His Holiness Jagadguru Sri Sankaracharya of Kanchi

[Guest guest]

Namami Sankaraachaaryam, sarvalokaika Poojitham

 

With permission blessings and grace from HH Swamy Vijeyendra

Saraswathi garu of Shri Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham Paramacharya and

miracles

 

His Holiness Jagadguru Sri Sankaracharya of Kanchi

Dr. A.B. Franklin

Former American Consul-General

My two interviews with His Holiness have received more attention from

the Press than they in fact deserve in relation to the many

interviews and conversations, His Holiness is continually holding.

They continued little of substance in any event. It is not necessary

for spirit as translucent as that of Sri Sankaracharya to engage in

lengthy intellectual disquisitions in order to convey the essence of

the great and simple Truth which he has to convey. I treasure those

few moments I have had with His Holiness, and, though I am a man of

words, a man who is likely to convert any experience into its

literary expression, I do not intend to make to my conversations with

His Holiness anything more than what they were, a moment's glimpse of

a Truth being truth, a Reality being reality.

We are living unique times in the world's history, when things are

happening on so many different levels that, we are likely to be

completely mistaken almost the whole. On one of these levels, (the

one which most interests me) the West, my West, is arriving,

laboriously, after centuries of search by our most brilliant minds,

at philosophical knowledge which was both implicit and explicit in

India thousands of years ago. The greatest miracle of the human

spirit is the sum of knowledge found in the body of lore which we

collectively term the Vedanta. His Holiness, more than half a century

ago, abandoned the multitude of other levels of human existence,

contest, involvement, to devote himself to Truth.

It is hard for me to find a tribute in words which expresses my

feeling of admiration and gratitude towards His Holiness. Those of us

who deal in words as a commodity or as a tool of trade, learn to

mistrust them. Especially do we mistrust words as a means to describe

a living, changing force, the personality, and like you remove

ancestors we learn to mistrust words as a means of describing

ultimate things. Perhaps the most appropriate thing I come from a

very God-fearing portion of Christian America, that is to say, New

England. Our earliest great philosophers, in that blessed corner of

the earth, were among the very first westerners to appreciate the

fact that the Vedanta, far from being an outworn creed, was a vast

and joyous experience that lay ahead of us. Not only do I come that

corner of the earth which bred Emerson and Thoreau, whose spirits are

with us here this evening, but I am one of the long line, log as our

lines in America go, of ministers and teachers. When this line

started, back in the seventeenth century, ministers and teachers were

usually one and the same individual. It gives me pleasure to be able

to say, in these circumstances, that though some of my ancestors were

in their day the subject of controversy because of their beliefs,

just as Emerson was n his day, yet not one of them would question the

appropriateness of my being here this evening. For them as for me,

the spirit whom we are celebrating, presents the highest aspirations

of mankind.

In an article on the Meenakshi temple, I have associated His Holiness

with the concept of renunciation. I said at that time, renunciation

is at the heart of all world's great religious philosophies. It is at

this epicenter of philosophy and the spirit that Sri Sankaracharya

dwells. It is to share this experience with him as best we can that

we have gathered to celebrate this occasion.

The Paramacharya is one of the greatest Saints of our times. To be

with him is always a great spiritual experience.

- Dr. P.C. Alexander,

Governor of Maharashtra.