Swami Tadatmananda Saraswati

About the Author

Swami Tadatmananda was born in 1953 to Christian parents in the suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He grew up during the tumultuous 1960's, a time of antiwar protests, experimentation with drugs, and spiritual exploration. After getting married and receiving a degree in electrical engineering, he moved to California and worked in the computer field. There, his marriage soon ended but he found the opportunity to practice meditation and yoga under the guidance of several teachers from India. In 1981, he met Swami Dayananda, a traditional teacher of Vedanta. He studied Vedanta and Sanskrit under Swami Dayananda's tutelage and went to India for further studies in 1986. He then left his home and successful career to move to Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, an ashram in Pennsylvania's Pocono mountains, to undertake a three-year residential course in Vedanta, meditation, and Sanskrit taught by Swami Dayananda. Soon after the course, he assumed the responsibility for managing Arsha Vidya Gurukulam. In 1993, he was initiated as a sannyasi, a Hindu monk, by Swami Dayananda on the banks of the Ganges River in Rishikesh. He then began to teach at Arsha Vidya Gurukulam and throughout the United States, giving lectures, seminars and meditation workshops for various organizations, temples, universities and industries. In 2000, with the blessings of his guru, Swami Dayananda, he established his own ashram, Arsha Bodha Center in Somerset, NJ, where he continues to teach.