Swami Vivekananda

A Contemporary Reader

Makarand R. Paranjape

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138380684
• eBook ISBN: 9781317446361
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) popularised Vedanta in the West and reformed Hinduism in India. He also inspired the mass movement that made India a modern nation. In showcasing his life and work, this Reader balances the two main aspects of his life: the religious and the secular, the spiritual and the practical, the devotional and the rational. Included here are the most significant and representative texts from every major genre and phase — selections from his speeches, essays, letters, poems, translations, conversations, and interviews — arranged for easy reading and reference. With a scholarly Introduction highlighting his contemporary relevance, separate section introductions and a detailed biographical Chronology, this volume provides a rare insight into one of India's greatest minds.

This volume will interest scholars and students of modern Indian history, religion, literature, and philosophy as well as general readers.

Part 1

Addresses at the Parliament of Religions, Chicago

The story of Swami Vivekananda’s participation in the World’s Parliament of Religions, Chicago, is the stuff legends are made of. His decision to go to the Parliament was clinched in Kanyakumari in February 1892, when he felt that he was destined to contribute to the reawakening of India. In Madras, where he went afterwards, his devotees, especially a band of young men led by Alasinga Perumal, began to collect funds for the trip; the Raja of Khetri also contributed later. Vivekananda saw a vision in which he was walking on water and also received the permission from Sarada Ma, Sri Sri Ramakrishna’s consort, to go West with the Master’s message. On 31 May 1893, Vivekananda set sail for America. It would be a long voyage, taking him through Colombo, Penang, Singapore, Hong Kong, Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo, to Yokohama, and thence, crossing the Pacific Ocean, to Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada, and finally to Chicago at the end of July 1893.

In Chicago, he found out that the Parliament had been postponed until September. In his strange clothes, he was teased and stared at; hotels often mistook him for a ‘negro’ and denied him lodgings. He was advised to go to Boston. Enroute, in the train, he attracted the curiosity of Miss Kate Sanborn, who invited him to ‘Breezy Meadows’, her home in Boston. As Miss Sanborn’s guest, he was introduced to Boston society, as an item of curiosity, the ‘first Easterner and Hindu’ they had ever met. Their image of India, derived mostly from the Christian missionaries, was rather unflattering. Vivekananda wished to show a different India to the West, one that actually had something to offer to the modern world. In Boston, he also met Professor J. H. Wright of Harvard University, who agreed to write a letter of introduction to the Parliament so that Vivekananda could be a delegate.

Vivekananda arrived in Chicago arrived late in the evening, spending the night in the freight car. The next morning, a kindly lady — who saw him from the window of her house — knew him to be a delegate at the Parliament. She was Mrs George W. Hale, who not only gave him succour and shelter, but presented him to Dr J. H. Barrows, the President of the Parliament. Vivekananda, once again, had proof that Providence was watching over him. The Hales later became Vivekananda’s staunch devotees.

The Parliament, which was inaugurated on 11 September 1893, was a grand event. Part of the World’s Columbian Exposition (also called the Chicago World Fair) to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America, the Parliament was, perhaps, also meant to show the West’s supremacy in matters of religion as the Exposition was to demonstrate the West’s material and technological superiority. Yet, this was an unprecedented opportunity for people of various faiths and cultures to talk to each other. There were many delegates not only from all over the world, but also from the Indian subcontinent; not just Christians, but Muslims, Hindus, Brahmos, Theosophists, Buddhists, Jains, and Parsis participated.

