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Lahiri Mahasaya

An icebreaker

A government accountant in Varanasi never left his job, his marriage, or his household, yet he became the source of a meditation lineage that reached the West decades after his death.

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Worth knowing · 1 of 5
Who was he before he became a teacher?
He was born Shyama Charan Lahiri in a Bengal village in 1828. He worked for decades as an accountant for a government engineering office, an ordinary householder's job he kept for life.
Worth knowing · 2 of 5
What happened in 1861?
As the tradition tells it, his office transferred him to the Himalayan foothills that year, and there he met a master called Babaji, who taught him the meditation technique his lineage carried forward.
Worth knowing · 3 of 5
How did he teach once he returned home?
He went back to his clerk's post in Varanasi and began teaching what he had learned. He never left his job or his family, and became known as the guru who never renounced ordinary life.
Worth knowing · 4 of 5
Did he write anything himself?
He left no books of his own. What's known comes mainly through his students' accounts and, much later, a widely read 1946 autobiography written by a follower two generations down his lineage.
Worth knowing · 5 of 5
What did he leave behind?
He died in Varanasi in 1895, having initiated disciples who carried the practice to a wider world he never traveled to see. One of them later taught the teacher who brought it to the West.
Words to know
Kriya YogaA meditation technique this lineage holds he began teaching in the 1860s after learning it in the Himalayas.
Householder yogiA teacher who practices and teaches while keeping ordinary family and working life, rather than renouncing it.
Guru lineageA chain of teacher-to-student transmission through which a tradition's teaching and authority are said to pass.
More words
BabajiThe Himalayan master the tradition holds he met in 1861, said to have revived this meditation technique.
A voice · 1 of 3
Lahiri Mahasaya · Teacher who never left his job

As the tradition holds, after his 1861 meeting with Babaji in the Himalayas, he returned to his clerk's post in Varanasi and taught the technique he had received without ever renouncing his household or his work.

A voice · 2 of 3
Sri Yukteswar · Disciple he initiated

As his own student later recounted, he received the meditation teaching directly from Lahiri Mahasaya in Varanasi and went on to pass it to the next generation of the same lineage.

A voice · 3 of 3
Paramahansa Yogananda · Author who wrote of the lineage

In his 1946 autobiography, two generations down the lineage, he described Lahiri Mahasaya as the disciple who first brought a Himalayan master's meditation technique back into householder life in Varanasi.

A line to leave them with
A clerk's desk by day. A lineage passed on by evening.
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