ॐ वीरेश्वराय विद्महे
विवेकानन्दाय धीमहि । तन्नो वीर: प्रचोदयात् ।
In speaking of the sages of
India, my mind goes back to those periods of which history has
no record, and tradition tries in vain to bring the secrets out
of the gloom of the past. The sages of India have been almost
innumerable, for what has the Hindu nation been doing for
thousands of years except producing sages?.... antiquity of the
nation – the work that this nation did in the past
Two ideals of truth are in our scriptures; the one is,
what we call the eternal, and the other is not so
authoritative, yet binding under particular circumstances,
times, and places. The eternal relations which deal with the
nature of the soul, and of God, and the relations between
souls and God are embodied in what we call the Shrutis, the
Vedas. The next set of truths is what we call the Smritis, as
embodied in the words of Manu. Yâjnavalkya, and other writers
and also in the Purânas, down to the Tantras. The second class
of books and teachings is subordinate to the Shrutis, inasmuch
as whenever any one of these contradicts anything in the
Shrutis, the Shrutis must prevail. This is the law. The idea
is that the framework of the destiny and goal of man has been
all delineated in the Vedas, the details have been left to be
worked out in the Smritis and Puranas. As for general
directions, the Shrutis are enough; for spiritual life,
nothing more can be said, nothing more can be known. All that
is necessary has been known, all the advice that is necessary
to lead the soul to perfection has been completed in the
Shrutis; the details alone were left out, and these the
Smritis have supplied from time to time.
Our religion preaches an Impersonal Personal God. It preaches any amount of impersonal laws plus any amount of personality, but the very fountain-head of our religion is in the Shrutis, the Vedas, which are perfectly impersonal; the persons all come in the Smritis and Puranas — the great Avatâras, Incarnations of God, Prophets, and so forth. And this ought also to be observed that except our religion every other religion in the world depends upon the life or lives of some personal founder or founders.
"Wherever an extraordinary spiritual power is manifested by external man, know that I am there, it is from Me that that manifestation comes." That leaves the door open for the Hindu to worship the Incarnations of all the countries in the world. ....Ours, as I have said, is the universal religion. It is inclusive enough, it is broad enough to include all the ideals. All the ideals of religion that already exist in the world can be immediately included, and we can patiently wait for all the ideals that are to come in the future to be taken in the same fashion, embraced in the infinite arms of the religion of the Vedanta.
truths of spirituality we also see in a superconscious state of the human soul. This Rishi-state is not limited by time or place, by sex or race. Vâtsyâyana boldly declares that this Rishihood is the common property of the descendants of the sage, of the Aryan, of the non-Aryan, of even the Mlechchha. This is the sageship of the Vedas, and constantly we ought to remember this ideal of religion in India, which I wish other nations of the world would also remember and learn, so that there may be less fight and less quarrel.Religion is not in books, nor in theories, nor in dogmas, nor in talking, not even in reasoning. It is being and becoming. Ay, my friends, until each one of you has become a Rishi and come face to face with spiritual facts, religious life has not begun for you. Until the superconscious opens for you, religion is mere talk, it is nothing but preparation.
The Vedas, grammar, astronomy, etc., all these are secondary; that is supreme knowledge which makes us realise the Unchangeable One. Those who realised are the sages whom we find in the Vedas; and we understand how this Rishi is the name of a type, of a class, which every one of us, as true Hindus, is expected to become at some period of our life, and becoming which, to the Hindu, means salvation. Not belief in doctrines, not going to thousands of temples, nor bathing in all the rivers in the world, but becoming the Rishi, the Mantra-drashta — that is freedom, that is salvation.
A great landmark in the history of religion is here, the ideal of love for love's sake, work for work's sake, duty for duty's sake, and it for the first time fell from the lips of the greatest of Incarnations, Krishna, and for the first time in the history of humanity, upon the soil of India. The religions of fear and of temptations were gone for ever, and in spite of the fear of hell and temptation of enjoyment in heaven, came the grandest of ideals, love for love's sake, duty for duty's sake, work for work's sake.
