Swami Vivekananda: The Journey of a Spiritual Entrepreneur

By Rakesh Tripathi

Swami Vivekananda: The Journey of a Spiritual Entrepreneur details the events of Vivekananda's life, encompassing his transformation from a nameless wanderer to the most renowned representative of Hinduism of all times. In this book, we come across the Vivekananda who not only created history by delivering the Chicago Lecture in 1893 but also established the Ramakrishna Order through an unparalleled entrepreneurial spirit which brought to the fore his qualities as a decisive leader and an excellent communicator who reached out globally to convey the message of the Vedanta. These attributes of Vivekananda's personality have remained largely unexplored in most of the books written on him.

This book also maps Hinduism and its present-day challenges vis-à-vis its attributes in light of Swami Vivekananda's philosophy and brings forth its contemporary relevance in a practical manner for the reader at a time when the fire of fundamentalism among different faiths has turned religions of the world essentially into separating factors within humanity. Further, it also contains detailed descriptions of practical approaches to translation that will help scholars build a comprehensive framework for translation of complex texts such as the Vedas and Upanishads. It finally concludes with the Indian media's articulate advocacy of Vivekananda's approach on a number of platforms in recent times, to unite humanity despite all its diversity as it is ever more relevant today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Apr 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9789388038775

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SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

THE JOURNEY OF A SPIRITUAL ENTREPRENEUR

SWAMI

VIVEKANANDA

THE JOURNEY OF A

SPIRITUAL ENTREPRENEUR

Rakesh Tripathi

BLOOMSBURY INDIA

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First published in India 2019

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Copyright © Rakesh Tripathi, 2019

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To my parents,

Radhey Shyam and Kamla Tripathi, my wife Jyotsna and son Siddhant

May we work together in peace and harmony

and enjoy the fruits of our efforts by sharing with others

May our study be vigorous and fruitful

May we not be jealous of others achievements

May peace prevail on earth

(Taittiriya Upanishad, II.i.1)

CONTENTS

Foreword by Dr Karan Singh

Preface

Acknowledgements

1. Vivekananda’s Childhood and Early Life

2. Meeting Sri Ramakrishna

3. The Beginnings of the Ramakrishna Order

4. The Parivrajaka’s Trail

5. The Parliament of Religions

6. Exploring the West

7. Swami Vivekananda’s Global Outreach

8. The Homecoming

9. The Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission

10. Across Europe and America Again

11. The Mahasamadhi

12. Linguistic Aspects in Swami Vivekananda’s Discourses

13. Mapping Hinduism in Swami Vivekananda’s Discourses

14. Swami Vivekananda in Contemporary Indian Media

References

Index

About the Author

FOREWORD

Swami Vivekananda was one of the most outstanding figures in the religious and spiritual history of the world. His apprenticeship with the spiritual genius Sri Ramakrishna, his subsequent travels throughout India where he was deeply distressed to see the condition to which she had been reduced after centuries of foreign rule, and then his dramatic appearance at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in 1893 are all part of the saga of his life. Thereafter, he returned to India and founded the Ramakrishna Mission which continues its valuable service to society down to the present day.

Swami Vivekananda thus had three great achievements to his credit. The first was a virtual rearticulation of Hinduism based on the immortal teachings of the Vedanta.

This was long overdue, because at the time Hindus were sunk in superstitions and iniquitous social structures, particularly vis-à-vis women and dalits. Vivekananda’s teachings and writings came as a breath of fresh air that helped to sweep away centuries of stagnation and impart a new dynamism to this most ancient of all religions.

Secondly, his advent at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago, as well as his lectures in Britain, were the first occasion for an exposition of the true foundation of Hinduism for the Western world, and marked the beginning of a whole series of Hindu saints and scholars who visited the West to propagate their doctrine. This distinguished list includes, among others, Parmahans

Yoganada who set up the Self-Realisation Fellowship in California, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi with his Transcendental Meditation, Prabhupada Swami who founded Iskcon which today is active around the world, Swami Sachidananda who created a spiritual community in Yogaville, Carolina, on a beautiful sight overlooking the Lotus Temple, the first Inter-faith Temple in the world, Swami Chinmayananda whose Chinmaya Mission now is spread widely across America, and recently Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living and Sadhguru Vasudev’s Isha Foundation. All of this flowed from Swami Vivekananda’s path-breaking initiative.

