First of all I would like to thank you for this wonderful opportunity to share my story.

My name is Tanmoy Shaha, I currently live in Dhaka, Bangladesh. I am a textile engineer and work for a Danish clothing company at their Bangladesh Sourcing office.

 

I am a Hindu by birth, grew up in a rural area with my family. Vaishnava tradition is very popular among our people, also my family is quite religious. So I learned few things about basic ritualistic Bhakti practices from there but after I left my home for higher education I slowly started questioning the blind faiths.  I can remember a period of time when I used to feel myself as a pure atheist.

 

My main logic against faith was existence of so many religions and every religion’s claim that it is the only way. I knew Hinduism tries to say all the paths lead to the same God but I never understood it properly. Though I read some stories about Swami Vivekananda & Sri Ramakrishna when I was 14 or 16 but unfortunately I could not understand its significance that time.

However, I used to read a lot of books & in one of my favourite Bengali novels (Prothom Alo by Sunil Gangopadhyay) I got to know some amazing facts about Swami Vivekananda. I can’t remember exactly but maybe it was 2011/12 when I went to Ramakrishna Mission in Dhaka and bought a few books (Bengali) of works by Swami Vivekananda. First thing I read was the speech given by Swamiji in USA. When he spoke about “I” it gave me goosebumps, I never thought like that earlier.

 

After that I started reading a lot of things written by Swamiji and first got to know the term “VEDANTA”.

 

Meanwhile I got too busy with my work because it was my first job and had to work very hard even after office hours and in the weekends. When things became bit flexible on my job I continued my search to know more but there were so many thing in those books I was not capable of understanding them clearly.

 

It was early 2017 when I found a video of Swami Sarvapriyananda at IIT Kanpur. The subject was “Who am I” based on Mandukya Upanishad. It was so amazing and eye opening for me that I think it was a new start of my spiritual seeking. Since then I regularly follow the lectures of Swami Sarvapriyanandaji on the Youtube channel of Vedanta Society of NY. I really like to think Swamiji as my digital guru. 

 

I think it is God’s grace that I found the lectures of Swami Sarvapriyanandaji because it has introduced me with Advaita Vedanta and it gave me the meaning of spiritual life. Also it gave me back the respect and faith for all the religions, now I can bow down my head with full respect in front of the Murti at any temple I go (My wife takes me to temples very often).

 

I really try to follow the teachings of Vedanta about not reacting on worldly things but many times I fail. Sometimes I even feel upset for not improving enough spiritually. This is the reason, I really need to get initiated very soon in order to make progress on my spiritual journey. It would be great if I could be initiated by Swami Sarvapriyanandaji but I can’t reach him. So I need to find an alternative. I seek everyone’s grace so that I can find my guru and continue on my spiritual path.