Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 143)

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Parts 1 to 142 were posted earlier. This is part 143. 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 143

d) The Vitality of India’s Spirituality Was Constructively Conserved by a Host of Reformers

[The fanatical belief of many of the invaders into India is] that those who do not belong to their sect have no right to live. They will go to a place where the fire will never be quenched when they die; in this life they are only fit to be made into slaves or murdered; and that they have only the right to live as slaves to "the true believers", but never as free people. So in this way, when these waves burst upon India, everything was submerged. Books and literature and civilization went down.

But there is a vitality in the race which is unique in the history of humanity, and perhaps that vitality comes from non-resistance. Non-resistance is the greatest strength. In meekness and mildness lies the greatest strength. In suffering is greater strength than in doing. In resisting one’s own passions is far higher strength than in hurting others. And that has been the watchword of the race through all its difficulties, its misfortunes and its prosperity. It is the only nation that never went beyond its frontiers to cut the throats of its neighbors. It is a glorious thing. It makes me rather patriotic to think I am born a Hindu, a descendant of the only race that never went out to hurt anyone, and whose only action upon humanity has been giving and enlightening and teaching, but never robbing.(9)

[india] is the ancient land where wisdom made its home before it went into any other country, the same India whose influx of spirituality is represented, as it were, on the material plane by rolling rivers like oceans, where the eternal Himalayas, rising tier above tier with their snow-caps look, as it were, into the very mysteries of heaven. Here is the same India whose soil has been trodden by the feet of the greatest sages that ever lived. Here first sprang up inquiries into the nature of humanity and into the internal world. Here first arose the doctrines of the immortality of the soul, the existence of a supervising God, and immanent God in nature and in humanity, and here the highest ideals of religion and philosophy have attained their culminating points. This is the land from whence, like tidal waves, spirituality and philosophy have again and again rushed out and deluged the world, and this is the land whence once more such tides must proceed in order to bring life and vigor into the decaying races of humankind. It is the same India which has withstood the shocks of centuries, of hundreds of foreign invasions, of hundreds of upheavals of manners and customs. It is the same land which stands firmer than any rock in the world, with its undying vigor, indestructible life. Its life is of the same nature as the soul, without beginning and without end, immortal.(10)

All along, in the history of the Hindu race, there never was any attempt at destruction, only construction. We have a host of reformers - Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, and Chaitanya. These were great reformers, who were always constructive and built according to the circumstances of their time. This is our peculiar method of work. All the modern reformers take to European, destructive reformation which never did good to anyone and never will. The progress of the Hindu race has been towards the realization of the Vedantic ideals. All history of Indian life is the struggle for the realization of the idea of the Vedanta through good or bad fortune. Whenever there was any reforming sect or religion which rejected the Vedantic idea, it was smashed into nothing.(11)