Devotees at Baranagar Math (contd-1)

Though for a time Sarat Chandra returned home reluctantly, yet as soon as the monastery started he began to visit it off and on and spend long hours in the company of his comrades, absorbed in spiritual practice or about the talks about the life and teachings of the Master. Apprehending that his son Sarat was tending to be a recluse, and failing to turn his mind towards wildly life by arguments, Sart's father Girish Chandra, took the extreme step of cutting off all contacts of his son with his fellow disciples by locking him up in a room. Unruffled Sarat Chandra accepted the unenviable solitary confinement in his own house, and fully utilised his loneliness in focussing his mind on his spiritual objective. However, one day when one of his sympathetic younger brothers furtively unlocked the room. sarat Chandra silently walked out of the house and went straight to the Baranagar monastery. Shortly after this, he and some of his brother disciples assembled in the village home of Baburam ( later Swami Premananda), and there, inspired by their leader Narendranath's exhortation during a night-long vigil round a sacred fire, they took the solemn vow of Sannyasa, that is, monasticism for life.
Thus, step by step and without any fuss, sarat Chandra forged ahead on the path chalked out for Hindu monks. A period of austere monastic life in the Baranagar monastery  followed. Without  paying any heed to the meagre allowance of food and dress that the slender resources of the monastery provided for these educated middleclass youths, they braced themselves up for the arduous task of realizing the divine. No other concern could stand in the way of their one-pointed spiritual endeavour. Meditation, hymns,prayers, scriptural study and discussion on religious topics were all absorbed most of their time and energy.
On one auspicious day in the Baranagar monostery they performed the prescribed sacred rite known as Viraja Homa and thus ceremonially joined the traditional Hindu monastic life was virtually started by Sri Ramakrishna during his last days in Cossipore garden house, and was reinforced by their solemn vows in the village home of Baburam under the inspiration of Narendranath, it was from this day that they commenced a new life as sanctioned by Hindu religious texts.From this day Sarat Chandra came to be known as Swami Saradananda.Like other Sradananda was seized by a passion of leading a wandering monk. (Parivrajak).