Mahasamadhi Anniversary Tribute to our revered and beloved Swami Shivapadananda Puri. 1st October.
Today is the 32nd mahasamadhi commemoration of our beloved Guru, Swami Shivapadananda Puri, who left his body just after 3am on 1st October 1994.
Many of us then very young, western disciples were blessed to first meet Swamiji in 1971. I marvel as I look back and realise that ‘Papa’ as I called him, wore the gerua garb for the first time on the night of Krishna Jayanti in August 1965.
Gurudev, Swami Nischalananda Puri, Founder and first President of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa, had initiated Papa into sannyas a while before leaving his own body on 11th February, 1965.
Which means that Papa, at just 27 years of age, had to guide the Centre in South Africa through the turbulent period following the passing on of Gurudev. Papa had been the 2nd President and Spiritual Head of the Centre for only 6 years when we met him. His body was then aged 33.
Please indulge some personal reminiscing here. I met Papa for the first time in February 1971. Looking back, my ‘take’ on Papa’s bodily age, if anyone had asked, would have placed him in his early 50s. Not that the body looked old – in those days Papa’s beard was still totally black. But those of you who had personal contact with Papa will know that he radiated a gentle but powerful gravitas, that conveyed a depth and maturity decades beyond the physical age.
I can’t put a label on what Papa was. The delightful, wise Swami Swatmaramananda, current President of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa, lovingly said to me when we were working on the compilation by devotees, of a biographical tribute to Papa, ‘Don’t. Because you may inadvertently demote him.’
Swami Swatmaramananda saw Papa in the flesh when Papa was visiting India and Swatmaramanandaji Maharaj was then a young brahmachari at the (if memory serves me) Baranagore Math?
I don’t think it’s an accident that Maharaj is today the head of the Ramakrishna Centre in South Africa. As the saying goes, not coincidence, but rather, ‘synchronicity’ as Carl Jung might have described it.
Swami Swatmaramananda has been instrumental in maintaining Gurudev’s and Papa’s legacy and memory in South Africa, for which we disciples and devotees are profoundly grateful. Our situation here in South Africa is unique. The ashram and branches weren’t developed by the Math and Mission. But were affiliated with the Belur Math ‘Mother Ship’, as an already fully functioning, country-wide entity.
It’s understandable that the Ramakrishna Math and Mission doesn’t glorify individual swamis other than Master’s [Sri Ramakrishna’s] direct disciples, because it’s very easy for a personality cult to develop around a particular monk.
Swami Gautamanandaji, the current president of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission internationally, has said that regardless of who from the Math and Mission is mandated to give Diksha mantra initiation, the Guru remains Sri Ramakrishna, alone. And not the individual acting as the authorised ‘instrument or channel’ to give initiation.
So what was Papa? What would be an accurate term to describe him? Our beloved Mother Radha, who devotedly made notes and recorded Papa speaking over several decades, making this website of Papa’s teachings possible, once asked Papa, ‘Are you an incarnation, Swamiji?’ To which Papa replied, ‘Not exactly.’ Was he a Nitya Siddha, an Ishwarakoti, a Rishi who regularly came here to lead groups of people forward? Only he knows. But from the impact and evidence, we knew that this was not his first visit as a sadhu.
Ashram ‘Mummy’ as everyone associated with the ashram called her – Jayanti Devi Mataji, was the closest disciple to Swami Nischalananda and without a doubt also to Papa. Mummy was truly the ‘glue’ in the ashram. Multi-talented, deeply holy, reserved and self-effacing, Mummy played a subtly formidable, seemingly ‘invisible’ role as the female energy or ‘shakti’ to both Gurudev and Papa. And not in the marriage sense as some deluded people once accused me of suggesting, when I said that very same thing in a speech.
Papa said to me one day, ‘If you knew what the saints must go through to reach that stage, you would cry and cry and cry. Repeated three times. Papa said to me in the 1970s, ‘This time, I have come for the householders [Grihastha devotees].’
In the last two years of her bodily life, I had the privilege of living in the same Durban cottage as Mummy and offering a teeny bit of seva. When we were talking about Papa one day, I said to Mummy, ‘I’m thinking that there can’t be too many of Papa’s calibre on earth at any one point, Mummy.’ To which she just silently nodded her head.
When Papa visited Kanti Nivas, Mummy’s little cottage in Newlands West in Durban, he would, while Mummy was preparing a meal for the three or four of us, sometimes appear to have a lie-down and ‘nap’ on the living room couch. Only later did I realise that it wasn’t a nap, but samadhi. And at the precise moment necessary, Mummy would appear from the kitchen with a small fresh towel, to absorb saliva that may have accumulated in Swamiji’s mouth as he returned to a normal plane of consciousness. Think about that. The Mother’s mind knew the exact moment, even though Papa’s body had not moved and his eyes were still closed, that he had come back to this plane of consciousness.
Papa was here to glorify Sri Ramakrishna, Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi and Swami Vivekananda. I can’t tell you how many times, when things went well and I’d say, ‘With your grace, Papa’, and he’d immediately say, ‘Master’s [Sri Ramakrishna’s] grace’, whilst quickly glancing at the nearest picture of Sri Ramakrishna. It was a reflexive and consistently repeated response.
One day when I said that and Papa responded with ‘Master’s grace’, I rather cheekily said, ‘Can you please tell me the difference?’ He didn’t respond or look at me. But he never ever took credit for anything, no matter what, and stressed his role as an instrument in Master’s or his guru’s hands. A more perfect ‘brand ambassador’ in spiritual marketing or communication terms, our beloved Thakurji [Master] could not have wanted.
Papa discreetly stepped back from actively running the Avoca Durban Headquarters ashram, the Sri Sarada Devi ashram [a convent] and the various branches by living in retreat for a few years at the ‘Ramakrishna Blessings’ Richmond farm, to grow the renunciates and develop their leadership and organisational skills.
It was textbook ‘servant leadership’ with never a hint of micro-management. Papa didn’t want the Centre’s history to be about him, but about Master, the Ramakrishna movement and a continued legacy of service to man as worship of God, through the young Swamis and Nuns.
Papa loved quoting the Lord Jesus. So, an appropriate way to end this brief insight into the enigma and mystic who was Swami Shivapadananda Puri, our beloved Papa, is with Matthew 7:16-20 King James Version of the Christian Bible. It reads, ‘Ye shall know them by their fruits.’
At the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden in Cape Town, there’s a beautiful inscription on the gravestone of the gardens founder, botanist Professor Henry Harold Pearson. It reads simply: ‘If ye seek his monument, look around you.’ We can say the same of our beloved Papa.
Jai Sri Ramakrishna!
Underlined words are hypertext links to clarification, explanation or other sources. Just tap on them.
The free-to-read or download, 396-page Flipbook version of Swamiji’s biography, ‘A Life Lived For Others‘, is available by clicking HERE. If you’d prefer the PDF version, please click HERE.
For our gurubhai Atmaprakash Kramer’s beautiful pictorial ‘memoir’ booklet of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa, Avoca Ashram, please click HERE.
There’s also a Facebook site for Swamiji’s posts now. They feature newer readings published more recently. Click HERE to view.
These recordings or the excerpts from them, were made from the early 1970s onward, by Mother Radha, a close devotee of Swamiji’s and edited for uploading here by our gurubhai and her son, Brother Tim. Please be mindful that what Swamiji was saying may have been specific to those with him at the time.