Being the third generation in AWGP isn’t what originally hooked me into Sanātana Dharma.

It was a man who left computers to be a monk.

Before the Arsha Bodha Center was a modestly sized building with a parking lot, lecture hall, and classrooms. It was a small home that Swami Tadatmananda lived and taught out of it. You’d enter and to the right was the kitchen and library. And if you walked straight after taking off your shoes, you would end up in the living room where he would teach us.

There was something about being taught Vedic culture from a Swami who is a white man who used to be a computer engineer earning six figures as a consultant in California.

The adults already loved him. Yes there was the gimmick, white dude who was so fascinated by Vedanata that he took sanyas. But there is also this magic with words that Swamiji has. He could take these things that were revered but distant, and bridge that gap. Even in a faraway land, he helped them grow closer with their old home.

The magic didn’t stop there though. He is arguably even more effective at teaching the concepts and stories to children. Unlike the adults, there’s normally less compounded years of your elders telling you their version of things.

The Mahabharata, the Ramayana, scriptures like the Upanishads. None of us knew Sanskrit. Most of us were already forgetting how to speak our Mother Tongues. But still he could teach us just how deep, rich, and nuanced they all are.

What stuck is that he didn’t focus on us memorizing the mantras and shlokas. He cared more that we understood what we were saying. All of the printouts we had would have translations of the Sanskrit for us to read. Every once in a while, he’d switch it up and we’d have to chant and do the aarti singing in English.

Digging deeper. A skill that has carried me forward both in my career and my journey with faith.