An Irish Youth came into contact with Holy Mother's life and became a Monk of the Ramakrishna Math and stayed in our Deoghar Centre as his Guru advised till his last breadth.
Swami Pavanananda ji (Shambhu Maharaj) was one of the pillars of Vidyapith during my time. He was a great teacher of English, a very good player of hockey, and a master with the lives of plants. Vidyapith has been lucky to have some great knower of plants like Rammoy Maharaj, and Buddhadev Maharaj, but because of the long stay of Shambhu Maharaj there, the gardens there came to be associated with his name. And what a master of plants he was! It was because of him that one could see beautiful flowers in front of every building and during every season.
I was fortunate to have been taught English by him for two years. Whenever we made mistakes, his remarks used to be sarcastic and also funny! In our time he never punished, but I had heard from our seniors that he was quite stern earlier and whenever someone promised that he won’t make such a mistake while being punished, he always replied, ‘And, I won’t punish you then!’
He was a person of foreign origin but he had been told by his Guru, Srimat Swami Shivananda ji Maharaj, that in his previous birth he belonged to that area and to Lord Shiva only, so he spent nearly all his life there. What I loved of him was his beautiful smile that reflected his inner joy; his morning and evening visit to the prayer hall where he seemed lost in the divine; and his always sitting erect even on his bed while talking to anyone – he was, as if, ready to dive deep into meditation the moment the visitor left. Just like his sitting posture, he always walked straight, talked straight and had a wonderful memory till his last. Vidyapith surely made a great monk of him.
And he was so detached! He loved me since he had known me from my first day at Vidyapith. Once he was on his way to the prayer hall when I stopped him to ask a question about a rose plant. He answered lovingly, but when I continued with my talk, he more lovingly said, ‘Look, I am on way to the temple. We will talk some other time.’
During my long years with him, I never saw him discriminate between any two. He was the secretary of Vidyapith in the early 1960’s, but during his long stay later, he never interfered in the administrative affairs, nor did he ever get attached to any. Once we had to remove his personal staff on serious charges of stealing jewellery from a guest. The staff convinced him of his innocence, so he came to meet me at night itself. When I narrated the incident and gave him the evidence, he simply smiled and left. No interference.
To think how he might have adjusted to the climate, language, culture, food etc. of an alien land, and grown up to be great, is a marvel that only Vidyapith could conjure up.
(This is the excerpts from Swami Sampurnananda's article on "Vidyapith, Deoghar – An institution as a Karma yogi)
