Hope Podcast: Featuring Swami Sachidananda

In this episode of the Hope Podcast, we sit down with Swami Sachidananda, a student fellow at HDS. We discuss his monastic journey and the power of a smile.

RILEY BROWN: Welcome to the Hope Podcast, a show about Harvard Divinity School students and how they find hope in difficult times. My name is Riley Brown, and I am a second year masters of Divinity candidate, a chaplain intern in the Office of Religious and spiritual Life here at HDS, and I'll be the host of today's conversation. 

I am joined by Swami Satchidananda, who is a student fellow. Is that what you said? 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: Yes. 

RILEY BROWN: A student fellow. And you are a graduating or finishing your program at the end of this year and you've made time to come and chat with me. So Swami, welcome. Thank you for joining me. 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: Thank you for having me. Lovely to be here. 

RILEY BROWN: I want to begin our conversation with having you introduce yourself a little bit to our audience. Where are you from, do you follow or belong to a religious or spiritual tradition, and just anything else you feel like might be relevant for an introduction. 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: OK. I'm Swami Satchidananda. I'm from India. I'm a Hindu monk. I was born and brought up in a place called Shivamogga, a small town in the Southern state of Karnataka, which is very rich in culture, classical music, arts, literature. 

So I grew up in a very rich environment of knowledge and arts around me, which helped me to see the world in many possibilities, in an artistic manner, in a spiritual manner. 

I did my undergrad in management studies in Bangalore, after which I decided that spiritual life is my calling. Then I decided to join our Ashram, which is Arsha Vidya Gurukulam and then life just happened. I was soaked in spirituality and service. So that's about me. 

So I have been teaching Advaita Vedanta philosophy from many years and also meditation across India and US. So we have another Ashram here in Pennsylvania, which I'm part of. So that's what I do. A small brief about me. 

RILEY BROWN: OK. I love what you said about you connected spirituality and service, which I love. That was such a small thing you did, but I think such an important thing. For years I think maybe you said you've been soaked in spirituality and service, which I think those two are so-- it's important to remember that they're connected. So I appreciate that wisdom. 

Could you give us a brief spiritual autobiography, how the role your tradition has played in your life, and how have you understood yourself relative to your tradition. 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: Sure. I belong to Advaita Vedanta tradition. Advaita means not to meaning non-duality. So my tradition or the philosophy or the wisdom that I believe in is to appreciate the world as one without a second. So this philosophy is all about recognizing one principle of unity non-duality which underlies multiplicity in the universe. 

So this tradition is something that my heart resonated to. When I was looking at deriving meaning for my life, I was exploring many wisdom traditions. And I believe that every wisdom tradition has something to offer to each one of us. It's just for an individual to see where one belongs to or what resonates with one's heart. So that's how it happened. 

So I was exploring, and then I came across the writings of various gurus and my guru, Swami Dayananda Saraswati in Advaita philosophy, which deeply resonated with my heart and then helped me find meaning and purpose in my life. 

So there I began my spiritual journey. So I joined the Ashram monastery. Initially, I was in a place called Arsha Vidya Gurukulam in the Southern state of Tamil Nadu, in a place called Coimbatore. The monastery is located in the forest. Almost we share boundaries with the forest. A very naturistic place, very calm with hundreds of trees, elephants walking around. 

RILEY BROWN: That's so cool. 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: Yeah. In fact, it's their place, we are the intruders. So the life at the Ashram was very, very beautiful. So I think just being amidst nature itself is a great way to be. You can learn so much from the trees, from the animals, from sky, from water, everything around us. 

So my spiritual formations were essentially there at Arsha Vidya Gurukulam. We had a very jam packed day which began from morning 4:30 AM and which went up to 9:00 PM. 

So we were involved in meditation, textual scriptural study of Hindu scriptures, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads primarily. And we used to deeply study language, Sanskrit and then many other spiritual and religious practices which helped me shape myself in the presence of many great teachers. 

Later on, I moved to our monastery or Ashram in Rishikesh on the banks of river Ganga. Again, a very beautiful space to be besides the river. So that's where I began to deeply study other texts and also got involved with meditative practices. So my spiritual formations were primarily in these two Ashrams back in India. 

RILEY BROWN: So you say, you grew up in a part of India where you emphasized the culture, that you were steeped in this culture as a very cultural environment. I guess there was a lot going on that you talked about. Did you have an idea as a child that being a monk was ever in your future? 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: I don't think so. That was not even a remote possibility. The only maybe closest thing I can remember is that sometimes for fun, me and my sister used to dress up as monks, but I had no clue that my life will go in such a way that I would end up being a monk. I never imagined as a child growing up to be a monk. 

RILEY BROWN: Then how did you end up becoming a monk? And was that kind of a strange experience? Did you think after you became a monk, I never would have thought I'd be here? 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: I think the beauty of my journey, the way I see, is that I never really decided to be a monk. It just happened. I would say, it just happened. Series of events led me to decide to take to a life of monasticism. I was just in love with the spiritual life. 

And in my tradition, it is believed that one can achieve greatness, inner peace, calm through any lifestyle. So monastic living is a choice of lifestyle, a way of living. So I felt I belong the most here. This lifestyle suits me the best to achieve or to go near to the goals that I have in my heart. So that's how I chose to be a monk, I suppose. But nothing that I clearly decided one day that I would be a monk. 

