A monk of my acquaintance for the past 20 years or so, a disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda, founder of Self-Realization Fellowship in 1920, has recently been anointed president of that organization.
His name is Brother Chidananda. He is a man of wisdom, wit and a deep, clear-minded understanding of the teachings Yogananda. At their heart, those teachings rest on the premise that the purpose of life, and of all healthy religions, is living the quest for the direct experience of God.
In fact, Yogananda, who lived from 1893 to 1952, called Self-Realization Fellowship “the church of all religions.” Experiencing the Divine is not the province of the few, Yogananda counseled, but a reality available to everyone. Indeed, he said, “All paths are paths to God, because, ultimately, there is no other place for the soul to go.”
My familiarity with Yogananda is grounded in the fact that I, too, am a disciple of his, ever since I read his “Autobiography of a Yogi” in 1980 and said to myself, “This is my guy!”––playful, loving and deep as deep can possibly be.
My wife and I also had the privilege of providing some counsel to the SRF management team when the organization was making its way through a particular transition, which is when I met Chidananda. But all of this merely sets the stage for a story Chidananda tells about himself that is relevant to us all, even to those of us who might not be any more aware of Yogananda than we are of golfing on the moon.
Some 40-plus years ago, soon after stepping onto the spiritual path guided by Yogananda, the young man who would become Brother Chidananda was attending an SRF service, and the organization’s president at that time, a woman named Daya Mata, walked in gave a little talk. Her presence was such a tidal wave of love and joy that the future Chidananda said to himself: If practicing these teachings can give me one fraction of the love and joy that radiates from her, then it’s worth any amount of time, any amount of effort.
What a lovely way to suggest one of life’s most useful questions we all have the privilege of asking ourselves: What is worth any amount of my time, any amount of my effort? And, equally important: Why? No matter our answer, the exploration can teach us so much about ourselves. Some of it humbling, I find.
For instance, when Gandhi was asked the purpose of his life he said: To die with the name of God on my lips. When I first heard that I thought it was the most succinct, practical, powerful aspiration I could possibly imagine, worth any amount of time and effort. And it is. Yet, the commitment, the discipline, the attention, the surrender it requires I find so complete, so comprehensive, so all-encompassing that two steps forward and one step back is often the best I can do.
But not forever, since plenty of people have done it. Meanwhile, I’m so grateful to the late Marshall Rosenberg for the thought: Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.
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Sharing my discoveries and welcoming yours is the purpose of this little playground. I hope you’ll add your voice when it feels right.
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