How to become a monk at the Ramakrishna Mission, Bangalore?
Becoming a monk at Ramakrishna mission will mean renouncing oneself from all worldly pleasures. For most of us, the thought of giving up on our senses sounds impossible. So why do people choose to become monks, and how do they manage to concede their pleasures? How is the life of a monk at the Ramakrishna mission?
I had the pleasure of meeting Swami Sri Vanishreyananda, also called Dattu Maharaj at Ramakrishna mission, Ulsoor, Bangalore, who happened to clear some of my doubts.
Between 4 and 6.30 PM each day, Swamiji at the ashram goes on a walk around the campus. I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to walk alongside Dattu Maharaj for an hour and a half during which time he painted for me the outline of the life of a brahmachari at the Ramakrishna mission.
My very first question to him was a bit naive but a curious one. Why was he called Maharaj?
Swamiji smiled and told me that during the age of kings, even the kings used to bow down to the Swamiji, placing them ahead of the king. Thus the name Maharaj.
During this two-and-a-half hour discussion that we shared, I asked Swamiji questions on both how life is for a monk at Ramakrishna mission and what their general beliefs are.
He divided my questions into two types. Vyavaharika relates to the transactional world, where humans operate with all their behaviours. Loukika corresponds to the worldly knowledge that I was seeking.
Vyavaharika:
1. How to become a monk at the Ramakrishna mission?
Swamiji told me that one could become a monk at any age provided they renounce as a Bhramachari and give up on worldly affairs.
I asked Swamiji how he became a monk at the Ramakrishna mission. He said that during his childhood there used to be two batches of students who used to come to the ashram. One batch used to be regular evening students and the other the weekend students.
Swamiji had been a weekend student at Ramkrishna mission throughout his schooling and college life.
There he was taught how to hold an outlook on people, surroundings, and life in general. They were made to chant prayers every weekend and the elder Swamijis thought them the discipline needed for being at the Ashram.
At the age of 21, after completing his BA bachelor’s degree and earning a job in Bangalore, Swamiji decided that such was not his life. He immediately decided to pack his bags and head to Ramkrishna ashram, where he foresaw his life to be.
2. Why become a monk at the Ramakrishna mission?
I asked Swamiji what made him come up with the thought of turning into a monk. Swamiji said that it was not he who chose to go to the ashram but it was God who brought him there.
He said actions without intentions mean nothing and such actions do not last very long. Intentions come from within and it is we who have to decide if we have to go with our intutions. In his case, he said he followed his intutions.
I asked him if people who join sometimes realize that monkhood is not their cup of tea and leave. He said that it happens all the time. To remain a monk is a mentally enduring process and it requires the truest intentions in one’s heart to stay. The real ones stay. Nobody goes there to have 3 square meals a day.
3. What are the roles of a monk at the Ramakrishna mission?
In 1976 when Swamiji was just 21 years old, he left his home towards Belur Math, West Bengal. He had envisioned his life as a Brahmachari. When Swamiji reached the ashram, he was equipped with accounting skills as he had completed his bachelor’s degree.
He would often maintain accounts at the office and many times even clean the washrooms. He has stayed at all the ashrams distributed across the country and done different jobs before retiring and now living his life at Ulsoor ashram, Bangalore.
Based on how equipped the person is, the person choosing monkhood may be given different roles in the ashram. Accounts, cleaning staff, cooking, priest, and garden maintenance, are some of the jobs that will be distributed amongst the capable.
I asked Swamiji if denial of one of the jobs is possible. He replied bluntly saying that if a person does not clean the toilet well, he can not be clean on the inside. He has to surrender himself to the lord and look at the welfare of others as his own. People who deny their duties most often don’t tend to stay for long.
4. Is there a social hierarchy of monks at Ramkrishna mission
I asked Swamiji if there was a hierarchy amongst the monks at the ashram. He said there wasn’t any such thing as a hierarchy but there is more respect for the ones who have served for longer.
