Vedanta Society
Swami Vivekananda, the founder of the Ramakrishna Vedanta movement in the West, came to the United States to represent Hinduism at the 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago, where he gave his celebrated greeting to the audience, "Sisters and Brothers of America!".
[11][12] Following his success at the Parliament, he spent two years lecturing in various parts of eastern and central United States, appearing chiefly in Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and New York.
"[16] After Swami Vivekananda's celebrated appearance at the 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago,[12][3] he went on a speaking tour of the mid-west and east coast of the United States.
[19] In 1895, Vivekananda broke off his speaking tour and held a 6-week retreat at Thousand Island Park, NY to train and initiate his first disciples, who would carry on the work after he returned to India.
[20] In 1921, the current location of the Society was able to be purchased through a gift by Miss Mary Morton, who was the daughter of the ex-Governor of New York, at 34 West Seventy First Street.
[30] The society struggled in the early years, but by the late 1930s, the Swami started to attract notable authors and intellectuals,[31][32][33][34][35] who were curious about the ancient Vedanta philosophy, and wanted to hear more from an adept.
By the early 1950s Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, and Gerald Heard had joined the editorial board of the Society's journal, Vedanta In the West.
[38] In the early 1940s, Gerald Heard decided to establish his own monastery in Trabuco Canyon,[31][39] in Orange County, Southern California, to practice intense spiritual exercises with a strict and physically demanding schedule, feeling that Prabhavananda was too lax.
However, there were not enough followers to support the effort, so in 1949 he donated the entire property, buildings and furnishing to the Vedanta Society of Southern California,[40] which became the Ramakrishna Monastery.
[42] Swami Atmajnanananda, currently the resident minister at the Vedanta Center of Greater Washington, DC, in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA.
[citation needed] He is a scholar in Indian philosophy and traveled extensively throughout India and Bangladesh; contributed various articles and translations to some of the books and magazines of the Ramkrishna order.
He also authored Jiva Gosvamin's Tattvasandarbha: A Study on the Philosophical and Sectarian Development of the Gaudiya Vaisnava Movement, published by Motilal Banarsidass in 1986 under his pre-monastic name.
[43] The Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center located on the upper East Side of Manhattan Island was founded in 1933 by Swami Nikhilananda, when he and a group of followers broke off from the Vedanta Society of New York, while still maintaining its affiliation with the Ramakrishna Order in India.
The center has a main temple and monastery in New York City and a retreat property at Thousand Island Park on the Hudson, where Swami Vivekananda stayed for 7 weeks in the summer of 1895.
[10][48] Huston Smith took weekly tutorial sessions with the Swami for a decade, which became the foundation of the course, the TV Series and Book, all titled, The Religions of Man.
Chetanananda continued the St. Louis Center's tradition of writing and translating important books on Vedanta and the early founders of the Ramakrishna Order.
[58] The Society provides spiritual seekers and students from local colleges and universities, participates in interfaith gatherings and promotes coexistence of the various religious traditions of the world.
