Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 164)

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Parts 1 to 163 were posted earlier. This is part 164. 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 164

 

3. Modern Hinduism Has Lost the Spirit of Religion and Become a Religion of "Don’t Touchism"

A dreadful slough is in front of you - take care; many fall into it and die. The slough is this, that the present religion of the Hindu is not in the Vedas, nor in the Puranas, nor in bhakti, nor in mukti - religion has entered the cooking-pot. The present religion of the Hindus is neither the path or knowledge nor that of reason - it is "don’t touchism". "Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!" - that exhausts its description. See that you do not lose your lives in this dire irreligion of "don’t touchism"…; it is a form of mental disease.(28)

There is a danger of our religion getting into the kitchen. We are neither Vedantists, most of us now, nor Pauranics, nor Tantrics. We are just "don’t touchists". Our religion is in the kitchen. Our God is the cooking-pot, and our religion is, "Don’t touch me, I am holy." If this goes on for another century, every one of us will be in a lunatic asylum. It is a sure sign of softening of the brain when the mind cannot grasp the higher problems of life; all originality is lost, the mind has lost all its strength, its activity, and its power and thought, and just tries to go round and round in the smallest curve it can find. (29)

The Vedas have two parts, mandatory and optional. The mandatory injunctions are eternally binding on us and constitute the Hindu religion. The optional ones are not so. The brahmins at one time ate beef and married shudras. A calf was killed to please the guest. Shudras cooked for brahmins. The food cooked by a male brahmin was considered as polluted food.(30)

In Pilibit in January of 1901, the swami adduced facts and authorities from the Vedas and the Samhitas in proof of his claim [that] even the Vedic rishis ate, and enjoined upon others, to eat beef, the very name of which is not offensive to the ears of orthodox Hindus. In the old Vedic period it was the practice to kill cows in honor of guests and at certain ceremonies and on auspicious occasions, and he supported his remarks by dilating on the evils that had accrued in the degeneracy of the Hindu race through the fanaticism of anti- meat-eating and the deshacharas and lokacharas [local customs] of the so-called orthodoxists.(31)

The Hindu religion no longer requires the prop of the caste system. A brahmin may interdine with anybody, even a pariah. He or she won’t thereby lose his or her spirituality. A degree of spirituality that is destroyed by the touch of a pariah is a very poor quantity. It is almost at the zero point. Spirituality of a brahmin must overflow, blaze and burn, so as to warm into spiritual life not only one pariah, but thousands of pariahs who may touch him or her. The old rishis observed no distinctions or restrictions as regards food. Anyone who feels that his or her spirituality is so flimsy that the sight of a low caste person annihilates it, need not approach a pariah and must keep his precious little to him or herself.(32)

People in India have given up the Vedas and all their philosophy is in the kitchen. The religion of India at the present time is "don’t-touchism" - that is, a religion which the English people will never accept.(33)

In modern India the spirit of religion is gone. Only the externals remain. The people are neither Hindus nor Vedantists, they are merely don’t-touchists; the kitchen is their temple and cooking pots their devata (object of worship). This state of things must go. The sooner it is given up, the better for our religion. Let the Upanishads shine in their glory and at the same time let not quarrels exist between different sects.(34)