Today we visited Swami Dayananda Saraswati's Arsha Vidya Gurukulam. The Arsha Vidya Gurukulam is an institute for the traditional study of Advaita Vedanta and Sanskrit located about 25 Kms from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India, in the picturesque Nilgiri Mountains, only 5 km from the Indian state of Kerala. There are so many elephants, cheetas and bison there that they close the main road in and out of the area at night because it is so dangerous to drive at night. It is out in the forest, really nice country. The ashram is wonderful... clean, well maintained and no marketing slant at all. They can accomodate 150 people in their courses. Each room has its own western style toilet.
Swami Dayananda is reputedly the world's leading expert in Vedanta. He was a disciple of Swami Chinmayananda, who was a brother monk to Swami Satchidananda and Vishnudevananda. Swami Dayananda was not there today. A man with a long white beard dressed in a white dhoti named Ramanji graciously showed us around and fed us lunch in their cafeteria. Their Vedanta courses last 3 months, in residence, and I get the impression that they are very hard core, very serious, sun up to sun down. They also have an ashram in Pennsylvania, which Catherine told me that two of our friends / acquaintances have been to. We just happened upon it because someone who we met at lunch mentioned it to us. The people we met there were just wonderful.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
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