Swami Paramananda
| Paramananda | |
|---|---|
Paramananda ca 1910
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| Born |
5 February 1884 Banaripara, East Bengal, British India (now Bangladesh) |
| Died | 21 June 1940 (aged 56) Cohasset, Massachusetts |
Paramananda (1884–1940) was a swami and one of the early Indian teachers who went to the United States to spread the Vedanta philosophy and religion there. He was a mystic, a poet and an innovator in spiritual community living.
Paramananda was born on 5 February 1884 as Suresh Chandra Guha-Thakurta, the youngest son of a prestigious family, in the village of Banaripara. The village is in Barisal District, which was then part of East Bengal in British India and is now part of Banaripara Upazila, Bangladesh. His father, Ananda Mohan Guha-Thakurta, was well known as a progressive, a champion for women's education, a legacy he was to pass along to his sons. His mother, Brahmamoyee Basu, bore eight children before dying of cancer in her early forties, when Suresh was nine years old. Suresh was known for his affectionate nature and cheerfulness. When Suresh was sixteen, his father began to lose his eyesight. As a result, Suresh read devotional texts aloud and one that was particularly compelling was a collection of "Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna," a revered saint who had died fourteen years prior.
On his seventeenth birthday, Suresh joined a group of older men from the village in a journey to Belur Math to visit the monastery and temple founded by Ramakrishna's disciples. There he met his teacher, Vivekananda, who was the foremost disciple of Ramakrishna and the first swami to teach in America.
Paramananda was initiated a month before his eighteenth birthday, becoming a monk (sannyasin) of the Ramakrishna Order and the youngest disciple of Vivekananda. The President of the Ramakrishna Math, Brahmananda, would call Suresh "Basanta Kokhil" [spring-bird], or simply "Basanta" [spring] and that became his new nickname. He trained under the mentorship of Ramakrishnananda, also a direct disciple of Ramakrishna, and founder of the Madras Math, a thousand miles south of Calcutta.
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