Vivekananda 150: The monk who served Truth

By Tulsi Badrinath

Vivekananda’s teachings help us recognise the true purpose of human life

In my first novel, Meeting Lives, I wanted to map not only the geographical space we occupy but also the rich, vertical spiritual space. To explore the practical application of vedanta in my protagonist Aditi's life, her journey of self-discovery, moving from ‘lower truth to higher truth', I had to find a way of describing both the worldview of vedanta and what it meant to Aditi. Weaving in the story of the rational, questioning Narendra, which altered forever by one touch from Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, and his becoming Swami Vivekananda, allowed me to do this. To read Vivekananda is to recognise the true purpose of human life, 
and to understand one's own self in relation to others.

Narendranath Datta was born in Calcutta on January 12, 1863, to Bhuvaneswari Devi and lawyer Vishwanath Datta. Thirty years later, he became known worldwide as Swami Vivekananda when, on September 11, he began his address at the Parliament of Religions with the words ‘sisters and brothers of America', speaking extempore, his heart ‘fluttering' and ‘tongue nearly dried up'.

Harriet Monroe, who was present at the parliament, wrote: ‘His personality dominant and magnetic, his voice rich as a bronze bell, the controlled fervour of his feeling, the beauty of his message to the western world—all these combined to give us a rare moment of supreme emotion.' 

The need to meet someone who had seen God brought a sceptical 18-year-old Narendra in 1881 to the master of Dakshineshwar, Ramakrishna, whom he thought ‘stark mad' at their first meeting. To Narendra's burning question—Have you seen God, sir?—Ramakrishna affirmed, ‘Yes, I see Him just as I see you here'.

Over the next five years, until Ramakrishna passed away in 1886, Narendra questioned every step of his spiritual journey. Eventually, Narendra was won over by the visible proof of Ramakrishna's immersion in God—made “his slave by his love for me”. And, he was gifted the entire force of his master's spiritual practice by one gaze. Said Ramakrishna: “O Naren, I have given you everything I possess, now I am no more than a fakir, a penniless beggar. By the powers I have transmitted to you, you will accomplish great things in the world, and not until then will you return to the source whence you have come.” And his gentle command to Narendra was: “You have work to do.”

On Christmas eve, 1886, Narendra renounced the world, “One eye shed tears of grief when I left home, because I hated to leave my mother, grandmother, brothers and sisters; the other eye shed tears of joy for my ideal.” 

It was no easy decision because his father's death in 1884 had left the family in debt. As the eldest son, Narendra inherited all the troubles. Having known involuntary poverty and hunger during this period, Narendra went on to embrace it voluntarily as a sanyasi, accepting alms not only in India, but also in Chicago when he arrived too early for the Parliament of Religions.

In 1890, he left his guru-bhais, the fellow monastic disciples of Ramakrishna, with strict instructions not to follow him. The young sanyasi travelled all over India under the names Satchidananda and Vividishananda and at times anonymously. For three years as an itinerant monk, he carried only a staff, coarse blanket, begging bowl and two books, Bhagavad Gita and The Imitation of Christ.

As a guest of the maharajas, or the Muslims or the poor untouchables, the swami witnessed the state of the Indian people under the British rule. His heart wept for what he saw and his mind blazed: “So long as millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them.”

It was at Kanyakumari in late 1892 that he synthesised all that he had seen and found a way to help the daridra narayana (the poor). To him, a monk's goal of personal salvation must be sacrificed at the prospect of helping others, for Ramakrishna wanted them to serve all beings as Shiva. The young monk put aside his personal inclinations to accomplish his master's work, but at the cost of his health.

The swami was only 30, and without money or fame. So, how could he find the money to fund his vision? It was then that an idea slowly took shape. To find more means for the salvation of the poor in India, he decided to go to America.

His ‘Madras boys' led by a devoted Alasinga Perumal went from house to house to collect funds for the trip. And his benefactor and devotee, Maharaja Ajit Singh of Khetri, bought him a first class ticket on the ship S.S. Peninsular and his silken ochre robes, and bestowed on him the name Vivekananda.  

