Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 14)

[Guest guest]

We are presenting the following work by Sister Gayatriprana.

Parts 1 to 13 were posted earlier. This is part 14. 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 14

h) Beginning the Educational Work in India

1. The Monastic Order

In 1894-95 we did not know the thoughts that were seething in Swami Vivekananda's mind day and night. "The work!, the work!" he cried. "How to begin the work in India! The way, the means!" The form it would take was evolved gradually. Certainly before he left America, the way, the means, and the method were clear in every detail. He knew then that the remedy was not money, not even education in the ordinary sense, but another kind of education: let man remember his true nature, divinity. Let this become a living realization, and everything else will follow - power, strength, manhood. He will again become MAN. And this he proclaimed from Colombo to Almora [after his return to India in 1897].

First, a large plot of land on the Ganga was to be acquired. On this was to be built a shrine for worship and a monastery to give shelter to his brother-disciples and as a center for the training of young men. There were to be taught meditation and all subjects relating to the religious life, including the Upanishads, the Bhagavadgita, Sanskrit, and science. After some years of training, whenever the head of the monastery considered them sufficiently prepared, they were to go out, form new centers, to preach the message, nurse the sick, to succor the needy, to work in times of famine and flood, to give relief in any form that was needed. How much of what he thought out at that time has been carried out! To this India can bear testimony. It seemed almost madness for a mendicant monk to plan such an extensive work. In later years we were to see it carried out in every detail. (46)

It was Swami Vivekananda's great desire that the Vedas and other Shastras should be studied at the math. Since the time the monastery was removed to Nilambar Babu's garden [in February, 1898], he had started, with the help of his brother disciples, regular classes on the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Vedanta Sutras, the Gita, the Bhagavata and other scriptures and had himself taught for a time Panini's Astadhyayi. (47)

Of Swami Vivekananda's stay in Calcutta from January to October, 1898, the story is one of continuous engagements and of training his disciples. The math diary gives access to a study of his varied activities and occupations. Now it would be the house of some devotee which he would visit in Calcutta, then the entertaining of scores of visitors who came to see him at the monastery and at Balaram Babu's house. Now it would be hours of training the sannyasins and brahmacharins of the Math, then hours of meditation, of song, of answering letters, or reciting stories and anecdotes, or else relating the acquisition of certain stages of yoga and of spiritual insight. Now it would be a lecture on the Bhagavadgita or on the Upanishads or other scriptures of Hinduism, then a discourse on the material sciences or on the history of nations. Or it would be a question-class in which he would invite the members of the Math to raise or discuss their philosophical doubts, and would himself take up the debate with his illuminating solution of the problems at issue. (48)

All through the serious period of his [final] illness in 1901 and 1902 and even up to the very end, the swami was eager to receive friends and visitors and to instruct his disciples, notwithstanding the plea of his brother disciples to take perfect rest for the sake of his health; for in the matter of teaching, he knew no limits. Everything must be sacrificed, even the body itself....

All through the period under description, and especially from the early part of March, 1902 until the time he passed away [in July of the same year], in spite of his physical afflictions, the swami was busy in many ways. Disease counted as nothing when his mind was set upon doing something. Even unto the last day he himself conducted numerous Vedic and question classes at the monastery, and oftentimes the brahmacharins and even his own brother disciples came to him for spiritual advice. He often spoke of methods of meditation and would train such as were backward in this spiritual science. He spent hours in answering correspondence, or in reading, noting down his thoughts for writing some book on Hindu philosophy or on Indian history; and then, for recreation he would sing some song or discourse with his brother disciples, giving himself up to fun and merriment. (49)

The swami always abhorred extremes. He protested against the too elaborate paraphernalia of daily worship at the math in the strongest terms and insisted on his disciples devoting more time to sacred study, religious talks and discussions, and to meditation, in order to mold their lives and understand the spirit of Sri Ramakrishna's teachings than to superfluous and minute details in conducting the worship. It should be done in the simplest way with due devotion and fervor, along with the former occupations, without taking up the whole time of the monks as it used to do. To enforce this, he introduced the ringing of a bell at appointed times at which the members, leaving aside - or, rather, finishing all other works - must join the classes for study, discussion, and meditation.... About three months before his departure he made a rule that at four o'clock in the morning a hand-bell should be rung by someone going from room to room to awaken the members of the Order, and that within half an hour all should gather in the chapel to meditate. So, also, classes on the Gita, Bhagavata, Upanishads and the Brahma Sutras, and question classes for religious discussion were regularly held. Over and above these, Swami Vivekananda encouraged his disciples to practice austerities.... In his charge to his disciples he repeatedly pointed out that no monastic order could keep itself pure and retain its original vigor as well as its power of working good, without a definite ideal to work for, without submitting itself to rigorous discipline, vows, and without keeping up culture and education within its fold. (50)

to be continued.....