LIHU‘E — Pecking the keys of a computer keyboard with two fingers, Radhanath Swami, one of India’s premier spiritual leaders, began his memoir on an Apple computer given to him by a friend. “Through the course of the book I
LIHU‘E — Pecking the keys of a computer keyboard with two fingers, Radhanath Swami, one of India’s premier spiritual leaders, began his memoir on an Apple computer given to him by a friend.
“Through the course of the book I learned to type,” he confessed.
At the insistence of a dying friend, the man born to a middle-class Jewish family as Richard Slavin vowed to write his memoir in 2005.
“This is not your story,” Bhakti Tirtha Swami told him from his death bed. “It is a tale about how God led a young man on an amazing journey to seek the inner secrets that lie within all of us.”
Join the author of “Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami” for a presentation from 6 to 8 p.m. today at the Church of the Pacific in Princeville.
At 19 Slavin left Chicago, Ill. for a European summer vacation, only to discover his calling was much further east. “Journey Home” takes readers across Europe and the Middle East — through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and eventually India. Multiple near-death encounters include run-ins with drug smugglers, robberies at knifepoint and an attack by a pack of wild dogs.
Through letters written home to his parents, Radhanath Swami was able to retrace his journey.
“Writing the book became a deep meditation,” he said. “Going back over those letters put me back in time. It became an emotional experience trying to recreate the actual events in a way that not only explains what happened, but also gives the reader the experience.”
Radhanath Swami is a practitioner of Bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion that awakens the love of the heart.
“The way I wrote the book is I pictured a person who I didn’t know, and who didn’t know much about the tradition I follow. I pictured that nice person and told them a story,” he said.
Sequestered away for intermittent one-month retreats, Radhanath Swami wrote his first draft over a period of one year. With the expertise of an editor, he honed the work — adding 70 more pages to the manuscript.
He described the writing process as one of great spiritual insight.
“The deeper we go to share something meaningful, I believe that a power beyond our own can inspire us to communicate from the heart and to the heart,” he said. “If we deeply go into our heart with a meaningful and fulfilling message, with a real concern for our reader, we can be empowered by a force beyond our own to transmit that message into a person’s heart.”
“Journey Home” is a story of adventure and profound spiritual discovery. It follows a young man through a life-changing journey down the path of enlightenment to his current status as one of India’s great spiritual leaders.
As a swami or “monk exclusively dedicated to God’s services,” his projects include founding of a food-distribution center for indigent children, emergency-relief programs, an orphanage, an eye clinic and a hospital.
There is a suggested donation of $20, with all proceeds to benefit his humanitarian work in India.
Visit radhanathswamiji.com for more information.