Vivekananda’s tremendous impact at the Parliament may best be summed up in his letter to his disciple Alasinga Perumal in Madras:

There was a grand procession and we were all marshalled on to the platform. Imagine a hall below and a huge gallery above, packed with six or seven thousand men and women representing the best culture of the country and on the platform learned men of all the nations of the earth. And I, who never spoke in public in my life, to address this august assemblage!! It was opened in great form with music and ceremony and speeches; then the delegates were introduced one by one and they stepped up and spoke. Of course my heart was fluttering and my tongue nearly dried up; I was so nervous and could not venture to speak in the morning. Mazoomdar made a nice speech, Chakravarti a nicer one and they were much applauded. They were all prepared and came with ready-made speeches. I was a fool and had none, but bowed down to Devi Sarasvati and stepped up and Dr Barrows introduced me. I made a short speech. I addressed the assembly as ‘Sisters and Brothers of America’, a deafening applause of two minutes followed and then I proceeded; and when it was finished, I sat down, almost exhausted with emotion. The next day all the papers announced that my speech was the hit of the day and I became known to the whole of America. Truly has it been said by the great commentator Shridhara — mukamkarotivachalam — ‘Who maketh the dumb a fluent speaker’. His name be praised! From that day I became a celebrity and the day I read my paper on Hinduism, the hall was packed as it had never been before. I quote to you from one of the papers: ‘Ladies, ladies, ladies packing every place — filling every corner, they patiently waited and waited while the papers that separated them from Vivekananda were read,’ etc. You would be astonished if I sent over to you the newspaper cuttings, but you already know that I am a hater of celebrity. Suffice it to say, that whenever I went on the platform, a deafening applause would be raised for me. Nearly all the papers paid high tributes to me and even the most bigoted had to admit that ‘This man with his handsome face and magnetic presence and wonderful oratory is the most prominent figure in the Parliament,’ etc., etc. Sufficient for you to know that never before did an Oriental make such an impression on American society (2003: 20–21).

The accuracy of description has been disputed by some (see Chattopadhyay 1999), but the immense significance of Vivekananda’s sojourn in the West cannot be denied. He created the groundwork for the reception of Indian spiritual traditions in the West, returning home to India as a victorious champion.

Response to the Welcome

At the World’s Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 11 September 1893

Sisters and Brothers of America,

It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us. I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions; and I thank you in the name of millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects.

My thanks, also, to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from the Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honour of bearing to different lands the idea of toleration. I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: ‘As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.’

The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: ‘Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.’ Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilisation and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.

Why We Disagree

15 September 1893

I will tell you a little story. You have heard the eloquent speaker who has just finished say, ‘Let us cease from abusing each other’, and he was very sorry that there should be always so much variance.

But I think I should tell you a story which would illustrate the cause of this variance. A frog lived in a well. It had lived there for a long time. It was born there and brought up there, and yet was a little, small frog. Of course the evolutionists were not there then to tell us whether the frog lost its eyes or not, but, for our story’s sake, we must take it for granted that it had its eyes, and that it every day cleansed the water of all the worms and bacilli that lived in it with an energy that would do credit to our modern bacteriologists. In this way it went on and became a little sleek and fat. Well, one day another frog that lived in the sea came and fell into the well.

‘Where are you from?’

‘I am from the sea.’

‘The sea! How big is that? Is it as big as my well?’ and he took a leap from one side of the well to the other.

‘My friend’, said the frog of the sea, ‘how do you compare the sea with your little well?’

Then the frog took another leap and asked, ‘Is your sea so big?’ ‘

What nonsense you speak, to compare the sea with your well!’

‘Well, then’, said the frog of the well, ‘nothing can be bigger than my well; there can be nothing bigger than this; this fellow is a liar, so turn him out.’

That has been the difficulty all the while.

I am a Hindu. I am sitting in my own little well and thinking that the whole world is my little well. The Christian sits in his little well and thinks the whole world is his well. The Mohammedan sits in his little well and thinks that is the whole world. I have to thank you of America for the great attempt you are making to break down the barriers of this little world of ours, and hope that, in the future, the Lord will help you to accomplish your purpose.

Paper on Hinduism

19 September 1893

Three religions now stand in the world which have came down to us from time prehistoric — Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. They have all received tremendous shocks and all of them prove by their survival their internal strength. But while Judaism failed to absorb Christianity and was driven out of its place of birth by its all-conquering daughter, and a handful of Parsees is all that remains to tell the tale of their grand religion, sect after sect arose in India and seemed to shake the religion of the Vedas to its very foundations, but like the waters of the seashore in a tremendous earthquake it receded only for a while, only to return in an all-absorbing flood, a thousand times more vigorous, and when the tumult of the rush was over, these sects were all sucked in, absorbed, and assimilated into the immense body of the mother faith.