The whole idea of being at the ashram is to attain Sadhanas which can be done both through meditation and introspection. The longer that a monk lives at the ashram, the more experienced and more Sadhanas he has to his name. Thus, the deserving respect.
Irrespective of age or achievements, based on their capabilities, all the monks have to take up different roles that would help drive the gated community in general.
5. Do monks at the Ramakrishna mission enjoy each other’s company?
As soon as I heard that it was a gated community with a set of members who were going to stay in one another’s presence for years, I wanted to know if all of them get along well.
I asked Swamiji if misunderstandings are a part of the game. Swamiji said that most usually that’s not the case. But he quoted one incident that happened to him in Lucknow in one of the ashrams when he was residing there.
As one of the senior monks doubted him for certain activities, Swamiji left the place immediately not looking back. He went on foot asking people for help till he reached Gurudwara where he found another ashram to reside at.
He recalled saying this incident happened way back in 1978. I did not want to probe further into asking if such incidents take place now as well.
6. How is the life of a retired monk at the Ramakrishna mission?
Now that Swamiji is well over 60 years age, he has been given a respectful opportunity to rest till his end days. He has been rid of major duties at the ashram apart from having to teach the kids.
He said he wakes up at 3 in the morning and starts his meditation which he does in 2 sessions until breakfast time. His entire day is spent reading books or teaching. Apart from that I also observed that he uses his phone and is well-versed in texting platforms such as WhatsApp.
Although their life may not seem dramatically different from ours, their behaviour and approach to situations in life do.
Swamiji told a few stories of how he accidentally broke his back and once even got electrocuted in one of his hands. He said that those were the results of his karma and he gracefully accepts it.
While most of us find it hard to keep our minds in one place throughout the day, Swamiji is more at peace with himself and dedicates his time to meditation and acquiring inner tranquillity.
All the while, I had been asking him questions to understand the superficial and tangible topology of a Swamiji life at the Ramakrishna Ashram. Swamiji was quick to notice it and point it out. He said he had a lot more to offer and headed into the philosophical aspects of a monk’s life.
Loukika:
1. How are monks at the Ramakrishna mission trained?
Swamiji said that monks at Ramkrishna mission are trained to have perspectives that most usual people in the society don’t. The very first thing that monks are made to do when they join is to read the Upanishads for 3 years. They are trained in 3 stages of monkhood.
In the first stage, Bhakti which is devotion, is instilled in the monks praying to the 33 crores Gods of the Dharmic religion. In the second stage, a personal god is worshipped until finally in the third stage a realization is arrived at that God resides in oneself.
The philosophy that is uniformly shared across all monks at the Ramakrishna ashram is the Advaita philosophy which was initially propagated by Adi Shankaracharya himself. The idea is that the Atman which is the soul and the Bhraman which is the God is but one.
The route to realizing that you are ‘that’ is through devotion to God instilled in the monks.
While telling this to me, Swamiji snugly put in a statement saying ‘I see God in you as well’.
Monks at the Ramkrishna mission are trained to think that there is God in every human being.
2. What are the beliefs of the monks at the Ramakrishna mission?
Of all the beliefs that monks share at the ashram, one of them appealed to me the most. Swamiji said that all religions are equal and each of them teaches the same. Humans can be in any of the following three states. An animal state, a human state, or a divine state. All religions try to lift humans into a divine state.
We are all chariots without a rider. It is our duty to appoint the rider to our chariot to direct us in the right direction. The driver can be Krishna for some and Jesus Christ for others. Religions help us trace the path of divinity.
The entire idea of any religion is to attain the highest state of divinity which is Moksha or liberation. This marks the end of Samsara or the cycle of life. Monks at the Ramakrishna ashram believe that attaining moksha is to end the sufferings of human life and this is common across all religions.
Swamiji continued explaining to me with numerous analogies of what it is to attain the divine path.
