Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 104)

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Parts 1 to 103 were posted earlier. This is part 104. 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 104

 

d) Renunciation Is the Real Beginning of Religion

1. Renunciation Is the Very Soul of Vedanta

The Absolute and the Infinite can become the universe only by limitation. Everything must be limited that comes through the senses, or through the mind, or through the intellect; and for the limited to be unlimited is simply absurd, and never can be. The Vedanta, on the other hand, says that it is true that the Absolute, or the Infinite, is trying to express itself in the finite, but there will come a time when it will find that it is impossible, and it will then have to beat a retreat; and this beating a retreat means renunciation, which is the real beginning of religion. Nowadays it is very hard even to talk about renunciation. It was said of me in America that I was a man who came out of a land that had been dead and buried for five thousand years and talked about renunciation. So says, perhaps, the English philosopher. Yet it is true that this is the only path to religion. Renounce and give up.... There comes a time when the mind awakes from this long and dreary dream - the child gives up its play and wants to go back to its mother. It finds the truth of the statement, "Desire is never satisfied by the enjoyment of desires; it only increases the more, as fire when butter is poured upon it." [Mahabharata 2.6.3 - Yayatigatha] This is true of all sense-enjoyments, of all intellectual enjoyments, and of all enjoyments of which the human mind is capable. They are nothing, they are within maya, within this network beyond which we cannot go. We may run therein through infinite time and find no end; and whenever we struggle to get a little enjoyment, a mass of misery falls upon us. How awful is this! And when I think of it, I cannot but consider that this theory of maya, this statement that it is all maya, is the best and only explanation. (41)

The alpha and omega of Vedanta philosophy is to "give up the world" - giving up the unreal and taking the Real. (42)

Disciple: Sir, even the Upanishads, etc., do not clearly teach renunciation and sannyasa.

Swami Vivekananda: You are talking like a madman! Renunciation is the very soul of the Upanishads. Illumination born of discriminative reflection is the ultimate aim of Upanishadic knowledge. (43)

[The ancient Indian philosophers] thought... this filthy world is not fit for the attention of humanity. There is nothing in the universe that is [permanent - neither good nor evil]. (44)

The Vedanta system begins with tremendous pessimism and ends with real optimism. We deny the sense-optimism but assert the real optimism of the supersensuous. That real happiness is not in the senses, but above the senses; and it is in every one. The sort of optimism we see in the world is what will lead to ruin through the senses.

Abnegation has the greatest importance in our philosophy. Negation implies affirmation of the real Self. The Vedanta is pessimistic in so far as it negatives the world of the senses, but it is optimistic in its assertion of the real world. (45)

Cross reference to:

Cha. Up., 7.2.3

Kaiv. Up., 2