From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists, and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hindu’s religion.

Where then, the question arises, where is the common centre to which all these widely diverging radii converge? Where is the common basis upon which all these seemingly hopeless contradictions rest? And this is the question I shall attempt to answer.

The Hindus have received their religion through revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end. It may sound ludicrous to this audience, how a book can be without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons in different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical, and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits, were there before their discovery, and would remain even if we forgot them.

The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis, and we honour them as perfected beings. I am glad to tell this audience that some of the very greatest of them were women. Here it may be said that these laws as laws may be without end, but they must have had a beginning. The Vedas teach us that creation is without beginning or end. Science is said to have proved that the sum total of cosmic energy is always the same. Then, if there was a time when nothing existed, where was all this manifested energy? Some say it was in a potential form in God. In that case God is sometimes potential and sometimes kinetic, which would make Him mutable. Everything mutable is a compound, and everything compound must undergo that change which is called destruction. So God would die, which is absurd. Therefore there never was a time when there was no creation.

If I may be allowed to use a simile, creation and creator are two lines, without beginning and without end, running parallel to each other. God is the ever active providence, by whose power systems after systems are being evolved out of chaos, made to run for a time and again destroyed. This is what the Brâhmin boy repeats every day: ‘The sun and the moon, the Lord created like the suns and moons of previous cycles.’ And this agrees with modern science.

Here I stand and if I shut my eyes, and try to conceive my existence, ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I’, what is the idea before me? The idea of a body. Am I, then, nothing but a combination of material substances? The Vedas declare, ‘No’. I am a spirit living in a body. I am not the body. The body will die, but I shall not die. Here am I in this body; it will fall, but I shall go on living. I had also a past. The soul was not created, for creation means a combination which means a certain future dissolution. If then the soul was created, it must die. Some are born happy, enjoy perfect health, with beautiful body, mental vigour and all wants supplied. Others are born miserable, some are without hands or feet, others again are idiots and only drag on a wretched existence. Why, if they are all created, why does a just and merciful God create one happy and another unhappy, why is He so partial? Nor would it mend matters in the least to hold that those who are miserable in this life will be happy in a future one. Why should a man be miserable even here in the reign of a just and merciful God?

In the second place, the idea of a creator God does not explain the anomaly, but simply expresses the cruel fiat of an all-powerful being. There must have been causes, then, before his birth, to make a man miserable or happy and those were his past actions.

Are not all the tendencies of the mind and the body accounted for by inherited aptitude? Here are two parallel lines of existence — one of the mind, the other of matter. If matter and its transformations answer for all that we have, there is no necessity for supposing the existence of a soul. But it cannot be proved that thought has been evolved out of matter, and if a philosophical monism is inevitable, spiritual monism is certainly logical and no less desirable than a materialistic monism; but neither of these is necessary here.

We cannot deny that bodies acquire certain tendencies from heredity, but those tendencies only mean the physical configuration, through which a peculiar mind alone can act in a peculiar way. There are other tendencies peculiar to a soul caused by its past actions. And a soul with a certain tendency would by the laws of affinity take birth in a body which is the fittest instrument for the display of that tendency. This is in accord with science, for science wants to explain everything by habit, and habit is got through repetitions. So repetitions are necessary to explain the natural habits of a new-born soul. And since they were not obtained in this present life, they must have come down from past lives.

There is another suggestion. Taking all these for granted, how is it that I do not remember anything of my past life? This can be easily explained. I am now speaking E...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chronology
• Part 1: Addresses at the Parliament of Religions, Chicago
• Part 2: The Four Yogas
• Part 3: Speeches and Lectures Delivered Abroad
• Part 4: Lectures from Colombo to Almora
• Part 5: Selections from Prose Writings
• Part 6: Poems
• Part 7: Selections from Letters
• Part 8: Sayings and Utterances
• Part 9: Interviews and Conversations
• About the Editor
• Index