Vivekananda on the Vedas ...part 6

[Guest guest]

We are presenting the following work by Sister Gayatriprana.

Your comments are welcome. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 were posted earlier this is

part 6. jay..Vivekananda Centre London

 

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 6

 

While the commentaries can well be read without the Introduction, especially by

those thoroughly familiar with the Neo-Vedanta of Swami Vivekananda, for others,

or for those who feel the historical dimension can deepen their appreciation,

the Introduction provides a frame of reference relating the commentaries to the

whole panorama of Vedanta - yet another gestalt in our study.

 

 

e) The Materials and How They Have Been Put Together

 

1. Selection of the Materials

 

Having arrived at the criteria of selection and basic presentation, we come to

the question of precisely which materials to use in the commentaries and how to

organize them. The response to the first question was, in line with our

inclusive approach, to include all materials with credentials of authenticity.

This decision spread the net beyond the Complete Works to the writings and

testimony of his brother-disciples (including the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna) and

his students, such as Nivedita and Sharat Chandra Chakravarty. Some interesting

accounts and observations by other friends and acquaintances pertaining to Swami

Vivekananda’s views on the Vedas and Upanisads were also included in the

biographic accounts which embellish the commentaries on some of the major

mantras.

 

With regard to the deployment of appropriate passages for inclusion in the

present compilation I have differentiated between passages with formal, more or

less literal quotes of the mantras and those without. The latter groups I have

called "commentaries" rather than "quotes"; their suitability for inclusion is,

of course, open to discussion. The criteria on which such commentaries have been

included are:

 

1. Wording of the mantra as a paraphrase rather than as a literal quote. As

mentioned previously, there is a definite difference between the way Swamiji

translated mantras in India and in the West. In India he tended to be more

literal and literary, while in the West he was much freer with language and

concepts, often giving loose paraphrases rather than complete or precise

translations.

 

2. Obvious comments on the mantra without an actual quotation or paraphrase of

it - again, more common in the West.

 

3. Passages which contain unique key words, phrases or thoughts which Swamiji

used in other, bona fide translations of the same mantra - more common, again,

in the West.

 

4. Poems or poetic passages which seem to contain the essence of Swamiji's

thoughts on any mantra, which I have placed at the end of the comments as a

"meditation".

 

In short, materials were used which are cognate with the more recognizable,

traditional passages. I feel it is important to include such passages because it

ensures coverage of his message for the West, a very vital ingredient of his

overall formulation of Vedanta,

 

 

2 Assignment of the Materials to Their Sources

 

In the Vedas and Upanisads the same mantra may occur in more than one place,

e.g. the parable of the two birds we usually think of as coming from the Mundaka

Upanisad occurs originally in the Rg Veda. I have assigned such mantras to the

earliest source when Swamiji does not assign it himself, or to the source to

which he himself most often assigns it, e.g. "There the sun shines not" has been

put in the Katha Upanisad (2.2.15) rather than in the Mundaka ( 2.2.12)

 

In a number of places Swami Vivekananda quotes mantras which are composites of

two Upanisadic mantras, or of the Upanisads and the Gita. These I have placed in

the comments on both sources.

 

 

3. The Organization of the Materials

 

(i) According to the Vedas

 

 

 

With regard to the question of organization, I have followed the traditional

division into four Vedas, under each of which the materials appear as Samhita

(especially in the Rg Veda), occasional Aranyakas, and the main body of the

work, the Upanisads, presented in the sequence found in S. Radhakrishnan’s The

Principal Upanishads. Apart from the literary convenience of clustering

materials from the same source together, this method also seems to bring out the

special emphasis of each Veda and to demonstrate how it was developed in the

Upanisads belonging to it. It also served to concentrate in one place all of

Swami Vivekananda’s insights into five major themes of Vedanta, as follows:

 

(to be continued.........)