Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 120)

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Parts 1 to 119 were posted earlier. This is part 120. 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 120

 

We may take different points of view as to what the Vedas are. There may be one sect which regards one portion as more sacred than another, but that matters little so long as we say that we are all brothers and sisters in the Vedas, that out of these venerable, eternal, marvelous books has come everything that we possess today, good, holy and pure. Well, therefore, if we believe in all this, let this principle first of all be preached broadcast throughout the length and breadth of [india]. If this be true, let the Vedas have that prominence which they always deserve and which we all believe in.(10)

b) Vedanta, the Sect Which Must Cover the Whole Ground of Indian Religious Life

1. The Vedic Sect Which Now Really Covers India is Vedanta, Which Is Itself Divided into Three Schools

The Upanishads not being in a systematized form, it was easy for philosophers to take up texts as they liked to form a system. The Upanishads had always to be taken, else there would be no basis. Yet we find all the different schools of thought in the Upanishads.(11)

There are six schools of philosophy in India that are regarded as orthodox, because they believe in the Vedas.(12)

Of the three orthodox divisions [of Hinduism] - the Sankhyas, the Naiyayikas, and the Mimamsakas - the former two, although they existed as philosophical schools, failed to form any sect. The one sect that now really covers India is that of the later Mimamsakas or Vedantists. Their philosophy is called Vedantism.(13)

[in the Brahma-Sutras] Vyasa’s philosophy is par excellence that of the Upanishads. He wrote in sutra form, that is, in brief, algebraic symbols without nominative or verb. This cause so much ambiguity that out of the Sutras came dualism, mono-dualism and monism or "roaring Vedanta".(14)

The Sutras of Vyasa have been variously explained by different commentators (15)