Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 13)

[Guest guest]

We are presenting the following work by Sister Gayatriprana.

Parts 1 to 12 were posted earlier. This is part 13. Your comments are welcome. jay/Vivekananda Centre London

Earlier postings can be seen at http://www.vivekananda.btinternet.co.uk/veda.htm

 

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 13

Continued.......

g) Systematizing the Concepts of Vedanta

More and more as time went on, the Swami had found it necessary to systematize his religious ideas. To do this he felt he would necessarily have to re-organize the entire Hindu philosophical thought by unifying its distinctive features around a few leading ideas of the Hindu religious systems, so as to make it more readily intelligible to Western minds. He wanted to bring out, according to different schools of Vedanta, the ideas of the soul and the divinity or final goal, the relation of matter and force and the Vedantic conception of cosmology, and how they coincided with modern science. He also intended to draw up a classification of the Upanishads according to the passages which have a distinct bearing on Advaita, Vishishtadvaita, and the Dvaita conceptions, in order to show how all of them can be reconciled. His constructive genius thus roused made him want to write a book, carefully working out all these ideas in a definite form. (34)

To Alasinga, April 4, 1895: "Send me the Vedanta Sutras and the commentaries of all the sects." (35)

To Alasinga, May 6, 1895: In your [English language] journal write article after article on the three systems [of Vedanta philosophy], showing their harmony as one following after the other, and at the same time keep off the ceremonial forms altogether. That is, preach the philosophy, the spiritual part, and let people suit it to their own forms. I wish to write a book on this subject; therefore I wanted the three Bhashyas; but only one volume of the Ramanuja Bhashya has reached me as yet." (36)

By the time Swami Vivekananda went to Thousand Island Park in the summer of 1895, he had with him the Bhashyas of all the sects, and all his philosophical writings and utterances were, as it were, so many commentaries upon these, which were remarkably original in their expression. He would accept no authority as final, "knowing full well how each commentator, in turn, had twisted the texts to suit his own meaning." Whensoever he made comments in his classes upon the Vedas or other sacred scriptures of Hinduism, he was found invariably to throw a whole world of light and revelation upon the texts. (37)

To Swami Ramakrishnananda from Caversham, Autumn, 1895: Well, you just patiently do one thing - set about collecting everything that books, beginning with the Rig Veda down to the most insignificant of Puranas and Tantras, have got to say about annihilation of the universe, about race, heaven and hell, the soul, consciousness, and intellect, etc., the sense-organs, mukti and transmigration and suchlike things. No child's play will do - I want really scholarly work. The most important thing is to collect the materials. (38)

To Mr. E. T. Sturdy, London, October 31, 1895: It is absolutely necessary to form some ritual and have a church. That is to say, we must fix on some ritual as fast as we can. If you can come Saturday morning or sooner, we shall go to the Asiatic Society Library, or you can procure for me a book called Hemadri Kosha, from which we can get what we want; and kindly bring the Upanishads. We will fix something grand, from birth to death of a man. A mere loose system of philosophy gets no hold on mankind.

If we can get it through before we have finished the classes, and publish it by publicly holding a service or two under it, it will go on. They want to form a congregation, and they want ritual. (39)

[This proposal of Swami Vivekananda was apparently never carried out]

To Mr. Sturdy from New York, February 13, 1896: I am working a good deal now upon the cosmology and eschatology of the Vedanta. I clearly see their perfect unison with modern science, and the elucidation of the one will be followed by that of the other. I intend to write a book later on in the form of questions and answers. (40)

[This was never done, but from his lectures in London in 1896 it is easy to see that his mind was still working on these ideas.]

Swami Vivekananda came to London [in the spring of 1896] and called for Swami Saradananda [to help with the Western work]. Swami Vivekananda's brother-disciples sent Swami Saradananda off on S.S.Rewa. In a few days the call came for Swami Abhedananda. Swami Vivekananda in his letter [of July 3, 1896] asked him to take all the Vedic classics with him:

"Send Swami Abhedananda to England as soon as you get this letter.... He will have to bring some books for me. I have only got the Rig Veda Samhita Ask him to bring the Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, Atharva Veda, as many of the Brahmanas as he can get, beginning with the Shatapata, some of the Sutras, and Yaska's Nirukta."

His brother-disciples went to the abode of the savant Satyavata Samashrami and purchased all the volumes of the Vedic books, Bibliotheca Indica, compiled by him and published by the Asiatic Society. Then Swami Abhedananda boarded the ship and his brothers gave him a sendoff. (41)

On Friday, August 6th, 1897... Swami Abhedananda landed at the port of New York, the commercial capital of the United States of America. He had with him a box of Sanskrit books on the Vedas, Upanishads, and six systems of Hindu philosophy which he had brought from India at the request of Swami Vivekananda. (42)

To Alasinga, Autumn, 1896: I am busy writing something big on the Vedanta philosophy. I am busy collecting passages from the various Vedas bearing on the Vedanta in its threefold aspect. You can help me by getting someone to collect passages bearing on, first, the advaitic idea, then the vishishtadvaitic, and the dvaitic, from the Samhitas, the Brahmanas, the Upanishads and the Puranas. They should be classified and very legibly written with the name and chapter of the book in each case. It would be a pity to leave the West without leaving something of the philosophy in book form.

There was a book published in Mysore in Tamil characters, comprising all the one hundred and eight Upanishads; I saw it in Professor Deussen's library. Is there a reprint of the same in Devanagari? If so, send me a copy. If not, send me the Tamil edition and also write on a sheet the Tamil letters and compounds, and all juxtaposed with its Nagari equivalents, so that I may learn the Tamil letters. (43)

October 31, 1896, from the Journal Light: We lately listened to a discourse by Swami Vivekananda.... The subject, in the main, was the Vedas, but we got excursions on evolution, modern science, idealism and realism, the supremacy of the Spirit, etc. On the whole, we gathered that the speaker was a preacher of the universal religion of spiritual ascendancy and spiritual harmony. Certain passages from the Vedas - beautifully translated and read, by the way - were charming in their bearing upon the humaneness and sharp reality of a life beyond the veil. One longed for more of this.

We were much impressed with the admission that in the Vedas there are many contradictions, and that devout Hindus never thought of denying them nor reconciling them. Everyone was free to take what he liked. At different stages and on different planes, all were true. Hence the Hindus never excommunicated and never persecuted. The contradictions in the Vedas are like the contradictions in life - they are very real, but they are all true. This seems impossible, but there is sound sense in it. (44)

Swami Vivekananda was invited by the Paris Congress of the History of Religions [in the autumn of 1900] to contradict the conviction of many of the Sanskrit scholars of the West that the Vedic religion is the outcome of the worship of the fire, the sun, and other awe-inspiring objects of natural phenomena. He promised to read a paper on this subject, but he could not keep his promise on account of ill health, and only with difficulty was he able to be personally present at the Congress, where he was most warmly received by all the Western Sanskrit scholars, whose admiration for the swami was all the greater as they had already gone through many of his lectures on the Vedanta. (45)

to be continued.....