Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 90)

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Parts 1 to 89 were posted earlier. This is part 90. 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 90

 

3. This Is the Great Hope: I Can Undo What I Have Done by Manifesting My Innate, Eternal Freedom

Your Shastras declare: despair not. For you are the same, whatever you do, and you cannot change your nature. Nature itself cannot destroy nature. Your nature is pure. It may be hidden for millions of eons, but at last it will conquer and come out. Therefore the Advaita brings hope to everyone, and not despair. Its teaching is not through fear; it teaches, not of devils who are always on the watch to snatch you if you miss your footing - it has nothing to do with devils - but says that you have taken your fate into your own hands. Your own karma has manufactured for you this body, and nobody did it for you. The omnipresent Lord has been hidden through ignorance and the responsibility is on yourself. You have not to think that you were brought into the world without you choice and left in this most horrible place; but to know that you have yourself manufactured your body bit by bit, just as you are doing a this very moment. You yourself eat; nobody eats for you. You assimilate what you eat; no-one does it for you. You make blood and muscles and body out of food; nobody does it for you. So you have done all the time. One link in the chain explains the infinite chain. If it is true that for one moment you manufacture your body, it is true for every moment that has been or will come. And all the responsibility for good and evil is on you. This is the great hope: what I have done, that I can undo. And at the same time our religion does not take away from mankind the mercy of the Lord. That is always there. On the contrary, He or She stands beside this tremendous current of good and evil. He or She, the bondless, the ever-merciful, is always ready to help us to the other shore, for His or Her mercy is great; and it always come to the pure in heart. (58)

We find, then, that this world is neither optimistic nor pessimistic; it is a mixture of both and, as we go on, we shall find that the whole blame is taken away from nature and put upon our own shoulders. At the same time the Vedanta shows the way out, not by denial of evil, because it analyzes boldly the fact as it is and does not seek to conceal anything. It is not hopeless, it is not agnostic. It finds out a remedy, but it wants to place that remedy on adamantine foundations. (59)