Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 173)

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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 173

 

3. Learn to Distinguish What Is Essential and the Power of Thinking and Timely

Action Will Come of Itself

 

This world, if you have eyes to see, is yours - if not, it is mine; do you think

that anyone waits for another? The Westerners are devising new means and methods

to attract the luxuries and comforts of different parts of the world. They watch

the situation with ten eyes and work with two hundred hands, as it were; while

we will never do what the authors of our Shastras have not written in books, and

thus we are moving in the same old groove, and there is no attempt to seek

anything original and new, and the capacity to do that is lost to us now. The

whole nation is rending the skies with the cry for food and is dying of

starvation. Whose fault is it? Ours! What means are we taking in hand to find a

way out of the pitiable situation? Zero! Only making a bigger noise by our big

and empty talk! That is all that we are doing. Why not come out of your narrow

corner and see, with your eyes open, how the world is moving onwards? Then the

mind will open and the power of thinking and timely action will come of itself.

(6)

 

Every critical student knows that the social laws of India have always been

subject to great periodic changes. At their inception, these laws were the

embodiment of a gigantic plan which was to unfold itself slowly through time.

The great seers of ancient India saw so far ahead of their times that the world

has to wait centuries yet to appreciate their wisdom; and it is this very

inability on the part of their own descendants to appreciate the full scope of

this wonderful plan that is the one and only cause of the degeneration of

India.(7)

 

The more, therefore, the Hindus study the past, the more glorious will be their

future; and whoever tries to bring the past to the door of everyone is a great

benefactor to this nation. The degeneration of India came, not because the laws

and customs of the ancients were bad, but because they were not allowed to be

carried to their legitimate conclusions.(8)

 

Your [Aryan] ancestors gave every liberty to the soul and religion grew. They

put the body under every bondage, and society did not grow. The opposite is the

case in the West - every liberty to society, none to religion. Now are falling

off the shackles from the feet of Eastern society as from those of Western

religion.(9)

 

In plain words, we have first to learn the distinction between the essentials

and non-essentials in everything. The essentials are eternal, the non-essentials

have value only for a certain time; and, if after a time they are not replaced

by something essential, they are positively dangerous. I do not mean that you

should stand up and revile all your old customs and institutions. Certainly not;

you must not revile even the most evil one of them. Revile none. Even those

customs that are now appearing to be positive evils have been positively

life-giving in times past; and if we have to remove these, we must not do so

with curses, but with blessings and with gratitude for the glorious works these

customs have done for the preservation of our race. And we must also remember

that the leaders of our societies have never been either generals or kings, but

rishis.(10)