'Easy option is not necessarily the best option' - My Homage to Swami Shantidananda ji (Kanta Maharaj)

Everey Ramakrishna monk I come across is capable of giving me gainful company for is he not but a special person whom Sri Ramakrishna calls for his own Sangha? It is bliss to meet and work with sadhus when Sri Ramakrishna is the joyful axis powering our acts.

Kanta Maharaj was just an acquaintance before a young man turned up and wanted to stay in an ashrama whose affairs I was then responsible for. He brought references from some senior sadhus and I had to oblige. Soon I found that it is better if this young man stays somewhere on his own and that our ashrama will neither benefit him nor will be benefited by him. He had been with Kantha Maharaj earlier and so I asked him about this person. His perceptive and loving words showed me the way to go. He agreed it would be difficult to live with and work with this young man, but if a miracle happens and this man stays for some length of time that would benefit him much. So I decided to put up with him and in fact had to put up with quite a lot of problems. He himself left after some months and I was doubly relieved, one that he had gone and again that I had not sent him away but that he left by himself. Most likely Sri Ramakrishna did some great good to him by keeping him in our ashramas for a while.

I salute him due to whom I could appreciate the loving heart of Swami Shantidananda and get a priceless hint about the ways of good works.

From the official Obituary :
http://www.belurmath.org/news_archives/2014/11/04/obituaries-01-november-2014/
Swami Shantidanandaji (Kanta Maharaj) expired on 14 October at about 2.45 am at Seva Pratishthan hospital, Kolkata.  He was 78 and had been suffering from various old-age ailments for some years.  Initiated by Swami Shankaranandaji, he joined the Order in 1955 at Kamarpukur centre and had Sannyasa from Swami Madhavanandaji in 1965.  Besides his joining centre, he served at Saradapitha (Belur) centre as an assistant, and Agartala, Garbeta, Manasadwip and Barasat centres as head.  He had been living a retired life for the last one year mainly at Barasat.  Affectionate and amiable by nature, he endeared himself to all who came in contact with him.

A Mendel among us - Vinayananda the Dahlia Swami

Many brothers of mine have gone away and I was sorry I had not been able to pay my due homage to them, for I was busy bobbing up and down hilly regions of Trivandrum, talking, singing, and organizing classes, and coming back to Nettayam Ashrama for the nights.

Let me try to catch up with their going, though I have this convenient excuse of being busy with more official duties. But no, no excuses. Perhaps I should make this resolution this coming New Year, that I would show due diligence to my writing instincts. So here I begin right away:

Of course, we should consider that 'all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away' but we may also choose to 'consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet ... even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven'.

Swami Vinayananda, our dear Bhuddhadev Maharaj did choose to consider some flowers, especially Dahlias and Roses and he did it very well. He had also managed to play God, so to say, and produced new varieties of Dahlias and discovered some new methods in horticulture. I am 'too lay' a person to get into details about these but even for a layman like me his dedication to horticulture was palpable. Once

sometime in 1988-89 I was assigned to escort him to some places in Kodaikanal, of course, in pursuance of mutual sharing or gaining some knowledge of flowers, chiefly of Roses. I spent some two to three days

with him and was amazed to find that there was so much to talk about flowers. It rained flowers for three days.

For some months, in 2008, while in Aroghya Bhavan, I came across him daily. By now he had withered and his sight had gone dim, but still he talked flowers. Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi came a few times, at the behest of his flower expert wife, to talk flowers with him. So did a few others too.

If memory serves me right, I had heard him say that all his interest and indulging in horticulture began only after he joined Ramakrishna Mission. Swami Lokeswarananda did well to encourage him in his pursuits. He went into it with full gusto and with all patience required of a flower farmer, and discovered newer methods and produced new varieties of Dahlia flowers. The international Dahlia Registry mentions his name and his creations, named after the Holy Mother, Thakur, Swami Vivekananda, Swami Madhavananda, Swami Lokeswarananda and one named Bhikku's Mother. He wrote under the name 'Bhikku Buddhadev' and produced some definitive books. He was sought after as a judge in flower shows.

Now-a-days a Ramakrishna Mission Monk going abroad is not a big deal, but for good or bad, back in the 1980s, we thought differently and forbade him to accept several invitations from prestigious international forums. I think the loss is more to us than to him.

The Ramakrishna Mission has arranged it acts better now after Vivekananda University came into being.

See for official obituary : 

http://www.belurmath.org/news_archives/2015/01/02/obituaries-01-january-2015/

Swami Vinayananda (Buddhadev / Pramod Ranjan) passed away at Arogya Bhavan, Belur Math, on 7 December at about 4.20 am owing to a sudden cardiac arrest. He was 77. Initiated by Swami Madhavanandaji Maharaj, he joined the Order in 1962 at Narendrapur centre and had Sannyasa from Swami Vireshwaranandaji Maharaj in 1974. Besides his joining centre, he served at Mayavati, Deoghar, Mumbai, Malda and Delhi centres as an assistant and Asansol centre as head. Towards the end of 1989 he withdrew himself from active life owing to ill health and had been living a retired life at Belur Math since then. An expert floriculturist, especially in growing roses and dahlias, he was often invited by several floriculture societies to act as a judge in their shows. He also authored a few books and a number of articles on floriculture in several national and international journals. The Swami was quiet and austere by nature.