born Kalikrishna Bose, was an initiated disciple of Sarada Devi and the sixth president of the Ramakrishna Order. Born as the son of Trailokyanath Bose and Nishadkalidevi, Virajananda was the first person to join the Ramakrishna Order after the direct disciples of Ramakrishna. In 1897, he was initiated into sannyasa by Vivekananda. From 1899 onward he served in Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati and became its president in 1906. He is recognised as a monastic disciple of Vivekananda.

Ramakrishna Math Monastic organization part of the Ramakrishna Order

Ramakrishna Math is the administrative legal organization of the Ramakrishna Order, considered part of the Hindu reform movements. It was set up by sanyasin disciples of Ramakrishna Paramhansa headed by Swami Vivekananda at Baranagar Math in Baranagar, a place near Calcutta, in 1886. India. The headquarters of Ramakrishna Math and its twin organisation, Ramakrishna Mission is at Belur Math.

Vedanta 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.

Swami Abhedananda Indian Hindu mystic (1866-1939)

Swami Abhedananda, born Kaliprasad Chandra, was a direct disciple of the 19th century mystic Ramakrishna Paramahansa and the founder of Ramakrishna Vedanta Math. Swami Vivekananda sent him to the West to head the Vedanta Society of New York in 1897, and spread the message of Vedanta, a theme on which he authored several books through his life, and subsequently founded the Ramakrishna Vedanta Math, in Calcutta and Darjeeling.

Pravrajika Vrajaprana American Hindu scholar, writer (born 1968)

Pravrajika Vrajaprana is a sannyasini or pravrajika at the Vedanta Society of Southern California, affiliated with the Ramakrishna Order. She resides at Sarada Convent in Santa Barbara, CA. and a writer on Vedanta, the history and growth of the Vedanta Societies

Nirmalananda

Nirmalananda, born as Tulasi Charan Dutta in Calcutta, was a direct disciple of Ramakrishna, the 19th-century mystic and Hindu saint from India, and took Sanyasa from Vivekananda along with Brahmananda and others. He was initiated by Sri Ramakrishna, on which fact a few latter-day antagonists tried to cast doubt in the Bangalore Court, but into which question the Court refused to get into. Nirmalananda played a key role in establishing Ramakrishna Math and Mission chiefly in South India, in Kerala and Bangalore and Tamil Nadu and also in the USA, Burma and Bangladesh.

Josephine MacLeod American devotee of Swami Vivekananda

Josephine MacLeod was an American friend and devotee of Swami Vivekananda. She had a strong attachment to India and was an active participant in the Ramakrishna Vivekananda movement. She was given the nicknames "Tantine" and "Jo Jo" by Vivekananda. She considered Swami Vivekananda to be her friend and helped him with his finances. MacLeod was not a sanyasin, unlike many others such as Sister Nivedita or Sister Christine. She was instrumental in spreading Vivekananda's message on Vedanta in the West. She made many contributions to the initial and the later phases of the development of the order of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. She was a contributor to many causes espoused by Sister Nivedita, the most famous disciple of Vivekananda, including that of contributing financially towards the development of the Indian National Movement especially in Bengal and elsewhere in India.

Sister Christine

Sister Christine or Christina Greenstidel was a school teacher, and close friend and disciple of Swami Vivekananda. On 24 February 1894, Christine attended a lecture of Vivekananda in Detroit, United States which inspired her. She started communicating with Vivekananda through letters. Christine went to India in 1902 and began working as a school teacher and a social worker.

Baranagar Math First monastery of Ramakrishna Order located in Baranagar, India

Baranagar Math or Ramakrishna Math, Baranagar was the first monastery of Ramakrishna Order. In September 1886, after the death of Ramakrishna, when his devotees stopped funding, Swami Vivekananda and other disciples of Ramakrishna decided to make a dilapidated house at Baranagar their new math. The house crumbled to dust in 1897. In 1973 Vivekananda Math Samrakshan Samity was formed who attempted to preserve the area. In 2001, the possession was handed over to Belur Math authority, who soon-after declared it as one of their official branch. The restoration and development work of the area is still going on.

