Martin Wolff (1950 - 2021)
In Memoriam
Born in New York City on 25th April 1950, Martin attended the College of Insurance and trained as an actuary. He later became a systems programmer and worked at the brokerage house Bear Stearns doing performance tuning for their mainframe computers. He met his wife Billee at the young age of 17 and the two married in the summer of 1973. Already in his boyhood he had spiritual experiences and was drawn to Gregorian chant and other sacred recitation which would become a key component of his spiritual path. Like so many of his generation, he asked a lot of questions in his youth and felt drawn to Eastern teachings, first to those of Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu, and then to Shankara and Advaita Vedanta. He attended the New York based School of Philosophy where he came under the influence of Sri Shantananda Saraswati from whom he learned meditation. In the course of time, Martin learned to read, write and chant Sanskrit and would eventually study Sanskrit recitation under the guidance of a highly qualified Vedic teacher, Dr.Srinivasan Yagna Subramanian. When a friend gave him a copy of Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi in the mid-1980s, Martin immediately had the urge to discover the place where Sri Ramana had lived and taught. This wish finally came to fruition in 2002 when he made his first trip to Ramanasramam. His enthusiasm from this first trip was so immense that his daughters worried their father might go and just stay in India! Martin, along with fellow devotee Peter Berking, returned almost every year up until the COVID pandemic began in the spring of 2020. These annual pilgrimages were the high point of his life.
In 2006, Martin was diagnosed with sarcoidosis, an interstitial lung disease which also affected his nervous system. Given the seriousness of the illness, the prognosis was uncertain and that year when he came to Ramanasramam together with his wife, Billee, he wondered if it might be his last visit. Doctors advised him against travel for which he was deeply pained, having by then come to depend on his annual visits to the Ashram. When he commiserated with Dr.Anand, (Venkat S.Ramanan, President), V.S.Ramanan’s son, about his doctor’s advice, Anand helped him to work out a travel scheme that his doctors might be able to live with. At Dr.Anand’s behest, Martin came directly from the airport to the Ashram and did not venture outside its gates for the duration of the visit, thus avoiding exposure to adverse environmental conditions. The protocol worked beautifully, and Martin found that he not only could safely come each year but remarked that he had had the best visit to date owing to devoting himself fully to Bhagavan, recitation and meditation. Though his medical condition forced him to take an early retirement, he made good use of his circumstances and poured his heart into the Vedas and meditation practice. He eventually took on students eager to learn Sanskrit chanting and even coached international students online. (Martin made recordings of his chanting and his CD ‘Shakti-Bhakti’ is available on CDBaby.com and on Amazon.com). Martin joined the Board of Arunachala Ashrama and chanted the Veda there each Saturday night along with Peter Fell and others.
On the afternoon of 26th February 2021 at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York as full moon celebrations were underway in Tiruvannamalai, Martin merged peacefully at the Feet of Bhagavan. He will be missed by devotees everywhere who fondly remember him for his warmth, kindness and generosity. Martin is survived by his loving wife, Billee, their two daughters, Elisha and Diana, and their four grandchildren.