srivasudevacharya.org

Sri Vasudevacharya (formally Dr. Michael Comans) is a senior disciple of Sri Swami Dayananda Saraswati, one of the great contemporary Hindu teachers of the present day. Swami Dayananda is himself a disciple of Sri Swami Chinmayananda. Vasudevacharya studied with Swami Dayananda in the traditional manner from 1980 until 1983, first at the Chinmaya Mission Ashram in Piercy, California, and later in Rishikesh, India. He returned to Australia in 1983 and completed his Doctorate in Classical Indian Philosophy at the Australian National University (ANU) in 1987. He taught briefly at ANU before taking up a position as Lecturer in Sanskrit and Indian Philosophy at the University of Sydney.

He has published a number of articles and books on Advaita Vedanta, the most recent being The Method of Early Advaita Vedanta (Motilal Banarsidass, 2000). He has also composed an Advaita treatise in Sanskrit, Advaitapratibodha.

In 1998 he was given diksha from his guru with the name Vasudevacharya. Since then he has been teaching the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads full-time to the general public. Vasudevacharya is the first person in Australia to have taught the entire Bhagavad Gita to the general public. He commenced a Bhagavad Gita Jnana Yajna in March 1996, at a function inaugurated by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, and through regular weekly classes he concluded the teaching of the eighteenth chapter in October 1997. Since then he has taught the complete Bhagavad Gita at the Sri Venkateshwara Temple in Helensburg and on two other occasions in his regular classes. He is also the first person in Australia to have taught the major Upanishads: he has taught Isha, Kena, Katha, Mundaka, Mandukya, Taittiriya, Aitareya, Prashna, Chandogya (ch. 6) and Brihadaranyaka (Muni Kanda).

He is able to present simply and clearly the essential vision of the Veda, and through the Bhagavad Gita he can show how spirituality intersects with everyday life. Vasudevacharya holds regular classes on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and Sanskrit in Sydney and Melbourne where he has a number of devoted students.