Alambazar Math is the second monastery of the Ramakrishna Order established in February 1892, which remained the order's headquarters till February 1898, when it was finally moved to Belur village on the bank of Ganga.

Swami Sadananda Hindu sage

Swami Sadananda, born Sharat Chandra Gupta, popularly known as Gupta Maharaj in the Ramakrishna Order, was a direct monastic disciple of Swami Vivekananda. He was the first disciple according to some sources. He took his monastic vows and joined Baranagar Math to serve the other disciples of Sri Ramakrishna in 1888–89 and subsequently joined the Belur Math when it was established. He was one of the leaders of early Ramakrishna Mission in its relief work. One of his significant contributions was providing relief to the citizens of Calcutta during the plague epidemic of 1898–99. He traveled to Japan in 1903. His later days were spent in company of Sister Nivedita as her protector and guide. His notable contribution in the later part of his life was preaching the message of Swami Vivekananda, especially among youth.

Kalyanananda

Kalyanananda (1874–1937) was a direct monastic disciple of Vivekananda, who had set up the Ramakrishna Mission Sevashrama at Kankhal, near Haridwar. As a monk of the Ramakrishna Order, he took up service to the humanity as the most important philosophy in his life and practiced it for the benefit of the local population and the pilgrims. He spent thirty six-years in Ramakrishna Mission Sevashrama Kankhal to serve the poor and afflicted. He was one of the pioneers to set up a hospital in a remote location for the poor, needy and the itinerant monks who did not have access to healthcare.

Ramakrishna Mission Sevashrama, Kankhal Hospital in Haridwar, India

Ramakrishna Mission Sevashrama, Kankhal (RKMS) is in its present form is a 210-bed multi-specialty charitable hospital in Kankhal, Haridwar in Uttarakhand. It is a branch of Ramakrishna Mission, and was established in 1901 by Swami Kalyanananda, one of the direct monastic disciples of Swami Vivekananda. The hospital serves the treatment needs of poor patients in and around Uttarakhand. Since its inception it has treated more than 10 million patients. From a modest beginning in a rented two room dilapidated building it has grown to be a multi-specialty hospital for treatment of impoverished and needy people, under the supervision of the monks of Ramakrishna Order. The hospital is located in an 18 acres campus, and houses Gynecology and Obstetrics, Pediatrics, Intensive Care Units, Pathological laboratory, Blood bank, Operation Theaters etc. in addition to dairy and agricultural land whose products are used for the consumption of poor in patients.

Dhanraj Giri

Dhanraj Giri (1811–1901) was the abbot of Kailash Ashram, an ashram, which he established in 1880 at Muni Ki Reti, Rishikesh. It was one of the first large ashrams to be established in Rishikesh, prior to which it was mostly as a place for individual seekers, or pilgrims to stop over on way to Char Dham temples pilgrimage. He was a famous monk in Northern India and was a scholar in Vedanta philosophy. He was well acquainted with spiritual luminaries of nineteenth century India like Swami Vivekananda.

Prakashananda

Prakashananda (1874–1927) was a direct monastic disciple of Vivekananda and a swami monk of the Ramakrishna Order who played a major role in propagating and promoting the Vedanta philosophy and Vivekananda's message in India and America. He worked closely with Trigunatitananda, a direct disciple of Ramakrishna for Vedanta Society of San Francisco, later renamed as Vedanta Society of Northern California, and later became its president.

References

Citations

  1. Gupta 1986 , pp. 118–119
  2. Rinehart 2004 , p. 391
  3. 1 2 3 "Vedanta Society of New York history". Vedanta Society of New York. Archived from the original on 12 September 2013. Retrieved 12 September 2013.
  4. Vrajaprana 1999 , pp. 80–88
  5. Gallagher & Ashcraft 2006 , p. 3
  6. Quinn 2009 , p. 2
  7. "Vedanta Society of New York activities". Vedanta Society of New York. Archived from the original on 12 September 2013. Retrieved 12 September 2013.

Sources