Abhishiktananda
| Swami Abhishiktananda | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Religion | Hinduism |
| Personal | |
| Nationality | French/Indian (since 1960) |
| Born | Henri Le Saux August 30, 1910 Saint Briac, Brittany, France |
| Died | December 07, 1973 Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India |
| Religious career | |
| Title | Monk, sannyasi |
| Guru | Sri Gnânânanda Giri |
| Disciple(s) | Swami Ajatananda Saraswati |
"If at all I had to give a message, it would be the message of “Wake up, arise, remain aware” of the Katha Upanishad. The coloration might vary according to the audience, but the essential goes beyond. The discovery of Christ’s I AM is the ruin of any Christian theology, for all notions are burnt within the fire of experience."
Abhishiktananda (30 August 1910, in Saint Briac, Brittany – 7 December 1973, in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India) (Sanskrit:अभिषिक्तानन्द), born Henri Le Saux, was a French monk who, having moved to India in 1948 in search of a more radical form of spiritual life, adopted sannyasa in accordance with Indian tradition and became one of the pioneers of Hindu-Christian dialogue. Multiple contacts with prominent saints such as Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Gnanananda Giri and Sri H.W.L. Poonja, led him to profound advaitic experience as well as to final recognition of the truth of advaita during the last years of his life.
Henri Le Saux was born on 30 August 1910 in St Briac, a small town on the north coast of Brittany. He was the first child of Alfred Le Saux and Louise Sonnerfaud, who gave him the names Henri Briac Marie. In 1921 his parents sent him to the minor seminary at Châteaugiron, from which in 1925 he went to the major seminary at Rennes. From his boyhood he had felt a monastic vocation: “What has drawn me from the beginning and what still leads me on, is the hope of finding there the presence of God more immediately than anywhere else….” At the age of 19 he was admitted as a postulant to the Benedictine monastery at Sainte-Anne de Kergonan where he spent another nineteen years (with a short break between the years 1939 and 1941 when he was required to participate in the World War II as a sergeant of the French Army).
The call to India was heard by Le Saux at Kergonan as early as 1934, within five years of entering the monastery. It was closely related to his vocation to a more radical contemplative life that he lacked within the existing framework of western monasticism. He expressed this feeling in his characteristic phrase that became his motto: “Beyond, always beyond.” In May 1947 he wrote to the Bishop of Tiruchirappalli, asking his help in “settling somewhere in the neighborhood of Tiruchi so that, living in some hermitage, he might there lead the contemplative life…in the closest possible conformity with the traditions of Indian sannyasa.” The letter was eventually replied by a French priest, Jules Monchanin, who had left for India in 1939 at the age of 44. The latter did his best to help Le Saux in arranging his arrival to India. In his correspondence of 7 August 1947, Monchanin advised his future partner: “Learn as much English as you can. You will have no objection to a purely vegetarian diet (essential for the life of a sannyasi). You will need unshakable courage…complete detachment from the things of the West, and a profound love for India….”
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