Swami Vivekananda

By Prema Nandakumar

Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) is India's most celebrated and charismatic monk. Handsome, brilliant, an image of contained strength, a lover of music and poetry, he also had a great desire to know about the source of his Hindu heritage. His search ended when he met his guru Sri Ramakrishna.His brilliant speech at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 brought him fame in India and abroad. In his short lifespan of thirty-nine years, he propagated the Hindu spiritual culture in India and abroad. His inspirational writings and speeches remain relevant even today. This book is a study of the Swami, his life and times and his teachings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harper India
• Release date: Nov 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9789353024017

Prema Nandakumar

Dr Prema Nandakumar is an independent researcher, publishing critical and biographical works. She is also a creative writer in Tamil and English. She is the recipient of several awards.

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PREFACE

Sthapakayacha dharmasya sarva dharma swaroopine

Avatara varishtaaya Ramakrishnaaya te namah

My maternal grandfather, M.S. Krishnaswami Iyengar, was a very orthodox Srivaishnava. A widower, he would not eat food cooked even by my mother who was his only child. He had to travel a good deal because of his work but never would he eat in a stranger’s house. Hotels were taboo. Wherever he stayed (even if he came to our house) he would take out his own well-packed utensils and make a simple meal of rice and dal. If he had no time or place to do his cooking, he would be content with water and fruits.

But apparently he kept his heart open. The two volume edition of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna which he bought in 1920 may be said to be the starting point of Sri Ramakrishna-Vivekananda literature in our house. When I contemplate upon the past, I realise that grandfather’s purchase of the two volumes of the Gospel was auspicious. This was the first non-traditional piece of writing to enter the shelf of our Srivaishnava household. From that day onwards the family library has never looked back in gathering spiritual treasures of our times. As the books came in, they brought new inspirations, joys and fulfillment. Grandfather remained enclosed in orthodoxy but does it matter what he ate or how much he worried about ritual purity or why he painted a gorgeous Srivaishnava tilak on his forehead? He had the curiosity to find out what was inside the Gospel which had the subtitle: The Ideal Man for India and for the World. Later on curiosity turned to regard and respect. That makes this obscure postmaster and millions of disciplined, educated Indians of the last century like him a priceless conduit for the sustenance of our Sanatana Dharma.

That also explains the significance of Swami Vivekananda’s life. More than a hundred years ago when educated young men were unable to find a meaning in their lives and remained bound to the discipline of tradition, he came as a leader to show them a royal path which would not alienate them from their tradition and yet bring them to a brave new world. Today’s Indian culture is largely the work of Swami Vivekananda. I feel it is the grace of the Divine Mother that has given me this chance to write his biography. It has not been an easy task for the literature is immense and the urge to allow his words to tell the tale can be overwhelming. But it is also like wandering in the world of heroism and valour. Who wants to leave it?

Swami Nikhilananda’s biography in English and Swami Ashutoshananda’s in Tamil have been my mainstay throughout the planning and writing of this book. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda apart, I have also drawn from the writings of Sister Nivedita, the biography of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Saradananda, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna by M and other books of this area which have nurtured my writing career spanning fifty-five years.

I am grateful to Sonavi Desai for asking me to take up this work for the series on Spiritual Masters, and to Swami Satyaswarupananda for suggesting my name to her. My loving thanks to Nandakumar and my children, Ahana, Bhuvana and Raja, for making me forget my age and age-related problems. And to my personal library, a salutation in gratitude.

Prema Nandakumar

Mudhal Tirumaligai

152/91, South Chitrai Street

Srirangam 620 006

8 August 2012

1

YOGA BHUMI

Spirituality, the consciousness that is all-inclusive, is the very heart of the Indian nation. From times immemorial, this consciousness has also been nurtured with intent by the Indians. No man is considered an island. All, all is Brahman. Towards sustaining this view, Indians have successfully integrated the secular and the spiritual streams of existence. All the Vedic sacrifices were tuned towards human perfection and so have we hailed India as the Bhoga Bhumi. Self-sacrifice for the cause of Dharma has come easily to Indians whether they belonged to the Vedic-Upanishadic stream or the Sramanic pathway that has made the land a Tyaga Bhumi. The individual was never lost sight of in this move towards perfection. This has meant an assiduous cultivation of the body and the mind, by yoga. So we salute Mother India as Yoga Bhumi as well.

The Vedas are the earliest available records in our long journey towards perfection. Couched in colourful imagery, sounding somewhat obscure because of the twilight speech (sandhya bhasha) employed by the seers, but containing within them deep significances, the Vedic hymns have been the springs of India’s religion and spirituality. According to Sri Aurobindo their rhythms are carved like chariots of the gods and borne on divine and ample wings of sound. The Gayatri Mantra of Rishi Viswamitra for instance is well-known.

