It is with great sadness that we share that our beloved Pravrajika Deviprana (Robin Small) passed in the wee hours of August 1, from complications of multiple sclerosis, which she endured for 20 years. We are sad because we will miss her quiet radiance but glad that she is finally free from the body that gave her so much grief the past two decades.
Deviprana was born in Altadena, California, in 1951. Her father, John, after graduating from Cal Tech, worked at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and her mother, Marguerite, worked at See’s Candy. Throughout her childhood, Deviprana was extremely active, often trekking with her older brother Steven in the surrounding San Gabriel mountains.
The joyfulness of her early teen years was shattered by the death of her mother to cancer when she was 14, an event that dramatically altered her life. In 1969 she went to Whittier College, where she received her BA in Political Science and a teaching credential.
In 1975, Deviprana came to Santa Barbara to attend the wedding of close friends and fell in love with the city by the sea. She found a job she loved, teaching at the Franklin Day pre-school for several years; at the same time, she worked as a nanny for five children. Her former Franklin Day pupils would visit her throughout her life.
Always interested in Eastern philosophy, Deviprana began taking yoga classes in the early 1970s from a woman who had belonged to the Vedanta Society in Chicago. Not long after, Deviprana discovered the Vedanta Temple and the Sarada Convent of the Ramakrishna Order in the hills of Montecito. She immediately felt a clarion call to a new life and mission — one leading to a near half century of service, work and worship.
When she told her coworkers she was joining a convent on April 1, 1976, they were certain it was an April Fool’s prank. She remained a nun — without regrets — until her last breath.
Deviprana spoke often of her great fortune to be initiated by Swami Aseshananda, a disciple of Sri Sarada Devi, the wife and first disciple of Sri Ramakrishna. In much of India and among devotees around the world, Ramakrishna (1836-1886) is regarded as a spiritual avatar in the same pantheon as Buddha, Jesus, Moses, and Krishna. It was Ramakrishna’s foremost disciple, the celebrated Vivekananda, who first introduced meditation, and yoga, to the West in the 1890s.
Deviprana received her preliminary vows (brahmacharya) from Aseshananda in 1983 and her final vows of renunciation (sannyasa) in 1988. She visited him every year in Portland until his passing in 1996. Like her guru, Deviprana loved performing puja or ritualistic worship, which she did as long as humanly possible and beyond, resulting in several falls trying to do what she loved most in life. Even when she could no longer stand up on her own and had lost the use of her right hand, she continued worship in the convent’s small shrine. Like Aseshananda, who was also disabled, she was an avid gardener who conversed with the plants, encouraging them with endearments.
Deviprana was an unusually kind person, one who remained cheerful even during the most challenging circumstances. She had a terrific sense of humor, was an excellent mimic, and would sometimes laugh so intensely that she would weep. “She was the real deal,” said a Santa Barbara Vedantist, who recalled Deviprana’s earliest days at the temple. “She lived it.”
For many, there was much heartbreak that it would be Deviprana — the strongest, the most active nun of her order — who was struck by MS. And while MS slowly chipped at her strength and capabilities, not once did anyone hear a complaint. Ever. When asked why she had to endure so much, she replied, without a trace of self-pity, “Mother (Sri Sarada Devi) wants to teach me complete surrender.” A state of surrender for Deviprana was a gift from the divine.
Deviprana’s memorial was held at the Vedanta Temple in Santa Barbara on Saturday, August 17. In lieu of flowers, a donation can be made to the Vedanta Society of Southern California.