Pioneer Women of Vedanta - Marie Louise Burke

1912-2004

Marie Louis Burke

Marie Louise Burke was later known as Sister Gargi and Pravrajika Prajnanaprana. She was an acclaimed researcher on Swami Vivekananda. Her six-volume work, Swami Vivekananda in the West: New Discoveries, is highly regarded in India and in Vedanta circles worldwide.

She also wrote a soul-stirring biography of her mentor and spiritual teacher, Swami Ashokananda (1893-1969). In A Heart Poured Out, Sister Gargi told the story of her illustrious teacher of the Ramakrishna Order who spent much of his life expanding the Vedanta movement in northern California while training his American students to lead authentic spiritual lives.

In Shafts of Light: Selected Teachings of Swami Ashokananda for Spiritual Practice, Sister Gargi and Dr. Shelley Brown compiled more than 800 spiritual instructions expressed in Swami Ashokananda's own engaging language. "These illuminate the path to Self-knowledge and bring Vedanta's eternal truths to the modern mind."

Sister Gargi's own spiritual memoir was presented in A Disciple's Journal. Her diary entry on Lord Buddha's birthday, June 18, 1950 states:

I have never seen the altar more beautiful or Swami more beautiful. I was overwhelmed that I was alive, that this beauty existed, and that I was my particular self to see it just as I saw it. Buddha surely was there and because of that it was so extraordinary. I was seeing something of him.

Later I spent the afternoon in the Temple, reading Swami Vivekananda and meditating. My mind is calming down now, and I feel like the fish swimming in blissful waters.

Sister Gargi traveled to India on a regular basis to conduct her research on Swami Vivekananda and to write. She was thoroughly familiar with the spiritual atmosphere there in contrast to American life in San Francisco and New York. A diary entry in 1951 reads:

In India, where often the disciple never again sees the initiating teacher, the age-old traditions of the country support and guide him or her. The entire continent is geared to spiritual life, and there is no one who does not sympathize with what a spiritual aspirant is trying to do. There is no strong current opposing a newborn seeker.

In the West, on the other hand, a spiritual tradition does not permeate the air, the water, and the dust. It is not as natural to the people as breathing, or as expected as the next beat of the heart. The only place in the West where one can learn the ways of spiritual living and devote oneself to adapting to those ways is in the company of the holy- preferably, if one is so lucky, in the company of the teacher himself, or herself, who knows one's quirks inside and out. The teacher takes the place of a millennia-old culture of spiritual thinking and living, of spiritual being.

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