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Swami Ramakrishnananda: All you need is love
With his down-to-earth appearance and wit, Swami Ramakrishnananda easily attracts the attention of listeners
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With his down-to-earth appearance and wit, Swami Ramakrishnananda easily attracts the attention of listeners.
His lucid explanations and insights are delivered in a calm and gentle voice and are predicated on his deep spiritual experience.
Swami Ramakrishnananda is one of the first monastic disciples of Sri Amritanandamayi Devi of India, better known as Amma, and has been under her tutelage for three decades. He met Amma for the first time in 1978 and was overwhelmed by her presence and compassion.
“I was just so impressed by the atmosphere that I became very calm and couldn’t think of anything,” Swami says. “I forgot why I was there.”
Born in India in 1954, Swami grew up in an orthodox family. Later he worked in a bank in the small town of Haripad, not far away from Amma’s village.
Swami wasn’t happy with his job or the small place he was living in and was considering leaving his job and Haripad.
“Then a friend told me there was a person not far from our place who could help me with any problem,” he says.
That was how he met Amma. The first time, Swami was so overwhelmed he couldn’t even talk to her. So he visited her a second time. Again, he was impressed by how Amma treated everybody that came to her like a mother treats her own child – whether it was a sick and ugly person or a beautiful woman. That time she told him, “Don’t worry, I’ll help you.”
When Swami visited Amma’s village for the third time, he felt he wanted to stay there permanently.
“I wanted to learn how I could help her with what she was doing,” he says. He stayed in his job for another six years and visited Amma’s place every day after work. With a group of other young people, he started to learn and practice meditation as well as yoga from Amma.
Swami eventually quit his job to devote all his attention to the work of Amma and to live at her ashram. Since then, after her first world tour in 1987, Swami has been travelling around the world with Amma.
Now, he spends his time accompanying her, visiting Amma’s ashrams and centers around the globe, holding public programs, teaching yoga and meditation classes and organizing the many disaster relief and charitable activities of the Amma International organization.
Swami imparts essential spiritual principles that are the basis of a happy and contented life in a warm and inspiring way.
“Happiness depends on things that are always changing in your life,” he explains. “The logic of happiness is based on three things: time, place, and objects [including people] — and you need to respect all these things.”
To illustrate his philosophy, Swami provides simple yet perspicuous examples.
“You want to be happy day and night. You want to be happy in Indonesia and in India. You want
to be happy in your house and in your car, but all theses things are constantly changing. You are not in the same place with the same people all of the time. The logic is:
How can happiness not change when everything else is changing and impermanent?”
Swami further explains that happiness and sorrow are emotions you feel in your heart and mind.
“We know that things in our lives can go wrong, in business, in relationships, but we cannot accept it, because we are not prepared for it,” he says.
“You need to prepare your mind to face problems that can occur,” says Swami.
Swami adds that understanding the nature of the world and its objects, and focusing your mind to build mental strength, are the basics of spirituality. Swami admits this sounds simple but requires much practice.
“It needs real inspiration and a strong mind,” he says with a gentle smile.
Spiritual solutions help people to deal with the problems in their life. It takes time to attain mental strength, but Swami says it is never too late to start trying.
“Some people say they’ll focus on it later on because they are too busy at that moment. Others keep on learning,” he says. “Once you understand that each object can only give you limited happiness, you won’t feel that unhappy anymore.”
With his wonderful way of sharing his experiences and profound spiritual insights, Swami says he is happy with his life, because he is making others happy. He lives by the principle of getting less, and giving more.
“Of course I also feel unhappy when I see other people suffering,” he admits. “There is so much sorrow in the world.”
Swami knows that as a member of an organization it is easier to help other people as a single person. “I am happy that I can help.”
The solution for the problems of division and poverty around the planet in Swami’s eyes is to feel compassion for the poor and needy. “Love is the solution,” he says.
Courtesy of Amma Indonesia
