Swamy Home
Salvador Baltimore
When coming to India a big goal of mine was to get back into reading, for me. This is something that I really struggle with back home. In a normal semester, reading for class is never-ending and whenever I finish a reading assignment there is always another and another and another. So reading novels and creative non-fiction is among one of the things that has been put on the backburner for the past couple of years. I purchased The Journey Home a couple months ago, knowing that this would be a very special and revealing novel about India.
This book has been a wonderful escape and helped me to continue to reflect on my own personal experiences throughout my first few weeks in this new country. It continues to remind me to be grateful for what I have and to remember that there are very sacred things and experiences in this region waiting to be uncovered. In the spirit of expressing gratitude, a few simple things that I have really appreciated during my stay so far: incredible food, the colorful flowers, and kind strangers.
Ismail Kadar was born and raised in the town of Gjinokastr in Albania. He read literature at the University of Tiran and spent three years doing postgraduate work at the Gorky Institute in Moscow. The General was his first novel, published on his return to Albania in 1962, when he was twenty-six.
He lives with his wife and daughter in the Latin Quarter, in a spacious and bright apartment overlooking Luxembourg Gardens; he often travels to Albania. This interview took place at his home in February and October of 1997, with telephone conversations in between.
Kadar has the reputation of not suffering fools gladly, but I found him gentle, courteous, and rather patient with someone who does not know his country and its literature, both of which he cares about passionately. He speaks French fluently with a distinct accent in a quiet measured voice.
You are the first contemporary Albanian writer to achieve international fame. For the majority of people, Albania is a tiny country of three and a half million inhabitants on the edge of Europe. So my first question concerns the Albanian language. What is it?
Founded in 1959 by a visionary entrepreneur, Mr S Appaswamy, Appaswamy Real Estates is an eminent real estate conglomerate and one of the leading builders in Chennai. We are constantly expanding our footprint with exquisite dwellings and elevated lifestyle solutions in our apartments in Chennai. Our clientele spans thousands of happy residents and families in this beloved city.
After nearly a century, and many redesigns Veeraswamy offers guests a memorable array of dining options overlooking Regent Street from the first floor. The Regency Room offers eclectic luxury, with a cabinet of artefacts and Maharajah-era dress at its entrance.
As at siblings Chutney Mary and Amaya, there is a pioneering wine list that precisely matches white, red, ros, and sparkling wines to the unique spicing and character of different dishes, alongside a playful range of Indian-inspired cocktails.
Visit our Bookstore for an inspiring collection of books on spirituality from Vedanta, Christianity, and Buddhism among others. We also have a variety of children's books and audio CDs of weekly lectures.
Our history is inextricably tied with the history of Chicago and the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. It was the 1893 Columbian Exposition's Parliament of Religions that a young monk named Vivekananda burst upon the Western world and it was given to Chicago to first receive his ..message to the West as Buddha had a message to the East. Numerous places in and around Chicago are filled with his memories and footprints. Read here about places and people associated with Swami Vivekananda in Chicago.
The Vivekananda Vedanta Society of Chicago, established in 1930, is dedicated to bringing home the eternal message of Vedanta to humanity without discriminating about caste, culture, gender, language, nationality, or religion.
125 years ago, in his historic addresses at the Parliament of Religions, Swami Vivekananda revealed to the Western World India's most ancient yet ever-rejuvenating message of universal acceptance and the innate Divinity of every human being, irrespective of race and nationality. The Swami's vibrant message instantly touched the hearts of over 7000 listeners who had gathered for the Parliament of Religions at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Since its establishment in 1930, the Vivekananda Vedanta Society of Chicago has offered many wonderful programs to enrich spiritual lives. Our recently established Home of Harmony offers a platform where everyone, regardless of race or religion, can practice and participate in interfaith and intra-faith dialogue, learn about the world's religions and their original languages, interact with the savants and practitioners of other faiths on a regular basis, share the commonalities in various faiths and cultures, and also deepen these experiences by staying in an ashrama where sincere seekers can enrich their lives under the guidance of monastic teachers.
The vision includes: the Home of Harmony, the School of World's Religions, Yoga Studio, Guided Meditation Courses, and Mumukshu Nivas. These activities will be centered in the Society's new three-storied facility in the heart of Chicago at 3801 N Keeler Ave.
