Swami Samagrananda - the monk who exuded Peace

I am glad I could meet Swami Samagrananda last Sunday.

It was the only time I could detect in his face, a very slight trace of the pains he must have been going through.

I have not interacted much with my Guru Swami Vireswarananda ji. It hurts sometimes as it would hurt a boy who loses his father in his infancy. I had good compensation when I had the holy company of Swami Bhuteshananda ji, but still it sometimes rankled that it was not personal or personally intimate companionship. To a good extent, my close interactions with Swami Vipapmananda ji assuaged me a lot and to some extent my companionship with Swami Tapasyananda and Swami Ranganathananda too helped. These greats passed away and then it so happened that I started having frequent interactions with Swami Samagrananda ji in the recent past.

This time the relationship was in a different gear as I was slowly becoming a senior monk of the Order and he was sliding into the group of great Veterans. I was always into the habit of proffering advice, very often insistently and pro-actively, to all folks, sought or unsought but in Swami Samagrananda I met a dead end. He had the kindest of all faces I had ever seen and most courteous in manners and speech and it was very difficult to whip up from within me any willful assertiveness. I wanted to put up a good part of the blame  for his inability to lie down in his bed and his spending his last few months sitting  in a somewhat reclining chair  on his perceived physical laziness and I could do it only in a round-about way, saying that his living in good health for as long as possible will do a lot of good to the Sangha and he from his part should do whatever it takes. He just replied in his supremely pleasant way that it all depends on Thakur.

His pleasant face and manners was his radiant hallmark. It was always possible to pick holes in his decisions. It was easy to label him as somewhat lazy. Nevertheless, his pleasantness and peacefulness prevailed over everything. Unto the very last, he exuded peace, almost physically, so to say. One clearly understood what it is to meet a sadhu. Some could whip up others into action. Some could make depressed people cheerful again. Swami Samagrananda filled people with a sure and silent peace. Devotees in Sri Lanka, where he lived for thirteen years, would remark about his Buddha like calm face.

Haripad Ramakrishna Math lays claim to being the first Kshetra of Sri Ramakrishna in Kerala and rightfully so. But Tiruvalla too can lay a claim to be the first centre because it was in Tiruvalla, in a land provided by Swami Samagrananda’s father that the foundation stone to Tiruvalla Centre was laid by Swami Nirmalananda a month before foundation to Haripad centre was laid. That was in 1912 long before Samagranananda ji was born in 1930.

There is an incident that happened sometime in 1929-30. There was a little festival in Tiruvalla connected with Ramakrishna Math and a certain number of people had taken Prasad. Swami Nirmalananda asked the devotees how many fortunate people had Prasad that day and they mentioned a number. Swami Nirmalananda asked if they had counted correctly and they replied, yes, they had. Then Tulasi Maharaj said they had missed out one person. When they asked who was that fortunate soul, Nirmalananda ji replied that it was the foetus inside such and such lady. That was the mother of future Swami Samagrananda and she was in the family way.

There is another incident involving the young boy who was to become Swami Samagrananda later. It was a few years later and the boy was about five years or older. Swami Nirmalananda was having his dinner and the boy kept looking at his plate. The Swami too looked at him kindly. Then, suddenly the boy made a dash, picked up a piece of Pappad from the Swami’s plate, and ran away. His mother ran after him and scolded him. Tulasi Maharaj told the mother not to scold her boy and said that her boy would be a Sannyasin and made a gesture of blessing to the boy. Swami Samagrananda himself confirmed the truth of the story to me about two years back and insisted on the fact that he had not stolen the pappad but that the boy and the Swami both had an unspoken understanding that it is ok for the boy to have this Prasad.

I would still prefer to state that he did steal God’s grace that day. That was perhaps the only mischief  he ever did in his life. Soon he met Swami Vimalananda and was attracted into monastic life and served out abundantly that forever-refreshing Peace and Grace which he stole from Swami Nirmalananda’s Akshaya Thali.