Thirdly, his Foundation of the Ramakrishna Mission marked a new dimension in the long ecclesiastic tradition of India. He gave the Mission a clear mandate — Atmano Mokshartham Jagat Hitaya Cha—work for your own salvation, but also for the welfare of society. This spirit of service dedicated to the divine pervades the Ramakrishna Mission which now has hundreds of branches in India and around the world. Its work in the field of education, health services and disaster relief is well known. It also introduces millions around the world to the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna & Swami Vivekananda.

Hundreds of books have been written on Swami Vivekananda. In Swami Vivekananda: The Journey of a Spiritual Entrepreneur, Shri Rakesh Tripathi has dealt, at length, with the fascinating life and work of Swami Vivekananda and his rearticulation of Vedanta as the bedrock of Hinduism. It is a valuable addition to the voluminous literature on Swamiji, and will be welcomed not only in India but for all those who are interested in Swamiji’s life and work.

Never before has Vedanta been more important than today, and Swami Vivekananda’s exposition and writings can be a source of great inspiration, especially to younger generations. With all the tension around us, it is important that apart from our outer activities, we should follow an inner path because the outer turnmoil, in some ways, reflects the fractured and fragmented state of the human psyche. Swamiji has clearly set before us the four-fold path of Jnana yoga, Bhakti yoga, Karma yoga and Raj yoga which individually and collectively can give deeper meaning and significance to our lives and also have a positive effect on the society. I commend Shri Rakesh Tripathi for his contribution.

Karan Singh

21 November 2017

PREFACE

Swami Vivekananda or Narendranath Dutta was born around the time when the country was going through some of the greatest transitions. It had been barely five years that the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 had been successfully crushed by the British East India Company. It was the First War of Independence that India had lost. Before that, the last phase of the Mughal rule under Aurangzeb had been a period of suppression, especially in matters of religion and economy. His successor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, could not carry forth his legacy.

The British who primarily came to India for trade and commerce could clearly see that as a nation, India lacked a unified and stable social, political and economic order. This gave them sufficient leeway to consolidate their position by annexing regional kingdoms and bringing India under the British rule. Gradually, they began to interpret the Indian society, culture, religion and everything that could draw their attention. Describing the historical background of the eighteenth century India in his book Modern Religious Movements in India, celebrated Indologist J.N. Farquhar (1915:3) observed that ‘the terrific convulsions of eighteenth century had more than undone all that had been recovered. Learning almost ceased; ordinary education scarcely existed; spiritual religion was to be met only in the quietest places; and a coarse idolatry with cruel and immoral rights held all the great centres’.

By projecting such an image of the Indian society, Farquhar wanted to stress that its age-old spirit had died down and it was beyond the capacity of Indians to revive the social spirit and culture of their land. However, despite being considered an authority on modern religious movements in India, Farquhar failed to take into account some of the most significant religious developments of those times. He seems to have grossly underestimated the force and vitality of the Indian social spirit and culture which remained at a low ebb for a couple centuries.

He had apparently overlooked the fact that there was resurgence of Hinduism—the driving force of the Indian social spirit and culture—which had guided its followers through the ‘dark centuries’¹. Hinduism had been revived in a new light by Swami Vivekananda. He not only brought Hinduism out of the veils of mysticism but also propagated it as a universal religion and won worldwide recognition for it.

