Swami Chinmayananda

Founder

Swami Chinmayananda is the founder of Chinmaya Mission [1], an Indian non-profit working on faith-based service, education and rural & agriculture from Mumbai.

Swami Chinmayananda Saraswati (8 May 1916 – 3 August 1993), born Balakrishna Menon, was an Indian Hindu monk and teacher of Advaita Vedanta who founded the Chinmaya Mission in 1953. The mission spread the study of the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads and other Vedantic texts, teaching largely in English to reach the Indian middle class and the Indian diaspora.

The organisation he founded has grown into a worldwide network of centres that also runs schools, colleges, hospitals and rural development and health programmes.

Early life and education

He was born in Ernakulam, Kerala, in 1916 into a family of the judiciary. He took degrees in arts, law and English literature at universities in Kerala and Lucknow and also studied journalism.

During the independence movement he took part in the Quit India campaign and was arrested for distributing leaflets. After his release he worked as a journalist for The National Herald, the newspaper founded by Jawaharlal Nehru, writing on socialism and social reform.

Career

In 1947 he visited Swami Sivananda's ashram at Rishikesh, by his own account intending to expose religious hypocrisy, and instead became a student. He took monastic vows on 25 February 1949, receiving the name Chinmayananda, and then studied Vedanta under Tapovan Maharaj in the Himalayas.

He gave his first public lecture series, which he called a Jnana Yajna, in Pune in December 1951. After a second series in Madras in 1953 his supporters formed an organisation, and the Chinmaya Mission was established on 8 August 1953. From 1965 he undertook extensive international lecture tours, speaking in dozens of cities across many countries and founding study groups; Chinmaya Mission West was formed in 1975 to coordinate work in the United States.

He wrote some 95 books, including commentaries on Hindu scriptures that have been translated into several Indian and European languages, and established Sandeepany Sadhanalaya, a residential academy for the training of teachers of Vedanta, and the Chinmaya International Foundation. He also created structured study programmes for different age groups, among them Bala Vihar for children and the Chinmaya Yuva Kendra for young people. In 1964 he was among the founders of the Vishva Hindu Parishad and served as its first president.

The Chinmaya Mission now operates more than 300 centres worldwide, together with some 76 schools, seven colleges, hospitals and rural health programmes.

Recognition

Hinduism Today magazine named him Hindu of the Year in 1992.

Death

Chinmayananda died on 3 August 1993 in San Diego, California, aged 77, following heart bypass surgery. His body was returned to India and interred at Sidhbari in Himachal Pradesh.[2][3]

Chinmaya Mission

Chinmaya Mission, founded by Swami Chinmayananda and run through the Central Chinmaya Mission Trust in Mumbai, is a spiritual movement with 350+ centres worldwide. Its service work includes schools and a university, and rural development through CORD (Chinmaya Organisation for Rural Development).

Chinmaya Mission reports the following, on its own site: