Ninety minutes with a swami

Eighteen short chapters from Swami Sarvapriyananda, read in order.

Swami Sarvapriyananda runs the Vedanta Society of New York and teaches Advaita Vedanta mostly through stories. Eighteen of them here, one per chapter: a boy in a cinema asking where the screen is, a dying man laughing at a disciple, a physicist told his whole field is illusion, a teenage girl with an argument about suffering. Start at chapter one; the later chapters lean on the early ones.

18 chapters, read in order.

  1. The swami who teaches in stories Swami Sarvapriyananda runs the Vedanta Society of New York and teaches Advaita by argument and by anecdote. Eighteen of the anecdotes, one at a time, in order.
  2. An MBA on the way to becoming a monk He did not do the degree and then renounce it. He did the degree in order to renounce it faster.
  3. Where is the screen? A father takes his son to the cinema for the first time. Everywhere the father points, the boy sees a picture.
  4. Three questions, one answer Philosophy has three oldest questions. Vedanta gives the same one word answer to all of them, which is either very bold or a trick.
  5. Who is this Nagarjuna? Oppenheimer learned Sanskrit to read the Gita. A quantum physicist was told his ideas sounded like a second century monk and went to find out.
  6. The rascal has found me out A man dying of throat cancer in 1886 was told by a young disciple that he seemed to be in great bliss. He laughed.
  7. The second arrow A monk asked the Buddha why, if the teaching ends suffering, everyone following it still gets old and sick. The answer was about archery.
  8. Know it or believe it A monk put the whole of Advaita into three words of Hindi. Jano ya mano. Either you know it, or you believe it.
  9. All that is Maya is not an answer A physicist approached a traditional teacher. The teacher told him his whole field was appearance and he should come and learn the truth. The swami calls this unhelpful.
  10. The face in the canal, the sky through the window Two old models for how one consciousness appears as many people. One needs a mirror. The other only needs a window.
  11. Worship through one window If you stay as the patch of sky in your own window and pray to the great sky through all the others, that is religion. Advaita says it is not wrong.
  12. The dip in the Ganges Other Hindu schools accused the Advaitins of being Buddhists in disguise. The yogis accused them of talking too much. Both charges had a point.
  13. I can't believe all that stuff A French philosopher wrote that if he could choose a worldview to be true he would choose Christianity. Then he wrote the sentence that most of my friends would sign.
  14. My God the wicked Vivekananda's answer to people who could not believe in a God in heaven was to point at the street. You are looking at it.
  15. The word and Krishna told Arjuna to be centred in the absolute and fight. Jesus named the greatest commandment and then added a second. The swami says the small word is the whole teaching.
  16. A screen that plays no movie If the absolute is already complete, why did it bother to become a world? The swami's answer is that a blank screen would be a boring and useless thing to be.
  17. The brass labels on the pavement A teenage girl argued that if you do not complain about the good parts of life you should not complain about the bad. Her father could not answer her. The swami could.
  18. The eye of the hurricane Asked for a first step for someone in real distress, the swami gave four, in order, and none of them was a belief.