More About My Guru Shri Swami Dayananda Saraswati

Sri Swami Dayananda Saraswati has been teaching Vedanta for fifty years, both to the public and to resident students in short and long-term courses. Swami Dayananda has taught ten resident Vedanta courses, of 30 to 40 months. The syllabus includes study of Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads and Brahmasutra (Catussutri), with the study of Sankara Bhashya in Sanskrit. Sanskrit language is taught with Paninian grammar. There are also daily meditation and question and answer sessions. Each course graduated about 60 qualified teachers, who are now teaching around the world. More than two hundred are now sannyasis and are highly respected as scholars and teachers throughout India and abroad.
Under Swami Dayananda's guidance, various centers for Vedic teaching have been founded around the world.  Swami Dayananda has established  four Gurukulams, three in India at Rishikesh, Coimbatore, and Nagpur; and one in the U.S. at Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania (http://www.arshavidya.org/home.html).  At present there are more than one hundred centers in India and abroad that carry on the same tradition of Vedanta teaching through his graduate students.
To make the teaching more widely available and for preserving the teaching tradition, Swami Dayananda has created :-
·       Bhagavad Gita Home Study programme, based on the classroom material.
·       Purna Vidya teaching programme to give children a comprehensive understanding of our cultural forms and their meanings, in a syllabus graded from grade 1 to 12.
  • Arsha Vidya Centre for Research and Publications (http://www.avrpt.com/) to publish Swami Dayananda’s books and archive Swami Dayananda’s classroom materials.  
  • Swami Dayananda Digital Library for the discovery and preservation of manuscripts of ancient scriptures approved by a team of renowned scholars.
  • Veda Pathasalas to revive the learning of the Vedas in a traditional manner.

In addition, Swami Dayananda has initiated and supported various philanthropic efforts for the last forty-five years.  

The most far-reaching of these is the establishment of All-India Movement For Seva (www.aimforseva.org) which has been awarded consultative status with ECOSOC (Economic and Social Council) by the United Nations in 2005. This organization is devoted to serving people in the remote regions of India, in the areas of Education, Healthcare, Programs for Women, the Environment, Cultural Validation and Relief and Rehabilitation Work during natural disasters. AIM for Seva was commended for its efforts by former U. N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, during his tenure.  As of now, it has established 96 student homes in 15 States, 10 schools, 9 health-care projects, and 10 special projects in the above categories.

Krupa and Shanmuga Society for Special Children has also been established to help mentally challenged children.

In 2002, Swami Dayananda convened the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha that is a unifying body that provides leadership, guidance and a collective voice for the Hindus. One of its achievements was to hold the Hindu-Jewish Dialogues between the Rabbinate of Israel and the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha, resulting in landmark declarations in which the Rabbinate acknowledged that Hinduism is not idol worship, opening the way for a  bilateral relationship between these two traditions. 

The Dharma Rakshana Samiti was founded to preserve the native spiritual culture of Bharat inherited from the Rishis and to raise awareness among Hindus of the Vaidika Dharma.

To promote classical Carnatic Music, Swami Dayananda established the Arsha Kala Rangam and instituted the ‘Arsha Kala Bhushanam’ award, which has been conferred on  thirteen senior musicians (both vocal and instrumental).

The annual Thinkers Meet organized by Swami Dayananda provides a forum for educationists, journalists, industrialists and political leaders to come together to address Hindu and National issues.

On the occasion of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Swami Dayananda joined leaders of the world’s religions at The Hague on Oct 22, 2008 to sign a Faith in Human Rights Statement.
Besides these initiatives, Swami Dayananda has been participating and taking a lead role in several global initiatives to promote harmony among religions and world peace. A few of these are: the United Nations gathering of NGO's in 1980 where he spoke on “The Moral Imperatives of Ending the Arms Race”, the UNESCO Seoul Global Convention where he spoke on “Tolerance, Restoration of Morality and Humanity” in September, 1995; the United Nations 50th Anniversary Celebration in October, 1995 where he represented the Shankaracarya of Kanchi; the Millennium World Peace Summit in New York, September 2000, where he represented the Hindu delegation; the International Congress for the Preservation of Religious Diversity, in Delhi, November 2001, which he initiated and co-chaired; the Conference on the Preservation of Sacred Sites in Taipei in June, 2002 in which he was a key participant; the World Council for Preservation of Religious Diversity in Bangkok June, 2002 which initiated and co-chaired; the Global Peace Initiative of Women Religious and Spiritual Leaders in Geneva, October 2002, which he helped organize and for which he delivered the keynote address; and a Hindu-Christian dialogue with the World Council of Churches in Geneva, October 2002 which he initiated.  Swami Dayananda serves as one of the 73 Participant Scholars for Foundation for the Future’s The Next Thousand Years television. Swami Dayananda played a major role in the World Youth Peace Conference, Kyoto, Japan 2003, the Dharma Conference in New Jersey, July 2003,  the World Youth Peace Conference, Nairobi, Kenya, 2004, the Hindu Collective Initiative (North America)’s Hindu Dharma Summit at Orlando, December 14-16, 2007 (Swami Dayananda was the Convener). Swami Dayananda was the Keynote Speaker at the International Inter-religious Encounter, held at Monterrey, Mexico, Sept 2007, and the Parliament of World Religions in Madrid, Spain, Oct 10, 2008 and was a key participant and organizer of the Fifth Global Peace Initiative of Women in Jaipur, March 2008, and the Hindu-Buddhist Summit at Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Feb 12-14, 2009.