The Vedic Age was followed by a time of intense intellectual seeking giving us the Upanishads which form the basis of a majority of our philosophical systems and also contain some of the most heart-warming images in one’s experience. They have given us immortal statements like All is Brahman and You are That. They have given us some of the most lovable stories such as that of Satyakama Jabala and Raikwa the cart-puller. They have certainly raised the flag of our Sanatana Dharma all over the world. In fact the wisdom of the East had percolated into the West even from the days of ancient Greece. During the last two centuries several Indologists have studied them deeply. Schelling, Schopenhauer, Sir Monier-Williams. . . the list grows long. Archibald E. Gough says,

The Upanishads are the loftiest utterances of Indian intelligence. Whatever value the reader may assign to the ideas they represent, they are the highest product of the ancient Indian mind, and almost the only elements of interest in Indian literature which is at every stage replete with them to saturation . . . The Upanishads have been justly characterized . . . as the basis of the enlightened faith of India.¹

Close on the heels of the Upanishadic Age, India entered the very rich and colourful heroic age with the unsurpassed epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. A meeting place of the human and the divine, there is no aspect of man’s everyday life and his aspirational adventures that has been left untouched by Vyasa and Valmiki. Rama is the very image of Truth and Dharma; Sita the patient, compassionate Eternal Woman. All the characters in the epic, human, divine and otherwise, exemplify various shades of good and evil in man. While the main story of the Pandava-Kaurava feud in the Mahabharata is absolutely contemporaneous as well, the numerous branch-stories like that of Savitri and Nala have also been part of the racial consciousness.

A profound stress of thought on life, a large and vital view of religion and society, a certain strain of philosophic idea runs through these poems and the whole ancient culture of India is embodied in them with a great force of intellectual conception and living presentation. The Mahabharata has been spoken of as a fifth Veda, it has been said of both these poems that they are not only great poems but dharmashastras, the body of a large religious and ethical and social and political teaching, and their effect and hold on the mind and life of the people have been so great that they have been described as the bible of the Indian people.²

As India progressed in material civilisation, its religious and spiritual activity kept pace with it. Intense aphorisms by eminent thinkers gave us the Brahmasutras. Though the Classical Age of Sanskrit is associated with literary giants like Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti, their writings were no strangers to religious and philosophical thought. Dramas like Abhijnana Sakuntalam of Kalidasa and narratives like Bharavi’s Kiratarjuniyam were inspired by the epics. Secular life was followed by spiritual intuitions all the time.

Meanwhile, there were also protestant movements against the Vedic religion more than two millennia ago. As time passed, the priesthood had become less capable of comprehending the intuitive import of the Vedic hymns. They sought to read them literally. Sometimes this led to the killing of living beings on the sacrificial altar. The common man was alienated from the Divine by the veils set up by myopic priests. Two spiritual personalities illumined India about this time and rescued Indian culture and gave new dimensions to its progress.

Both Vardhamana Mahavira and Gautama Buddha were of royal lineage but took to renunciation. The sramanic ideal of monkhood was thus their contribution to Indian culture as the Vedic rishis did not favour renunciation. They were all married and had progeny. This is an important point in Indian culture. Rishabha is the earliest of the twenty-four Tirthankaras of Jainism, the last being Mahavira. Unlike the followers of the Veda, Jainism does not believe in God. According to it, every soul is capable of becoming the Supreme Spirit. Such evolved souls are worshipped by the Jains whose aim is to reach the highest state in the same manner. Moksha is release from the bondage of birth. This state is attained by following the Three Jewels: Right Faith, Right Knowledge and Right Conduct. The religion commands the followers to lead a life of severe self-discipline whether as a householder or as a monk.

The lifestories of Vardhamana Mahavira and Gautama Buddha seem to be very much the same. That neither Jainism nor Buddhism need to be seen as new religions was made clear by the great philosopher, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Writing during the twenty-fifth centenary celebrations of Buddha’s birth he said,

He (Buddha) was born, grew up, and died a Hindu. He was restating with a new emphasis the ancient ideals of the Indo-Aryan civilization. ‘Even so have I, monks, seen an ancient way, an ancient road followed by the wholly awakened ones of olden times . . . Along that have I gone, and the matters that I have come to know full as I was going along it, I have told to the monks, nuns, men and women lay followers, even monks, this Brahma-faring, brahmacharya that is prosperous and flourishing, widespread, and widely known, become popular—in short well made manifest for gods and men.³

Gautama Buddha’s realisation brought him knowledge of the cause of suffering on earth as attachment. Suffering can be overcome by giving up attachment. He taught his disciples the Eight-fold Path, which includes Right Action and Right Speech, to lead a pure life on earth. Though Mahavira and Buddha repudiated idol worship, in course of time the two pathways have had to accept the setting up of images. The wide spaces of philosophy, metaphysics and religious practices that one finds in Jainism and Buddhism are as amazing as what we encounter in the Vedic Path.

