What we’re about
Stay tuned for announcements for Vedanta meetups. These are for seekers drawing from Vedanta as a path of self-inquiry and service to humanity.
The Vedanta Society of Edmonton has been a gathering place for individuals from all walks of life with an interest in studying texts and commentaries from the Vedas.
If you have watched Swami Sarvapriyananda's discourses on YouTube, then our meetups might interest you. We organize gatherings on a drop-in basis, open to the public, conducted in English, and normally free of charge (unless there are costs we cannot cover otherwise).
We draw inspiration from Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), who brought his simple message to the West in 1893 that every individual has vast, limitless potential if they harness their own minds.
Swami Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission Order of Monks with disciples of his Master, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa (1836-1886), a divine mystic, and his consort, Sri Sarada Devi. His brotherhood of monks from this Mission are well versed in the vedic texts and a great resource to help access this knowledge and stay motivated to stabilize our minds. They are our best guides us in our queries on self-inquiry.
This platform will keep you notified about visiting monks from the Ramakrishna Mission. They conduct Vedanta retreats and speak on different topics from Vedanta philosophy.
It is our good fortune, to have found Swami Vimohananda, the Minister-in-Charge of the Vedanta Society of British Columbia since December 2019, as the monk we are consulting with in Edmonton since 2021.
Advaita Vedanta philosophy follows the path of jnana yoga applying the framework that reality is infinite consciousness bliss and that the light of knowledge awakens us to this perception of eternal oneness that we need to be stabilized in.
Swami Sarvapriyananda is based in Vedanta Society of New York (VSNY), affiliated with the Ramakrishna Order of India and the Order's first Center started by Swami Vivekananda, in 1894 that seeded the world-wide Ramakrishna Movement over a century ago.
Vedanta is a philosophy originating in India concerned with the metaphysics of reality, the individual soul/self, and the ever-changing empirical universe, world, body and physical matter. As individuals, the quest is to determine how to remain immersed in service as an act of worshipping the divine/truth/oneness in others, given this reality.
Swami Vivekananda was the first teacher of Vedanta to come to the West, who drew wide acclaim by his electrifying addresses at the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893. After its conclusion, a group of American students interested to learn more about Vedanta gathered about the Swami, and the first Vedanta Center in the West was started in New York City.
The Vedanta Society of Edmonton, is an independent society, that draws inspiration from these lectures and aspirants who help unpack and explain this philosophy to us regular people.
We have been grateful for the generosity of the Hindu Society of Alberta for providing us a meeting space the last decade. However, due to water damage from a fire, the facility remains closed to the public until repairs are completed. The Society is in a process of relocating our meetups. The plan will be to resume on Zoom while we establish a physical location. We look forward to meeting again soon.
