Supreme being: Guru, who do?
MANILA, Philippines - The search for higher — or highest — consciousness can be a hazy, even comedic thing, as pop cinema has portrayed. Desperate housewives bored from their shopping routine, teens chasing the triviality of Sting-endorsed Tantric sex, Madonna — there’s an easy laugh in the Western impression of Eastern spirituality that Mike Myers probably thought would revive his career. But The Love Guru tanked and at this point in recession-steeped down time, people need a little more transcendence to get by.
There emerges the Jivanasutrani. Sounds like an ahh-inspiring mud wrap or a bunch of neo-spiritual caca, but if you open your mind a bit more, you might just soak up a real ray of enlightenment from it. The Jivanasutrani —“Tips for Happy Living” — is a composition we could definitely use in these so-called doom days, but its teacher, Swami Tejomayananda, is no crackpot dealer of divinity. As the head of the Chinmaya Mission Worldwide, an organization that hails from Pune, India, it is “sublime knowledge” among other things that Tejomayananda — now honored as Pujya Guruji — wishes to spread.
Urban skepticism can’t mess with the Chinmaya Mission’s more than 50 years in practice, since devotees of Swami Chinmayananda submitted themselves to scattering the word of the “great saint” across the world. “To provide individuals, from any background, the wisdom of Vedanta and the practical means for spiritual growth and happiness, enabling them to become positive contributors to society,” is the prime aim of the Chinmaya Mission. Along with extensive social service towards the disadvantaged that operates from 243 centers within India and around the globe, to stimulating an international interest in Indian culture, to spreading the universal science of Vedanta, noble is certainly an understatement in describing the Chinmaya Mission. And though it is a Hindu spiritual organization, its concerns are more cognizance than conversion. Especially since the core of Hindu philosophy, Vedanta, “would inspire people to understand their own faith (whichever it may be) better.”
Pujya Guruji was thoroughly inspired himself when he encountered Swami Chinmayananda. A 20-year-old amid accomplishing his Master’s in Physics, he soon jumped from a Master’s in Physics to the Chinmaya Mission’s Vedanta course, later becoming a formidable teacher who’s taken up the grand vision of his master. Skipping across the world and granting millions spiritual sustenance by spreading the knowledge of Vedanta, Guruji shall now sow his seeds of wisdom in Manila.
Through aphorisms, “easy-to-remember statements of wisdom,” Guruji will sow his “Tips for Happy Living” in a five-day series of evening talks to those seeking a potent hit of inspiration. From April 4-8 at the Mini Theatre of the University of Makati, Guruji is set to give students a heady dose of those “wisdom-capsules” and “words to live by,” based on The Scriptures, but certainly no mystical load of incomprehensibility; just a means to “shape the health of our character and ultimately the fragrance of our life.” Of course, to improve the state of the nation and our personal states of well-being, happiness is definitely worth re-learning — especially if it’s from a worthy teacher.