In the course of time, the Indian intelligence subsumed the protestant ideals put forward by these great personalities. The advent of Shankaracharya helped this to a great extent. He took up the monastic ideal that had been given a very high place by Mahavira and Buddha. While the founders of Jainism and Buddhism had lived to an advanced age, Shankara had hardly thirty-two years of earthly life to spread his message. The basis for his philosophy of monism was the Upanishadic canon and he proclaimed that the world was an illusion, maya. He wrote commentaries on the Gita and the Brahma Sutras and composed innumerable prayers in Sanskrit that are recited to this day with great devotion.

There have been very many great Vedantic teachers but three stand out because of the following they command till today, and represent three major variations of Vedanta. Shankara’s approach was Advaita, monism: all is Brahman and the earth is but an illusion. Ramanujacharya, who came after him, posited Visishtadvaita Vedanta, or qualified monism. According to him, all is Brahman but the life of the individual soul on earth is no illusion. The individual soul consciously turns towards the Brahman by the path of self-surrender. The Supreme is the Way and the Goal. As the religio-philosophical ambit included the ecstatic Tamil hymnology of the Alvars (3rd to 8th century), Ramanuja’s Theistic Vedanta was welcomed widely. After him came Madhvacharya whose Vedanta is known as Dvaita or Dualism. He also considers the world to be real and eternal. God is the ruler of this universe and he is distinct from individual souls and matter. Looking back at these centuries of Vedic learning, Vedantic churning and protestant discourse, we realise that India is indeed a unique country, with a constant turn towards the spiritual.

This has been of incalculable help for a land that has always remained fragmented by mutually warring kingdoms and tiny principalities. Fortunately, the great teachers of Vedanta knit the land into a single entity. The Indian, to whatever region he belonged, still spoke of Bharata Varsha and Bharata Kanda. Such was the triumph of Vedanta in achieving the spiritual unity of India.

Unfortunately, foreign depradations did indeed create problems. But the genius of India had opted for a life based on the concept of Dharma. This Dharma was ancient (Sanatana). It was never exclusive. The Upanishadic seer who spoke of the all-pervading Brahman would not distinguish between people belonging to different religions. Thus, the all-inclusive Sanatana Dharma found no problem in accommodating foreign religions like Islam and Christianity, and giving refuge to persecuted people like the Jews and the Parsis. This was due to the Vedantic concept of Ekam Sat.

But then, shadows had fallen on the Vedantic spirit of India because of the English-educated Indian of the nineteenth century. There was indeed a time in the nineteenth century when the love of everything from the West ruled the mind and home of the English-educated Indian. Analysing the situation in his book The Case for India (1930), Will Durant said, The East is drunk with the wine of the West, with the lust for liberty, luxury and power.

Fortunately, the innate strength and resilience of India’s Sanatana Dharma that has upheld the Vedantic ideal of Ekam Sat stood the test well. English education itself became a powerful weapon for the intellectual to probe his own past and get to know the world outside. With Raja Rammohun Roy founding the Brahmo Samaj, and with Ramakrishna Paramahamsa discovering Swami Vivekananda, the future was unfolded. A neo-Vedantic approach was in the offing with eminent personalities like Debendranath Tagore giving deep thought to the problem of Vedantic enquiry and idol worship. Keshub Chunder Sen experimented endlessly in his search for a universal dispensation. Of this time one could say,

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

Waited for rain, while the black clouds

Gathered far distant, over Himavant.

The jungle crouched, humped, in silence.

~T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Then came 1893. At the Parliament of Religions, Swami Vivekananda went up the rostrum in Chicago, and began: Sisters and Brothers of America … The Age of Neo-Vedanta had begun.