We have acquired the new property in Chicago and we really need your generous support to materialize our aforesaid vision. You can help with this effort through your a) donations, b) interest-free loans, c) sponsoring a room. You can read more details and contribute online.
Spread over 100 acres, the Vivekananda Retreat located in Ganges, Michigan, was established in 1971 as a retreat facility - a place for spiritual seekers who wish to withdraw into solitude and engage in prayer, study, and meditation.
Each month there are lectures by Swami Ishatmananda. In addition, between the months of May and October, there are spiritual retreats on various topics by monks from other Vedanta centers. The facility is also available to those who wish to organize their own events.
Read more...
Vedanta states that the underlying substance behind all phenomena, names, and forms is one. A few thousand years ago, the scriptures of India affirmed that Truth is one. The wise call it by different names.
The Vivekananda Vedanta Society of Chicago regularly supports the Ramakrishna Mission, which is involved in numerous humanitarian activities. Its Headquarters is located at Belur Math, West Bengal, India. The Ramakrishna Mission has numerous hospitals, educational institutions, orphanages, and old age homes. The Ramakrishna Mission also conducts rural development programs and performs relief work during natural disasters.
You will also find articles on various aspects of the Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi as a unique disciple, a guru, a wife, and as Mother of all. These are followed by an article on Swami Vivekananda as India's ambassador to America.
Besides, he's not going to let the 50th anniversary of his surfing life go by without paddling out. And he'll soon be back home in the waves of India, in his saffron robes and his multicolored surf trunks. There are 7,000 kilometers of coastline there to explore, almost all of it to himself, apart from an occasional elephant on the beach.
How he set up an ashram at the beach for travelers willing to give up alcohol, meat and sex during their stay. In return, they get waves and a glimpse, perhaps, into a deeper understanding of their world.
How he taught some Indian boys to surf - after first teaching them to swim, in a nation where few take to the water. How surfing is slowly growing in India, and how the Swami Narasingha, who now has a surfboard importing business, is the man behind it all. The pioneer.
Consider this quote, in the Asian edition of Sports Illustrated, from a 22-year-old Indian surfer: "If (he) had not introduced us to surfing, we probably would never have experienced this unalloyed joy."
No car? Twenty-plus miles to the beach? No problem. He and neighbor Boyd Emerson would hitchhike, with their boards, across town, just to surf. One time Boyd, on his own, was stuck, really stuck, until filmmaker Bruce Brown and his "Endless Summer" crew, on tour with the movie, came along in a motor home and helped a fellow surfer get to the beach.
Hebner came to the pier Thursday morning after visiting his mother, who's turning 90, in Orlando. Before that he was in an ashram he helped found. It's in the highlands of Mexico, where you can kayak in water as blue, he says, as the sky over the Jax Beach pier.
But as his old friends - Boyd Emerson, Bill Perry, Byron Colley, Glenn "Gordo" Guthrie and Tom Grizzard show up - he slips easily into the old stories, when they were all skinny and bleached blond by the sun.
As a surf-crazy teen, Hebner got a job fixing dings at Harry Dickinson's surf shop; Dickinson sometimes let him and Emerson stay overnight there. The Swami's memory is fuzzy on this story, but Emerson likes to tell how Hebner schemed to dig out a cave under the shop; that way the two Westsiders would have a permanent Beach home.
He left Jacksonville for good in the spring of 1966, and eventually made it to Hawaii. He got waves, sure. But he also found a deeper kind of enlightenment there, taking up yoga, getting his body and mind clean, joining the Hare Krishna movement - orange robes, shaved head and all.
He was serious: Soon he swore an oath of celibacy and traveled the world as a Krishna monk. He went all over Africa in those robes, taking photos and writing stories for the movement's magazine. He became something of a Hare Krishna celebrity.
It was sometimes difficult between him and his Navy father. Being a Hare Krishna made him - and here he jokes - the "orange sheep" of the family, a family that included a younger brother, Scott, who joined the Navy and became a rear admiral.
After 45 minutes or so, they leave the water and rejoin their buddies in the shade of the pier. The other guys don't surf that much these days, perhaps. But they're all eager to talk about old friends and old times - the road trips they took, the girls they chased, the all-you-can-eat restaurant that was woefully unprepared for young men with such appetites as they possessed.
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