Vivekananda, after receiving training under Sri Ramakrishna, set out on the path of self-realisation and experienced that it did not mean withdrawing into solitary caves but to translate and advance the wisdom of ancient scriptures in practical ways to serve humanity. He was an ardent supporter of industrial and material development but emphasised that it should go hand-in-hand with one’s value system. In most of his speeches, Vivekananda laid a lot of emphasis on character-building and he firmly believed that to have a ‘fully functional personality’, it was highly desirable to have the synthesis of all the four yogas—Jnana yoga, Bhakti yoga, Raj yoga and Karma yoga—for leading one from a state of ignorance to the state of manifestation of inner divinity as each yoga involved the cultivation of one of the faculties such as reason, feeling, or will power. He admired the Western spirit of reasoning and said that one should not simply believe in what one is told. One must validate the ‘truth’ before believing it. This is where Vivekananda tried to bring in the best of the East and the best of the West together. It is in him that we find a perfect combination of the four yogas. The establishment of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission also perfectly exemplify this. No doubt that brother-monks contributed immensely to building an institution of the stature that the Ramakrishna Order has today, but it was Swami Vivekananda’s spiritual enterprise that brought it to the forefront, not just in India but around the globe. True to its motto, the Order has been incessantly working towards spiritual, social and economic upliftment of people, irrespective of their religion, the colour of their skin or the economic class they belong to.

Today, even after 130 years of his Chicago lecture, the world is surrounded by numerous problems: economic exploitation, civil unrest, religious strife, terrorism, poverty, corruption, financial turmoil, unethical conduct and armed conflicts. When the greatest minds of this century seek resolution to these problems, their ideas resonate with the ideology of Swami Vivekananda and often, the solutions are derived from his ideas. The monk’s contribution therefore assumes an eternal dimension, necessitating a study afresh of the monk, his making and his contributions.

Being a modest effort in this direction, I hope this book will provide some insight into how we can tread the quest for the highest developments in the material world through realisation of the potentially divine self.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Professor V. Prakasam and Professor Kalyani Samantray for encouraging me to give shape to my years of study in the form of a book on Swami Vivekananda.

I am grateful to Dr Karan Singh, an eminent philosopher-statesman of our times, for writing the foreword of this book. I am indebted to Swami Vibhatmananda, Manager, Advaita Ashrama, for his kind consent towards the inclusion of several pictures of Swami Vivekananda and other eminent personalities associated with him, which have made the book livelier. I also owe my thanks to Ms Kavitha Harish and Professor Kaushal Verma of the Archives and Publications Cell, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, for allowing me access to the rare archival documents. I am also thankful to Mr Sunil Pandey, Vice-Principal, National High School, Kolkata, for the wonderful pictures he captured across the different locations of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, with due permission from the Math authorities. I am grateful to Ms Moira Rankin, Senior Archivist, Archive Services, University of Glasgow, for permitting me to use Professor William Hastie’s picture in this book.

I remain thankful to my friends, Mr Aritra Das and Mr Ravi Vishwakarma, for bringing me in touch with the right people who could appreciate the potential of this work, especially Mr Praveen Tiwari, Publisher, Bloomsbury, for his keen interest in the book right from the initial stages, Mr Nitin Valecha, Manager, Acquisition, for the excellent professional coordination at his end, and Ms Shreya Chakraborti, Manager, Editorial Services, and Ms Ananya Sharma, copyeditor, for the meticulous editing at their end.

I am ever grateful to Poojya Gurudev H.H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Ji, a great spiritual leader and humanitarian, also the Founder of the Art of Living Foundation and Sri Sri University, for his kind blessings for this work. I am highly indebted to Ms Rajita Kulkarni, President, Sri Sri University, Dr Nand Lal, Vice Chancellor, Sri Sri University, and Mr Narendra Lamba, Director Operations, Sri Sri University, for their kind support and encouragement when the book was in progress at initial stages.

I am very thankful to Professor Martha Roth, Chauncey S. Boucher Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago, and Mr Ryan Goodwin, Digital Editor, University of Chicago, and Mr Jason Smith, photographer, for helping me with the photograph of the establishment of the Vivekananda Chair at University of Chicago in January 2012.

