Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Religion

Swami to take up residence in Old Southeast

A small Vedanta community is thrilled to have received official recognition from India.

By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published October 30, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - For more than a quarter of a century, members of a religious community based on Hindu traditions have worshiped in a tiny temple on a quiet street in St. Petersburg. For 20 of those years, the small community of American converts has looked for spiritual guidance from an Indian swami based in New York City.

Now change is coming to the Vedanta Center of St. Petersburg. This year the center received word that it has at last been accepted as an official member of the Ramakrishna Order of India. That means the St. Petersburg Vedanta Center has become the first official Ramakrishna community in the southern United States.

It also means that local devotees will get their own live-in swami, or monk. Members know who their swami will be, but he has not yet arrived in the United States.

They are also ecstatic and have high hopes that their community will grow.

"We're very excited and relieved a little bit, because now the center will go on," said Elizabeth Hawley, who has been a member of the community for about 30 years. "Now that we've been officially recognized and we will be a branch center, it will go on. It's exciting to have a resident swami and we will have more people come and it will be more vibrant. It will be a whole new chapter."

Over the years, the religious group at 216 19th Ave. SE has lived on because of the efforts of a core group of about 20 members, several of whom live in the surrounding Old Southeast neighborhood. They take turns holding Sunday services and look forward to the visits of their longtime spiritual leader, Swami Adiswarananda.

He travels from New York about twice a year, and his visits help swell attendance in the small worship center. Last week was one of those times.

During his visit, he sat down to discuss the changes that are coming to the St. Petersburg center and spoke about the Ramakrishna movement in general.

He said the organization has 165 centers around the world, 13 of them in the United States. It has grown over the past decade, expanding into Brazil, Germany, Argentina and the United Kingdom, he said. There is one problem, though.

"There are not enough swamis to spare for foreign countries," he said. "This swami who is coming, I met him in India twice and he's a likable person. He's from the south of India. He is a former editor of an English language journal. He's just about 50 and he knows all these high-tech computers."

Adiswarananda, who has been in America since 1968, heads the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center on Manhattan's Upper East Side. He lobbied on behalf of the St. Petersburg center, urging the Indian headquarters of the Ramakrishna movement to accept the community and assign it a permanent spiritual leader.

But being assigned a swami is the first step in long process before he can take up residence in the community's two-story parish house, next door to its place of worship. The process could take more than a year.

Since April, members have been working with an immigration lawyer to bring their new spiritual leader to America. They have had to show that their center is financially sound and that they can support the swami, whose vows include one of poverty.

Members hope that a resident leader will bring more people to the center, which dates back to 1951. At the time, it was run by the Rev. M. McBride Panton and his wife, Earnly, who had arrived in Florida to take over a spiritualist church at 1717 Tangerine Ave. S.

The current chapel was built by members and dedicated in 1959. Back then, teachings were a blend of Vedanta principles and spiritualism.

Vedanta was founded by Sri Ramakrishna in the 19th century and brought to the United States in 1893 by Ramakrishna's foremost disciple, Swami Vivekananda.

Its teachings are based on four principles, among them that "there's only one God, worshiped by different denominations, by different names," Adiswarananda said. The monotheistic faith evolved from the teachings of the Vedas, a collection of ancient Indian scriptures.

"It teaches you how to live life to become one with God. That's the ultimate goal, to realize the divinity within you," Hawley said. "It's very helpful if you have a spiritual guide."

[Last modified October 30, 2005, 01:13:18]