Vivekananda on the Vedas ...part 6

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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.........)