He said Ramayana if viewed from the perspective of our own life, Rama is us, the protagonist. Sita is the peace, serenity, or motherly love that we yearn for. The peace that we seek is always in the hands of our desires which is the dashavatar. The five senses of sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing, along with their corresponding actions are the 10 heads of Ravana that prevent us from attaining the required peace.
The whole idea is to cut off the heads of the Ravana or end our desires to be able to attain peace.
This peace can only be attained when our mind (buddhi) is removed as it always prevents us from realizing the eternal truth. Our mind always questions the truth. That is the exact reason why lord Ganesh’s head was cut off and replaced with that of an elephant.
Monks at Ramkrishna ashram believe that the entire universe is a form of energy that vibrates to the dance of the Goddess Kali. We are all a byproduct of the dance of these energies dictated without will.
Nobody in this world is either good or bad. They all have a Sattva, Rajas, or Tamas Guna, which are a play of the energies arising from Goddess Kali’s dance.
The idea is simply to realize this fact and be able to exit the animal state so that a human state, or even better a divine state can be reached.
3. Arguments based on science with monk at the Ramakrishna mission:
As Swamiji explained all this to me, I stood there with a bit of denial on my face. He could see through me. Knowing that I am a science student and that I have scientific thinking, he took a different approach.
Swamiji said that our flesh covers our bones. But the fact that bone exists is undeniable. Science is like an X-ray tool that allows us to look through our flesh and prove that the bone exists.
Although science has given us knowledge of the reality of life through its lens, it is just one of the perspectives to view life in general.
Observing nature and understanding humanity is also a form of science that people in India have been doing for a long time. The perspective has been completely shunted by western philosophy.
He continued to tell me that every animal including humans has 4 inevitable qualities. Seeking survival, eating food, deriving sleep, and spreading through reproduction. Humans are only different from the rest of the animals in that they are capable of thinking about the future. A sense of comprehension.
Swamiji said that our comprehension is extremely limited by our inherent biases. There are things we are incapable of comprehending which necessarily does not mean that they do not exist. It is like believing that there are no bones because you do not have an X-ray machine.
We as science students are unfortunately, however, wired to think in the direction of proof. Swamiji and I never came to a consensus on this fact. My belief in evolution is equally strong as his on the energies arising from the dance of God that makes up life.
Conclusion:
It was a long talk that we shared. We had easily walked close to 8 Km by that time. It seemed like I was more tired than Swamiji himself was.
Swamiji smiled at me and asked me to come back again but to have an open mind and think about all that was discussed.
After speaking with him, I was a little lost as to how to gauge him. He did not have any complaints whatsoever in his life. He had surrendered to the will of God. Every arising situation including his death was gratefully accepted with arms wide open. All the justifications and validations were of that surrounding only God.
This left me confused. I couldn’t tell the difference between what selfish and self-centred is!
Within the community, Swamiji is a selfless man helping the community progress for the better. But the fact that he is thinking about attaining moksha in itself is a self-centred thought, if not a selfish thought. Maybe I am too naive at this point to understand where to place brahmacharya in the chart.
Before departing, I asked Swamiji one last question. I asked him how is it that I am supposed to take the all-India cycling journey I am embarking on. I wanted to know if he had a word of advice.
Swamiji simply asked me to acknowledge the situations as they come. Never force them. Accept the will of God and surrender to the superior force. If all of them are done right, I need not put in the effort to take care of myself. The world will take care of me.
The discussion I shared with Swamiji was very different from the one I shared with the Pastor of a church. Probably I will need to acquire more knowledge in the field to comment on the same.
I am a 31 year young PhD graduate who has decided to travel the length and breadth of India on my cycle, to document the journey of meeting a vast array of people. In my journey, I intend to understand the characteristic features of the people of this nation and categorize them based on their demographics, age, profession, gender, traditions, and cultural differences.
Awesome conversation baka boy.
Very enlightening. Keep going. Your journey is helping me a lot.