Vedanta, which had become increasingly confined to the guru paramparas, had now begun a new quest. Without jettisoning the spirit of Vedanta, the twentieth-century Vedantins could see what seemed New to be present in the Old and find the Old enclasped with the New vision. Swami Vivekananda set the pace for these new scholars. Traditional scholars, even today, do not go beyond the fixed framework handed over to them. But the Neo-Vedantins could do so. They saw that the time had come for tapping the creative sources in Vedanta for giving a new lead to Indians. Since India itself was no more an isolated area in the global village, India’s gains would help the whole world as well. For a century, the message of the Neo-Vedantins has prospered. Once again, the attempt to integrate the inner and outer worlds of man is gaining momentum, for just as the Upanishadic seers of old, they have dared to throw away what is valid no more. They have not rejected material life, but have sought to prove that in India the turn is always towards the spiritual.

Of the many who belong to this age of Neo-Vedanta inaugurated by Swami Vivekananda, three names stand out: Sri Aurobindo, Ramana Maharshi and Sri Narayana Guru. None of them has rejected tradition and they have all been Vedantins cast in the Upanishadic mould. But their Vedanta has not been mere academics. With them, Vedanta is not a statement but a powerful instrument for a renaissance, a re-flowering of the Indian spirit. They have set aside the casteist hurdles as the Upanishadic seers did before when Jabala’s son Satyakama and the Shudra Janashruti and the cart-puller Raikwa could become teachers. Their approach has been an integrating factor for a world that has often been on the verge of a break-up due to seemingly insuperable inner divisions. The work that started with Swami Vivekananda’s call at the Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893 has prospered beautifully, lighting lamps of hope for the future of man, for the Greater Dawn for mankind.

2

BORN TO RENOUNCE

Rudyard Kipling has written a masterly tale on the Indian’s natural turn towards the spiritual. The Miracle of Purun Bhagat (1894) is about Sir Purun Dass, a highly educated Brahmin Prime Minister of a native state in India who leaves home at the height of his career, taking with him only a staff and a begging bowl. With divine nonchalance he retires to a Himalayan cave and performs tapasya.

… he did a thing no Englishman would have dreamed of doing; for, so far as the world’s affairs went, he died. The jewelled order of his knighthood went back to the Indian Government, and a new Prime Minister was appointed to the charge of affairs, and a great game of General Post began in all the subordinate appointments. The priests knew what had happened, and the people guessed; but India is the one place in the world where a man can do as he pleases and nobody asks why; and the fact that Dewan Sir Purun Dass, K. C. I. E., had resigned position, palace, and power, and taken up the begging-bowl and ochre-coloured dress of a Sunnyasi, or holy man, was considered nothing extraordinary.

1893-94 were years when the American papers were full of the princely-looking ochre-robed monk from India, following the Parliament of Religions held at Chicago. It is significant that critics have noted how Kipling has been influenced by American life at that time when he wrote the story. The message of Rudyard Kipling is clear. Western materialism needs this renunciatory attitude of the Indians if the country should become a bastion of humanism.

Looking back with hindsight, one wonders whether the monastic future for Swami Vivekananda had been perfectly mapped out when he was born to Viswanath Datta and Bhuvaneswari Devi on 12 January 1863. Viswa and Bhuvana, the terms referring to the world, formed an appropriate beginning for one who would be waking up the world to the glory of India’s Sanatana Dharma. The Datta household was prosperous. Bhuvaneswari Devi’s prayers to Vireswara Shiva of Varanasi had preceded the boy’s birth. Thus it was natural that the newborn was named Vireswara. However, he was called Narendra. Apt names both for one who personified heroism and achieved world-wide fame.

Narendra’s father Viswanath was a wellknown lawyer of the High Court in Kolkota. His own father had renounced the world and gone away when Viswanath was born. The growing up of Narendra in the shadow of this renunciation is significant. His father was generous and kindly and was obviously proud of his son. Bhuvaneswari Devi was piety personified. With four daughters and three sons, she had a large household to manage. Narendra was the eldest and was a very active boy. It is said that she often wondered whether Vireswara Shiva was so pleased with her prayers that he actually sent one of his bhoot ganas to her as a son!

The beloved mischief-maker had a special fondness for monks who wandered over the land, susbsisting on alms. Giving generous portions of food for such wandering holy men was natural for householders in those days. Watching this, Narendra imbibed the habit and so giving away became a way of life for him. Meanwhile Bhuvaneswari Devi introduced him to tales from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Sister Nivedita has pointed out how mothers like Bhuvaneswari Devi transmitted the glorious Indian culture contained in these two epics to the younger generations:

These two great works form together the outstanding educational agencies of Indian life. All over the country, in every province, especially during the winter season, audiences of Hindus and Mohammedans gather round the Brahmin story-teller at nightfall, and listen to his rendering of the ancient tales . . . And in the life of every child amongst the Hindu higher castes, there comes a time when, evening after evening, hour after hour, his grandmother pours into his ears these memories of