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Swami Dayananda Renounces Chinmaya Mission West: Changes and Challenges Ahead
It was California, 1975, and Swami Chinmayananda was still reluctant to set-the-ring-to-wax, sealing his approval for the official incorporation of a mission in the West. He felt it was premature, and he wasn't looking for another frontier that Chinmaya Mission could tame as spiritual peace officers.
Actually, he had been coming to the West since the mid-60's. U.S. and Canadian devotees had gradually started picking up all the logistics of arranging his tours and catching the fever of the Chinmaya Mission themselves. Almost organically, their service grew into an embryonic, albeit unofficial, mission. Finally in 1975 the devotees got the green light to officially incorporate. Chinmaya Mission West (CMW) and Chinmaya Publications West were born.
"Today, we can see how indispensable the Mission has become," noted Nalini Browning, one of the head staff members at Chinmaya Mission West headquarters (Mt. View, Calif.), who has been with H.H. Swami Chinmayananda since 1965. Heading into its first decade of multi-dimensional "liberal" Hindu service, which cuts right across the grain of India from its culture to its advaitic Vedanta, CMW has proven its worth to the U.S. Indian community. Propagating a universal Vedanta laced with Bhagavad Gita Krishna/Narayana theism, it's influence is widespread, effective, and it focuses much of its activity on the young Indian generation. Drawing on decades of sadhana and computer-like knowledge of the Gita and Upanishads, Swami Chinmayananda's infectious missionary spirit has sparked CMW into the frontrunning India/Hindu organization in the U.S.
But CMW's fairytale growth had a true-to-life side - an unavoidable salvo of karma that has tested CMW's strength. After Swami Chinmayananda's 1980 heart operation, the Mission suffered a coronary arrest of its own in July 1982 when Swami Dayananda, designated Guru/heir apparent to the worldwide Chinmaya Mission, formally resigned and disassociated himself from the Mission. In residence...