Checkout

Yankee and the Swamis: A Westerner's View of the Ramakrishna Order

(1 reviews)
  • Yankee and the Swamis
SKU: YANKEE
by John Yale (Swami Vidyatmananda)

A travel story of the author that chronicles his adventures, mis-adventures, and the amazing people he met as he journeyed throughout the holy places of India.

  • 313 pages, Indian paperback
  • 81-7120-908-4
$9.95
The author was a monk of the Vedanta Society of Southern California during the early fifties. After a few years, he felt a need to go to India and experience India for himself.

This is his travel story. It chronicles his adventures, mis-adventures, and the amazing people he met as he journeyed throughout India. The India he visited then is far different today. Back then, many of the disciples of the disciples of Sri Ramakrishna were alive and active. India was to this white American another world with strange food and habits. Nonetheless, he jumped in wearing his white brahmachari dress, and went native as best as he could. He found an India that was welcoming, and people who bent over backwards to make him comfortable. It's a good and inspiring read.

Global Rating: 3.00 from 1 reviews Add your review of this product
Review By Meow

Yankee and the Swamis

The author recorded his visit to India, 1952- 1953, under the umbrella of the Ramakrishna Order. He takes many points of view: a devotee, a critic, a monk in training, a travel writer, an intellectual, a public speaker and above all, a Yankee. The book is a little of everything. This is a zigzag story and the people around him are peripheral. It might have been better to edit the book into two or three shorter books each with a more focused theme. Compare this book to Days in an Indian Monastery by Sister Devamata, who was also an American who travelled to India to pay her respects and record her impressions. Her pilgrimage to India was one long prayer.