In many ways, Swami Chidekananda grew up as an “all-American kid.” Raised in Los Angeles, California, his father was a UCLA microbiology professor for more than 40 years, and Chidekananda made the all-star team as a shortstop in baseball. On the inside, though, he felt tension as a first-generation Indian American still very much immersed in the rich Hindu spirituality with which his mother bestowed him.
“We used to have monks come over to our home once a month,” Chidekananda says. “My mother just wanted that. And so, I used to feel very embarrassed seeing these guys in orange come to our home. Oh my God, what are my friends going to think?”
Though rife with mixed feelings, these experiences in his youth exposed Chidekananda to experiential theology and pluralism, which would eventually set his entire life’s trajectory. He was attracted to monasticism from an early age, but for the first couple decades of his life, he did not consider it for his own life’s purpose. Instead, Chidekananda became a prosecuting attorney, even working with Kamala Harris for some time, with his sights set on prestige and success as a lawyer.
While making significant strides in his legal career, he attended spiritual retreats where he learned more about monasticism. He traveled to monasteries well before he ever joined one. He continued to commune with monks, developing personal spiritual growth, while still focused on becoming a bigtime lawyer or judge. At one of these retreats, Chidekananda faced a question that would ultimately lead him to reorient his life to better embody his beliefs.
“You’ve had everything in this life. You’ve had good parents. You’ve had a good education. You’ve had a good job. You’ve made some money. Everything, you have had. So if not now, then when?”
In that moment, Swami knew that he would become a monk, like the many he had admired since childhood. He joined the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, headquartered in Kolkata, India, which currently has centers around the world and about 2,000 monks. Their Vedanta focuses on pluralistic experientialism and the infinitude and illimitability of God, without name or quality; their shrines feature not just the Ramakrishna Holy Mother but also Christ and the Buddha.
“The infinite cannot be confined to a singular name, a singular form, even a singular doctrine,” Chidekananda explains.
The ministry of the Ramakrishna order aims to explore the infinite nature of God, and the centrality of spiritual experience has informed Chidekananda’s approach at Harvard, where he joined the Hindu Monastic Fellowship Program sponsored by Harvard Divinity School, with thanks to philanthropic support from friends of the School. After taking his final monastic vows, he felt a cosmic pull toward continued education. The pluralistic commitment of Harvard Divinity School aligned with the values and ideology upon which Chidekananda hoped to expand, and the environment at HDS has allowed him to understand his spiritual goals from a wide spectrum of religious orientations.
“Now I’m seeing in class so many students from different backgrounds—Western scholars,” Chidekananda says. “So they’re looking at other aspects of the Upanishads that I didn’t really pay attention to before.”
Gaining insights and broadening understanding have extended beyond the classroom. Friendships with students of different beliefs and orientations, according to Chidekananda, help to remove one’s inner biases and see everybody as Divine. He sees HDS as a "semi-monastery" and feels the “sincerity of purpose” binding each HDS student together in a shared goal of learning and growth.
In Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures Charles Hallisey’s class on friendship and Buddhism, Chidekananda was able to contemplate how friendship can play an important role in monastic communities. He also greatly appreciates Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology Frank Clooney's support of the Hindu monks: "Professor Clooney is why Hindu monastics can come and study at HDS, and I feel grateful for his guidance." Classes like these and friends across religious backgrounds have helped him uncover a professional goal that marries his spirituality with academic interest.
Over the last 15 years, Chidekananda has visited nearly every holy place of pilgrimage across India, Nepal, and Tibet, including Mount Kailash, Amarnath, Varanasi, Dwarka, Bodh Gaya, Parasnath, the Twelve Jyotir Lingas, and countless other places. In the future, he hopes to visit the Vatican and Assisi. He has written articles about how to approach any place of pilgrimage and refers to it as the “Pilgrimage Mindset.” “What people sometimes forget is that the real pilgrimage actually begins once we return from the place of pilgrimage,” Chidekananda explains. He has been writing and researching their sacred significance while documenting his experiences at the sites. With the help of Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies Diane Eck, this semester, he hopes to compile some of these articles into a book and possibly for academic publication.
“What I love about places of pilgrimage,” Chidekananda says, “is that it has the possibility to convert our theoretical experience of the mind into living experiences of the heart...These past experiences are not just passive memories. They’re living realities, living companions. Those deities, those things that you met, they’re actually living. The more attention you give, you can cultivate that. And to me, this is the ultimate sacred space.”
Through sharing his own history and practices, Chidekananda hopes to help others integrate the experientialism of pilgrimage into their everyday spiritual lives; however, he does not claim mastery of this wisdom.
“Ramakrishna, the 19th-century mystic, used to say, 'As long as I live, so long do I learn.' That's the attitude of Vedanta. We’re lifelong students," he says.
Even as Chidekananda leads and teaches, continued learning, as he is doing at HDS, will always be at the center of his life.
—by Cecily Powell Tolleson, HDS news correspondent