Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 154)

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Parts 1 to 153 were posted earlier. This is part 154. 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 154

Yet, perhaps, some sort of materialism toned down to our own requirements, would be a blessing to many of our brothers and sisters who are not yet ripe for the highest truths. This is the mistake made in every country and every society; and it is a greatly regrettable thing that in India, where it was always understood, the same mistake of forcing the highest truths on people who are not ready for them has been made of late. My method need not be yours. The sannyasin, as you all know, is the ideal of the Hindu’s life and everyone by our Shastras is compelled to give up. Every Hindu who has tasted the fruits of this world must give up in the latter part of his or her life and whoever does not is not a Hindu and has no more right to call him or herself a Hindu. We know that this is the ideal - to give up after seeing and experiencing the vanity of things. Having found out that the heart of the material world is a mere hollow, containing only ashes, give it up and go back. The mind is circling forward, as it were, towards the senses; and that mind has to circle backwards; the pravritti has to stop and the nivritti has to begin. That is the ideal. But that ideal can only be realized after a certain amount of experience. We cannot teach the child the truth of renunciation; the child is a born optimist, his whole life is in his or her senses, his whole life is one mass of sense-enjoyment. So, there are childlike people in every society who require a certain amount of experience, of enjoyment, to see through the vanity of it, and then renunciation will come to them. There has been ample provision made for them in our books; but, unfortunately, in later times there has been a tendency to bind everyone down by the same laws as those by which the sannyasin is bound, and that is a great mistake. But for that, a good deal of the poverty and misery that you see in India need not have been. A poor person’s life is hemmed in and bound down by tremendous spiritual and ethical laws for which he has no use. Hands off! Let the poor souls enjoy themselves a little and then they will raise themselves up and renunciation will come to them of itself. Perhaps in this line we can be taught something by the Western people; but we must be very cautious in learning these things. I am sorry to say that most of the examples one meets nowadays of people who have imbibed the Western ideas are more or less failures.(32)

Renunciation - that is the flag, the banner of India floating over the world, the one undying thought which India sends again and again as a warning to dying races, as a warning to all tyranny, as a warning to wickedness in the world. Ay, Hindus, let not your hold of that banner go. Hold it aloft. Even if you are weak and cannot renounce, do not lower the ideal. Say, "I am weak and cannot renounce the world", but do not try to be hypocrites, torturing texts and making specious arguments and trying to throw dust in the eyes of people who are ignorant. Do not do that, but own you are weak. For the idea is great, that of renunciation. What matters it if millions fail in the attempt, if ten soldiers or even two return victorious! Blessed be the millions dead! Their blood has bought the victory. This renunciation is the one idea throughout the different Vedic sects except one, and that is the Vallabhacharya sect in the Bombay Presidency - and most of you are aware of what comes where renunciation does not exist. We want orthodoxy - even the hideously orthodox, even those who smother themselves with ashes, even those who stand with their hands uplifted. Ay, we want them, unnatural though they may be, for standing for that idea of giving up, and acting as a warning to the race against succumbing to the effeminate luxuries that are creeping into India, eating into our very vitals, and tending to make the whole race a race of hypocrites. We want to have a little asceticism. Renunciation conquered India in days of yore; it has still to conquer India. Still it stands as the greatest and highest of Indian ideals - this renunciation. The land of Buddha, the land of Ramanuja, of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the land of renunciation, the land where, from days of yore, Karma-Kanda was preached against - and even today there are hundreds who have given up everything and become jivanmuktas - ay, will the land give up its ideals? Certainly not. There may be people whose brains have become turned by Western luxurious ideals; there may be thousands and hundreds of thousands who have drunk deep of enjoyment, this curse of the West - the senses - the curse of the world; yet for all that, there will be other thousands in this motherland of mine, to whom religion will ever be a reality and who will be ever ready to give up without counting the cost, if need be.(33)