My wife Jyotsna and son Siddhant have extended their full support, right from the beginning. It is because of their care and attention that I could complete my work with utmost devotion and dedication. I am ever thankful to them for their unstinted support. Siddhant shares a very special relationship with this book as it has, once again, brought him closer to Ramakrishna-Vivekananda literature. I hope it helps him imbibe the values that make one a better human being. This book would not have been possible without the blessings of my parents, Dr R.S. Tripathi and Mrs Kamla Tripathi. It is largely the way I have been brought up that reflects my concern for society and I shall ever remain thankful to them for endowing me with the ability to think beyond the usual self and work in larger interest of the society.

Rakesh Tripathi

1

VIVEKANANDA’S CHILDHOOD AND EARLY LIFE

Humanity needs dreamers for whom the selfless development of mankind is so enchanting that it becomes impossible for them to come out of its spell. Such men lead life free from material care for they desire no wealth or material profit, but the service of mankind, a chance to serve the poorest of the poor. Vivekananda was one such man.

Swami Vivekananda was born as Narendranath Dutta on 12 January 1863 in Calcutta (now Kolkata) to an affluent family, well known for philanthropy, scholarly leanings and independent spirit. Narendranath, fondly addressed as Narendra or Naren, was actually the sixth child among the ten children of Bhuvaneswari Devi and Vishwanath Dutta. Unfortunately, some of those elder to him died in infancy while others at a young age when he was struggling between the material and spiritual worlds. The ones who survived included his elder sister Swarnamayee, who lived till the age of seventy-two, and two younger brothers, Mahendranath and Bhupendranath, both of whom lived for more than eighty years of age.

Naren’s mother considered him a boon from Lord Shiva and named him Vireswara at birth. It was only later that he was given the name Narendranath. Even as a young boy, he possessed immense energy and was restless most of the time.

Narendra’s parents were indeed gifted people whose virtues influenced his early years. Even as a child, he had a fancy for wandering monks and as his personality evolved, it brought out in the process, his innate virtues which were a combination of discipline and saintliness. On one occasion, after achieving fame as ‘Swami Vivekananda’, he expressed his gratitude towards his mother in particular, saying that ‘I am indebted to my mother for whatever knowledge I have acquired’. Owing to the strong moral and cultural foundation given by his parents, Narendra also inherited their scholarly leanings, as a result of which he developed eclectic tastes, varied interests and the ability to recognise the misery of human life.

Family

Vivekananda’s father Vishwanath Dutta was a lawyer of great repute at the High Court of Calcutta. Those were the days when legal matters mostly required the knowledge of Persian and English and his profession brought him in close contact with these two languages, making him quite proficient in both. Added to this, Vishwanath was not only a very hospitable man but also a generous host who held many social gatherings at his palatial residence where he would recite the poetry of Hafiz or quote from the Bible while entertaining his friends, which were similar in their essence of human thought.

Vishwanath’s highly successful legal practice helped him earn a fortune, most of which was spent on socialising and helping needy relatives whose count never ceased until his death. He was very fond of cooking and travelling and enjoyed a hectic social life. It seems Narendra prominently inherited both these hobbies from his father. There are accounts which tell us that Vishwanath liked to prepare rare dishes and share them with his guests. So far as travel was concerned, he undertook long journeys to meet his professional commitments. Apart from that, Vishwanath also personally enjoyed it, especially when there were occasions to go on long tours. On one particular trip, the family went to Raipur where Vishwanath encouraged Naren to interact with renowned scholars on intellectual topics generally considered too difficult for the children of his age. This served to enable in Narendra the art of discussion by grasping the heart of the matter, perceiving truth in the widest sense and confining it to the issue being discussed.

Vivekananda’s mother, Bhuvaneswari Devi, epitomised womanhood in accordance with Hindu traditions. She was the mother of a large household and conducted herself with utmost dignity and grace. She had memorised large portions of the great Indian epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, and often used to narrate them to Narendra. Apart from this, she devoted most of her time to sewing and singing. Much like her husband, she too had a