Soon, the mission undertaken by Swami Sharvananda slowly transformed into a meditation. Practically alone,
he realized that women would be severely short changed if they were to receive any less than what was their
due as humans. Furthermore, the choice must be always left to women to decide; they alone must decide what
and how they should do, think, explore, organize and present. If they wanted to explore Samkhya and recite Vedas,
it would be their pleasure to do so and advance in their own terms as they would wish. The need to know,
to explore, to question, to prod, to advance must not be relegated on a gender-centric argument. Women, too,
are children of immortality.
Swami Vivekananda, in designing the foundation for the new Ramakrishna Math and Mission, outlined his premise
in terms of “Atmano mokshartham jagat hithayo cha” i.e. “For one’s own salvation and for the welfare of
the world” – a motto that was, perhaps, more aligned to the vision of Brahmo Samaj and that of the institutional
Christianity than what the nondualism of Ramakrishna actually stood for. In the nondual, where is the “one” that
must be “saved”? What is the meaning of “welfare of the world” when the world is bereft of understanding, bereft
of its essence of unity? "One" is not just a localized flesh with a mind neurologically asserted; one is its
interactions, one is the world it sees, one is its environment, its ecology, its madness, its profound presense,
its joy, its elations, its hurts -- one is all concurrent inclusion, one is the world, ONE IS. This is what stands
as the essential teaching of Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Sarada Ma: The quintessential Advaitva.
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Ashram administration during a planning exercise |
