Sw Anand Jina

(Robert E. Gussner)

(Mar 2, 1931 - Mar 24, 2018)

Jina was born in Minnesota but after high school he migrated East. He received a Bachelor of Sacred Theology degree from Boston University and a PhD in comparative religion at Harvard University. He was a Unitarian minister in Stoughton, MA from 1960 to 1964. He also helped organize peace action projects and non-violent direct action for civil rights in the South.

His major "career" was from 1969 to 1996, when he was a professor of comparative world religions at the University of Vermont. During this time, in 1977, he was sent to Pune by the American Academy of Religion to research and write a scholarly paper on Osho's syntheses of modern western methods (particularly those of the Esalen Institute in California) and the traditional Indian approach to religion.

While writing the paper, he became more and more intrigued, though at first he thought Osho's approach was so different from anything he knew that it couldn't be right. He visited several times, taking sannyas in 1982 or 83. He incorporated Osho into his teachings at the University of Vermont.

After his retirement, he continued to write and teach. He said that he received tremendous satisfaction from teaching, particularly about meditation and awareness. Some of his writings appear in the books below:

bibliography

1993 : The Rajneesh Papers: Studies in a New Religious Movement (contributor)

1999 : Osho Rajneesh and His Disciples (contributor)

see also

obit in Osho News

obit at legacy.com