RILEY BROWN: You are going to do it. 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: Yeah. Series of events just let me here. 

RILEY BROWN: And you mentioned earlier the kind of resonances. So you just felt the resonance and you just followed it and here you are. 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: Yeah, I just followed my heart. 

RILEY BROWN: Yeah, that's so beautiful. Well, you've given us a little background of who you are and your spiritual autobiography. What brought you to HDS? 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: Am deeply inspired by a rigvedic hymn, which is probably 5,000 years old or more which means may noble thoughts come to me from all directions of the world. So this is something which runs at the back of my mind all the time. 

So I think HDS is a place where you can get to engage and learn with the perspectives across religious traditions, across the world religious landscape. So when I was looking at this fellowship program in HDS and the HDS offered courses in multiple religious traditions and in multiple engagements, so I thought it would be interesting to explore the academic study of religion. 

Of course, I'm very much-- I have the formal training in Hinduism and Hindu texts, but I thought I'll take time to also deeply engage with other traditions, other faith traditions, which brought me to HDS I suppose. Yeah. 

RILEY BROWN: OK. So the interfaith aspect of HDS. 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: Yes. 

RILEY BROWN: Yeah. And we definitely have that here. 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: Definitely. 

RILEY BROWN: Yeah. So the central theme of this podcast is hope. But before we talk explicitly about what gives you hope, I was curious if you could talk about what I would call vehicles for hope or something that carry-- an illustration that carry used for me was if hope is a seed, what tools do you use to cultivate the soil that you are planting your seed of hope in? And these can be anything from insights or practices, but anything that gives you strength or allows the seed of hope to grow. 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: Wow, that's a beautiful illustration. I think Kerry herself must have conceived it. 

RILEY BROWN: She did. It's not mine. I can't take credit. 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: I would say service is a great vehicle to enable the seed of hope to germinate. In my work in India, where through Ashrams we run many free educational institutions, hostels, hospitals for the needy. 

And through this work, when I see a smile on a child's face or a person who was very ill physically, and that person has got treated and then again hope and faith is restored. So that smile gives me hope. 

And I think personally and also collectively, service is a great vehicle to generate hope in our context. I feel that always trying to do something for the other in our own capacities would make world a better place. And then make hope flourish in this world, I suppose. 

RILEY BROWN: Yeah. I think that's so true. Yeah, I think that's such a good way to put it. And you talked a little bit about something that gives you hope explicitly is seeing the smile of having served someone. Is there anything to state it plainly in a broader sense, what gives Swami hope? 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: I think in the difficult world that we live in with many problems, each country having its own problems, each institution having its own problems, each religious landscape having its own problem, each community having its own problems, in spite of all this, someone is able to smile because of somebody else's good deed. 

Somebody is able to have a meal, somebody is able to take few more steps towards their goal, all because of few people thought they should do something more for others. 

So these two things give me hope particularly, that somebody is able to move forward in their life in spite of all the challenges and problems. And there are few people wanting to change these difficult situation for somebody else's to restore hope in somebody else or enable their life. 

This situation, the three components I say, challenges and somebody being able to pursue their goals or make their life happen in spite of challenges. And also a group of people committed, dedicated to enable change for better. This situation gives me hope. This situation in the world which is still there, gives me hope. 

RILEY BROWN: Yeah, that's such a good way to put it. Both the ability of one to achieve their goals or to at least continue down their path towards their goals. But also the ability of one to help someone else to do the same and the combination of those two that gives you hope. 

I think that's such-- you talking about that gives me hope. That's such a good way to put it. Thank you so much for sharing that. Before I let you go, I wanted to ask if you had any parting wisdom by way of a recommendation. Is there a practice, podcast, book, movie or whatever else you might recommend to listeners who need a little hope. 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: Maybe many, many years back, at some point in my life, I was in a pessimistic space where I thought, world is just a very complicated space. One cannot do anything. But then somehow I started taking small steps, small actions to crack a joke, make someone smile, to try and help someone. 

And then these small actions showed me that wow, we can bring change in the world. We can add something to the way world is operating. And we can imagine a future which is brighter, which is just, which is a beautiful place for everyone to be. 

I think these small actions and the result that you can immediately see through those small actions can enable a person to hope for the future to have hope in one's heart. So I think that would be that small practice I would recommend. 

Each day if we feel that we cannot do anything, if we feel helpless, I think these small acts will restore hope. And I think somehow we should just radically believe that it's a possibility. I read somewhere hope is the ability to listen to the music of the future. Faith is the ability to dance to it today. 

RILEY BROWN: That's so great. 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: So I think in my life, how it worked is one should radically believe the possibility of a better future of a better world. This would help each one of us to have hope in our heart, I believe. 

RILEY BROWN: And perhaps the radical belief could be attuning yourself to the music of the future. And then what you say these small acts is the dancing. 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: Yes. 

RILEY BROWN: That's so great. Thank you so much for sharing. And thank you so much for joining me, Swami. 

SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA: Thank you. It was a pleasure talking to you. Yeah. 

RILEY BROWN: There we go. We did it. Thank you so much. Wow. Excellent. Excellent podcast. Thank you.