Sanatana Dharma Avatara Mela 2025

Awake, Arise!
Be Bold, and Face the Truth! Be One with It!

As the buds and blossoms that herald spring appear increasingly by the moment and set the mood of renewed life and vibrancy, these fresh and enlivening words of Swami Vivekananda are left reverberating from this year’s Sanatana Dharma Avatara Mela (Grand Gathering in Celebration of the Divine Manifestations of Eternal Truth).

With disciples gathering from around Japan, New York and Taiwan, the celebration this year focused on approaching Swami Vivekananda, the beloved disciple of Shri Ramakrishna, who in his short life of only 39 years, “shook the world to its foundations,” precisely as his master proclaimed that he one day would.

Swami Vivekananda was the one who dedicated his life to regenerate India, and to boldly introduce Eastern wisdom to the West for the first time in history. Behind all of his activity, travel between the East and West, brilliant speeches and relentless work, Shri Ramakrishna, his beloved Guru, was ever-present, such that Vivekananda worked as if united as one with the spirit of Shri Ramakrishna. His heart was as if bursting in pain from seeing and feeling the plight of the Indian masses, and he was thus determined to “awaken the sleeping divinity” of the “knowledge of God’s presence in man” as the “source of man’s strength and wisdom,” and, in a way, the wisdom he brought to the West might have been precisely what was needed to cure its growing materialism. When it came to his brother disciples, he set fire beneath them to serve people and work for the restoration of the masses rather than dwell on their own personal liberation, seeing also that a reawakened India could, in turn, help the world at large.

During the celebration, various pivotal moments of Vivekananda’s life were introduced along with visual images and direct words from both Vivekananda and Shri Ramakrishna, with these accounts focusing on the guidance of his Master, Shri Ramakrishna, the impulse and resolution that arose within Vivekananda, and the propagation of Vedanta and its wisdom of the divinity of the soul and the unity of existence.

A twenty-minute slide show, originally presented in Japanese, was recreated with additional wordings for the English-speaking audience and presented in New York. The incessant works Vivekananda carried out were on an enormous scale, impossible to cover in that short twenty minutes—Vivekananda himself even once said that the work he did was that of a thousand years. But in seeing the images and locations of the places where Vivekananda spoke, it helped us to feel more realistically the actual scale of those works, both internationally and in his motherland, India.

Indeed, Vivekananda worked across America, in Europe and in India at the end of the 19^th century, when travel was nowhere as easy or available as it is today, and surely the social circumstances must have been completely different from how they are now, such that the ideas he introduced were completely new to America and the West. If each one of us tries to sense the feeling of that, how do we perceive the actual challenges that Vivekananda faced, what was it like, what did he feel and what spirit was needed to accomplish what he accomplished at that time in the world? The depth of the contribution he made is so grand that it may be difficult to fathom, and humanity as a whole likely has yet to understand it, even now.

A number of celebratory speeches were offered by disciples internationally (see the featured selection in Pranavadipa Vol. 125). These speeches, coming from long time study, and learning, as well as each one’s feeling toward Vivekananda and Shri Ramakrishna overlapping with their feeling toward Shri Mahayogi and the Mahayogi Mission, gave us an opportunity to think about and feel the spirit of Vivekananda through a variety of different angles and consider how each of us can bring that spirit of his and his ideal way of living, full of virtue and bold dedication for actualizing the mission of his Guru, into our own lives.

A divine play was performed by disciples in Japan, focusing on the famous poem that was written by Swami Vivekananda during the time he spent at Thousand Island Park in New York with his Western followers. That was when Vivekananda was very exhausted by his continuous, strenuous work, and was invited to take rest at a vacation home of one of his followers. There, he trained twelve of his followers and initiated them as his disciples, even those who had only just heard his lectures. It is said that Vivekananda himself said he was at his best at Thousand Island Park. Mysteriously, this poem, “The Song of the Sannyasin,” was later found in his quarters.

Excerpt from “The Song of the Sannyasin”:

There is but One — The Free — The Knower — Self!
Without a name, without a form or stain.
In Him is Maya dreaming all this dream.
The witness, He appears as nature, soul.
Know thou art That, Sannyasin bold! Say —
“Om Tat Sat, Om!”

To close the celebration, all attendees joined together to sing as an offering, Achandala Pratihatarayo, a hymn written and composed by Swami Vivekananda for Shri Ramakrishna, an outpouring of his love for the Master and all that he represents.

When we think about the time we live in now, or at least if we look at our own surroundings here in New York, the impressions that we learned Vivekananda had in the end about America and the actuality of the conditions around us today, don’t seem to be very different at all. Perhaps, not much has changed in America since then, or perhaps because his message, or the message of Shri Ramakrishna, was universal, it might always feel so fresh and timely. We hope that more people will recognize the message of Shri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda and truly acknowledge the great works that Vivekananda accomplished, and the spirit and inspiration infused into all that he did. And for those who receive their message, who understand their message even a little, it should be carried on through action. That is what it is to answer their call.

This mela, Sanatana Dharma Avatara Mela, was created by Shri Mahayogi, our most beloved Guru. Through working and preparing concretely for this mela, only then may we begin to grasp why Shri Mahayogi has created such a gathering, such an opportunity for us to celebrate. Of what paramount importance it is to remember the message of the Avatara every year, to think about the way they lived their lives, their concrete demonstration of their message, and to renew our answer to their call with gratitude. This mela is one of the gifts of Shri Mahayogi, not only for us, disciples, but for all living beings, now and for the future generations to come.

Shri Mahayogi, concentrating on Swami Vivekananda for this year’s Sanatana Dharma Avatara Mela became our opportunity to think about what it means to be your disciple, and what our own mission as a disciple is. May we live united with you.