Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 40)

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Parts 1 to 39 were posted earlier. This is part 40. Your comments are welcome... 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 40

 

 

4. The Marvelous Boy Shankara, Having Brought the Vedas back to Life, Modern India Belongs to the Spiritual Part of the Vedas

A thousand years after Buddha's death... the mobs, the masses, and various races had been converted to Buddhism; naturally, the teachings of the Buddha became in time degenerated, because most of the people were very ignorant. Buddhism taught no God, no Ruler of the universe, so gradually the masses brought their gods and devils and hobgoblins out again and a tremendous hotchpotch was made of Buddhism in India. Again materialism came to the fore, taking the form of license with the upper classes and superstition with the lower. Then Shankaracharya arose and once more revivified Vedanta philosophy. He made it a rationalistic philosophy. In the Upanishads the arguments were often very obscure. By Buddha the moral side of the philosophy was laid stress upon, and by Shankaracharya, the intellectual side. He worked out, rationalized, and placed before people the wonderful, coherent system of Advaita. (64)

In spite of the preaching of mercy to animals, in spite of the sublime ethical religion, in spite of the hair-splitting discussions about the existence or non-existence of a permanent soul, the whole building of Buddhism tumbled down piecemeal; and the ruin was simply hideous. I have neither the time nor the inclination to describe to you the hideousness that came in the wake of Buddhism. The most hideous ceremonies, the most horrible, the most obscene books that human hands ever wrote or the human brain conceived, the most bestial forms that ever passed under the name of religion, have all been the creation of degraded Buddhism.

But India had to live…. The Lord came again, and this time the manifestation was in the South, and up rose that young brahmin of whom it has been declared that, at the age of sixteen he had completed all his writings; the marvelous boy Shankaracharya arose. The writings of this boy of sixteen are the wonders of the modern world, and so was the boy. He wanted to bring back the Indian world to its pristine purity - but think of the amount of the task before him. I have told you a few points about the state of things that existed in India..... The Tartars and Baluchis and all the hideous races of mankind came to India and became Buddhists and assimilated with us, and brought their national customs, and the whole of our national life became a huge page of the most horrible and bestial customs. That was the inheritance which that boy got from the Buddhists; and from that time to this, the whole work of India is a reconquest of this Buddhistic degradation by the Vedanta. It is still going on, it is not yet finished. Shankara came, a great philosopher, and showed that the real essence of Buddhism and that of Vedanta are not very different, but that the disciples did not understand the Master and have degraded themselves, denied the existence of the soul and have become atheists. (65)

When Buddhism broke down everything by introducing all sorts of foreign barbarisms into India - their manners and customs and such things - there was a reaction, and that reaction was led by a young monk, Shankaracharya. And [instead] of preaching new doctrines and always thinking new thoughts and making sects, he brought back the Vedas to life; and modern Hinduism has thus an admixture of ancient Hinduism, over which the Vedantists predominate. But, you see, what once dies never comes back to life, and those ceremonials of Hinduism never came back to life. You will be astonished if I tell you that, according to the old ceremonials, he is not a good Hindu who does not eat beef. On certain occasions he must sacrifice a bull and eat it. That is disgusting now. However they may differ from each other in India, in that all Hindus are one - they never eat beef. The ancient sacrifices and the ancient gods - they are all gone; modern India belongs to the spiritual part of the Vedas. (66)

 

5. Ramanuja Opened the Door to the Highest Spiritual Worship to All and Thus Brought the Masses back to the Vedic Religion

Shankara showed [that the real essence of Buddhism and Vedanta are not very different], and all the Buddhists began to come back to the old religion. But then, they had become accustomed to all these [buddhist] forms. What could be done? (67)

In the Buddhist movement, the kshatriyas were the real leaders, and whole masses of them became Buddhists. In the zeal of reform and conversion, the popular dialects had been almost exclusively cultivated to the neglect of Sanskrit, and the larger portion of kshatriyas had become disjoined from the Vedic literature and Sanskrit learning. Thus this wave of reform which came from the South, benefited to a certain extent the priesthood, and the priests only. For the rest of India's millions, it forged more chains than they had ever known before. (68)