Swami Vivekananda spent three years abroad, travelling, lecturing and suffering calumny from Christian missionaries and fellow Indians, only to find that he had been cheated of his earnings by an American lecture bureau. However,  donations from three western women—Henrietta Mueller, Sara Chapman Bull and Betty Leggett—made it possible for Vivekananda to establish the Belur Math in 1898. On his triumphant
 return to India, a year earlier, Vivekananda had laid the foundation for setting up the Ramakrishna Mission. Today, it is one of the wealthiest charitable organisations in India, funded by contributions of thousands of ordinary people.

Cutting short his second trip to the west in 1899-1900, Vivekananda returned to Belur Math. Severely ill with asthma, dropsy and diabetes, he was at peace in his room that overlooked the Ganga. His ill health did not stop him from fulfilling his mother's wish to go on a pilgrimage. “I have brought only misery to my people all my life. I am trying to fulfil this one wish of hers,” he had said.

On July 4, 1902, before he reached the age of 40, Swami Vivekananda passed away in his room at Belur Math. “After so much tapasya and austerity, I have known that the highest truth is this: He is present in all beings. These are all the manifested forms of Him. There is no other God to seek for. He alone is worshipping God, who serves all beings.”

Soon, the Indian freedom struggle intensified and freedom fighters were inspired by Vivekananda's pride in the Hindu heritage and fierce love for the motherland. But Vivekananda had shunned politics. 

“Let no political significance be ever attached falsely to any of my writings or sayings. What nonsense!” he had exclaimed in 1894. “I do not believe in politics. God and Truth are the only policies in the world. Everything else is trash.” 

In more recent times, the sayings of Vivekananda have been appropriated out of context by politicians for their own ends. 

In this context, it becomes necessary to reiterate that he was a sanyasi, who had renounced the world. And his aim was: “The dry advaita should become alive—poetic—in everyday life; out of hopelessly intricate mythology must come concrete moral forms; out of bewildering yogi-ism must come the most scientific and practical psychology— and all this must be put in a form that a child may grasp it. That is my life's work.”

What is advaita-vedanta? He expressed it thus: “All is one, which manifests itself, either as thought, or life, or soul, or body, and the difference is only in degree.” To mouth a few choice phrases from his entire works on the one hand and spread communal hatred on the other is a complete negation of everything Vivekananda stood for. 

Vivekananda did not hesitate to speak his mind about any religion, its great truths and its drawbacks in practice. He did not shy away from the truth that ‘practical advaitism, which looks upon and behaves to all mankind as one's own soul, is yet to be developed among the Hindus.' “On the other hand our experience is that, if ever the followers of any religion approach this equality in an appreciable degree in the plane of practical work-a-day life, it is those of Islam.”

While he believed that advaita-vedanta ‘is the religion of the future-enlightened humanity' he was ‘firmly persuaded that without the help of practical Islam, theories of vedantism, however fine and wonderful they may be, are entirely valueless to mankind'. Therefore, “I see in my mind's eye the future-perfect India rising out of this chaos and strife, glorious and invincible, with vedanta brain and Islam body.” Ultimately, “we want to lead mankind to the place where there is no Vedas, Bible or Koran; yet this has to be done by harmonising the Vedas, the Bible and the Koran. Mankind ought to be taught that religions are but the varied expressions of THE RELIGION, which is oneness, so that each may choose the path that suits him best.”

We take pride in being secular, but generations of Indians are growing up knowing very little about what it is that makes Hinduism or sanatana dharma, which is so accepting of other religions. If we do not understand why our worldview makes us all-inclusive, we cannot fight fundamentalism of any kind.

To any human being who embarks on the inquiry of the self, Vivekananda's relevance is a given. More than a hundred years later, one can still enter into a direct relationship with Vivekananda by reading his writings, in which the most difficult of Upanishada concepts are explained with the greatest simplicity. And his letters reveal a man who got a childlike joy in learning new things, and who used up every dish in the kitchen while cooking.

The words of French historian Romain Rolland hold true for all time: “His words are great music, phrases in the style of Beethoven, stirring rhythms like the march of Händel choruses. I cannot touch these sayings of his... without receiving a thrill through my body like an electric shock. And what shocks, what transports, must have been produced when in burning words they were issued from the lips of 
the hero!”

Tulsi is a Chennai-based writer and dancer. Her novels Meeting Lives and Man of A Thousand Chances were on the Man Asian Literary Prize long-list in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

COURTESY: THE WEEK, DEC 23, 2012