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In Acknowledgement
It has been a unique privilege to try and transmit the beauty and truth of Gurudev Shree Chitrabhanuji's life to others through the written word. Gurudev was kind enough to allow me to interview him from time to time. These brief conversations yielded a harvest of meaningful insights and experiences. I also gleaned many personal stories from the notes I took during Gurudev's talks throughout the years and from his own writings.
In Half Hours With A Jain Muni, a short first biography of Gurudev which was written by Shri Abdul Hamid A. Baakza and published in 1962, I found a number of significant events which I had a chance to clarify and amplify, with Gurudev's help. Before he expired in 1975, Shri Baakza, out of continued love and devotion to Gurudev, had prepared many notes for a sequel to his first biography. He had sent them on to Richard Kleifgen, longtime student of Gurudev and co-director of the Jain Meditation International Center. Rick started to rewrite and update the material, turning many of them into chapters for the new book. When I expressed an interest in lending my help to this project, Rick generously relinquished the notes, entrusting them into my hands. I am deeply grateful to both Shri Baakza and to Rick for their creative efforts at pulling so many of the threads together. In particular, I admire the way in which Rick exemplified unattachment to the fruits of his labor.
I specially traveled to India with Gurudev and Pramodaben, his wife, and fellow students in both 1975 and 1978 to observe Gurudev in his homeland, to feel the vibracions of the sanctified places where he had meditated and taught fo. nearly three decades as a monk, and to look at the many scrapbooks and diaries recording in word and picture those years. I learned of the hundreds of instances of social welfare spon-sored by Gurudev at the Divine Knowledge Society in
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