The movement of Shankara forced its way through its high intellectuality; but it could be of little service to the masses, because of it adherence to strict caste-laws, very small scope for ordinary emotion, and making Sanskrit the only vehicle of communication. Ramanuja, on the other hand, with a most practical philosophy, a great appeal to the emotions, an entire denial of birthright before spiritual attainments, and appeals through the popular tongue, completely succeeded in bringing the masses back to the Vedic religion. (69)

Shankara, with his great intellect, I am afraid, had not as great a heart [as Ramanuja]. Ramanuja's heart was greater. He felt for the downtrodden, he sympathized with them. He took up the ceremonies, the accretions that had gathered, made them pure so far as they could be, and instituted new ceremonies, new methods of worship, for the people who absolutely required them. At the same time, he opened the door to the highest spiritual worship from the brahmin to the pariah. That was Ramanuja's work. That work rolled on, invaded the North, was taken up by some great leaders there; but that was much later, during the Muslim rule; and the brightest of these prophets of comparatively modern times in the North was Chaitanya. (70)

In the South, the spiritual upheaval of Shankara and Ramanuja was followed by the usual Indian sequence of united races and powerful empires. It was the home of refuge of Indian religion and civilization, when northern India from sea to sea lay bound at the feet of the Central Asiatic conquerors. (71)

 

f) Through Slow Assimilation the Pure, Eternal Vedic Religion Has Evolved India towards the Highest Ideal

The task before [renascent India] was profound, problems vaster than their ancestors had ever faced. A comparatively small and compact race of the same blood and speech and the same social and religious aspiration [the Aryans], trying to save its unity by unscalable walls around itself, grew huge by multiplication and addition during the Buddhist supremacy; and it was divided by race, color, speech, spiritual instinct, and social ambitions into hopelessly jarring factions. And this had to be unified and welded into one gigantic nation. This task Buddhism had also come to solve, and had taken it up when the proportions were not so vast.

So long it had been a question of Aryanizing the other types that were pressing for admission and thus of making a huge Aryan body of its different elements. In spite of concessions and compromises, Buddhism was eminently successful and remained the national religion of India. But the time came when the allurements of sensual forms of worship, indiscriminately taken in along with various low races, were too dangerous for the central Aryan core, and a longer contact would certainly have destroyed the civilization of the Aryans. Then came a natural reaction for self-preservation, and Buddhism as a separate sect ceased to live in most parts of the land of its birth.

The reaction movement, led in close succession by Kumarila in the North and Shankara and Ramanuja in the South, has become the last embodiment of that vast accumulation of sects and doctrines and rituals called Hinduism. For the last thousand years or more, its great task has been assimilation, with now and then and outburst of reformation. This reaction first wanted to revive the rituals of the Vedas - failing which, it made the Upanishads or the philosophic portions of the Vedas its basis. It brought Vyasa's system of mimamsa philosophy (the Vedanta Sutras) and Krishna’s sermon, the Gita, to the forefront; and all succeeding movements have followed the same. (72)

During these hundreds of years since the time [of the great reformer Shankaracharya] to the present day, there has been the slow bringing back of the Indian masses to the pristine purity of the Vedantic religion. These reformers knew full well the evils which existed, yet they did not condemn. They did not say, "All that you have is wrong; you must throw it away". It can never be so.... Sudden changes cannot be, and Shankaracharya knew it. So did Ramanuja. The only way left to them was slowly to bring up the existing religion to the highest ideal. If they had sought to apply the other method, they would have been hypocrites, for the very fundamental doctrine of their religion is evolution, the soul going towards the highest goal, through all these various stages and phases which are, therefore, necessary and helpful. And who dares condemn them? (73)

In India, Kumarila again brought into currency the Karma Marga, the way of karma only; and Shankara and Ramanuja firmly reestablished the eternal Vedic religion, harmonizing and balancing in due proportions dharma, artha, kama and moksha [duty, gain, pleasure and liberation]. Thus the nation was brought to the way of regaining its lost life; but India has three hundred million souls to awake, and hence the delay. To revive three hundred millions - can it be done in a day? (74)