Potential Unlimited - Article Series on Ordinary People doing Extra-ordinary Work all around in Society
It was late 2021 when the then Editor of the reputed Vedanta Kesari magazine of the Ramakrishna Math, Chennai asked me to write a series of small articles on the interesting encounters that I seem to have with all sections of society. I had written a few articles for the Vedanta Kesari before and a big fan of this magazine with very limited circulation amongst the serious readers of Advaita Vedanta in India. Founded by Swami Vivekananda himself, my earliest reading on Vedanta were often the offprint of Vedanta Kesari that we got to read as youth thanks to the then Editor and an eminent scholar, Swami Tyagananda, who currently heads the Ramakrishna Ashram in Boston.
When I discussed the stories with Swamiji, trying to discover what impressed him about these, he said, that the way of presenting amazing concepts from the examples of ordinary life is what was impressive for him. He was keen that the extra ordinary aspects of ethics that is visible in the ordinary life of Indian people needs to be articulated as it gives hope that one need not be performing grand acts everyday to be good. This energises the potential in each one of us to achieve higher level of being, that such potential being highlighted became the focus.
So, we decided that the title of the series will be Potential Unlimited to indicate the potential of each and every person to achieve higher being through practice of ethics in daily life. As the writer, I requested Swamiji that I will not name the person or place that is profiled, because, often we miss the forest for trees and end up celebrating the individual or instance rather than see the broader design and practice. Swamiji agreed to this. So, the articles all have no name or only alphabets explaining the values deeply embedded.
I hope in some future date all of these articles will be compiled into a series for publication. These articles are available in the online version of the Vedanta Kesari as individual articles. They are also available digitally as a series of blog posts in the Dharma Institute blog here. In all there have been 11 articles in 2022 and the series continues in 2023 as well.
-- Ram, Jan 2023