Our religion preaches an Impersonal Personal God. It preaches any amount of impersonal laws plus any amount of personality, but the very fountain-head of our religion is in the Shrutis, the Vedas, which are perfectly impersonal; the persons all come in the Smritis and Puranas — the great Avatâras, Incarnations of God, Prophets, and so forth. And this ought also to be observed that except our religion every other religion in the world depends upon the life or lives of some personal founder or founders.
"Wherever an extraordinary spiritual power is manifested by external man, know that I am there, it is from Me that that manifestation comes." That leaves the door open for the Hindu to worship the Incarnations of all the countries in the world. ....Ours, as I have said, is the universal religion. It is inclusive enough, it is broad enough to include all the ideals. All the ideals of religion that already exist in the world can be immediately included, and we can patiently wait for all the ideals that are to come in the future to be taken in the same fashion, embraced in the infinite arms of the religion of the Vedanta.
truths of spirituality we also see in a superconscious state of the human soul. This Rishi-state is not limited by time or place, by sex or race. Vâtsyâyana boldly declares that this Rishihood is the common property of the descendants of the sage, of the Aryan, of the non-Aryan, of even the Mlechchha. This is the sageship of the Vedas, and constantly we ought to remember this ideal of religion in India, which I wish other nations of the world would also remember and learn, so that there may be less fight and less quarrel.Religion is not in books, nor in theories, nor in dogmas, nor in talking, not even in reasoning. It is being and becoming. Ay, my friends, until each one of you has become a Rishi and come face to face with spiritual facts, religious life has not begun for you. Until the superconscious opens for you, religion is mere talk, it is nothing but preparation.
The Vedas, grammar, astronomy, etc., all these are secondary; that is supreme knowledge which makes us realise the Unchangeable One. Those who realised are the sages whom we find in the Vedas; and we understand how this Rishi is the name of a type, of a class, which every one of us, as true Hindus, is expected to become at some period of our life, and becoming which, to the Hindu, means salvation. Not belief in doctrines, not going to thousands of temples, nor bathing in all the rivers in the world, but becoming the Rishi, the Mantra-drashta — that is freedom, that is salvation.
A great landmark in the history of religion is here, the ideal of love for love's sake, work for work's sake, duty for duty's sake, and it for the first time fell from the lips of the greatest of Incarnations, Krishna, and for the first time in the history of humanity, upon the soil of India. The religions of fear and of temptations were gone for ever, and in spite of the fear of hell and temptation of enjoyment in heaven, came the grandest of ideals, love for love's sake, duty for duty's sake, work for work's sake.
A rather sadder chapter of India's history comes now. In the Gita we already hear the distant sound of the conflicts of sects, and the Lord comes in the middle to harmonise them all; He, the great preacher of harmony, the greatest teacher of harmony, Lord Shri Krishna. He says, "In Me they are all strung like pearls upon a thread." We already hear the distant sounds, the murmurs of the conflict, and possibly there was a period of harmony and calmness, when it broke out anew, not only on religious grounds, but roost possibly on caste grounds — the fight between the two powerful factors in our community, the kings and the priests.
Thus, in spite of the preaching of mercy to animals, in spite of
the sublime ethical religion, in spite of the hairsplitting
discussions about the existence or non-existence of a permanent
soul, the whole building of Buddhism tumbled down piecemeal; and
the ruin was simply hideous. I have neither the time nor the
inclination to describe to you the hideousness that came in the
wake of Buddhism. The most hideous ceremonies, the most
horrible, the most obscene books that human hands ever wrote or
the human brain ever conceived, the most bestial forms that ever
passed under the name of religion, have all been the creation of
degraded Buddhism. ....Shankara came, a great philosopher, and
showed that the real essence of Buddhism and that of the Vedanta
are not very different, but that the disciples did not
understand the Master and have degraded themselves, denied the
existence of the soul and of God, and have become atheists. That
was what Shankara showed, and all the Buddhists began to come
back to the old religion. ...Then came the brilliant Râmânuja.
Shankara, with his great intellect, I am afraid, had not as
great a heart. Ramanuja's heart was greater. He felt for the
downtrodden, he sympathised with them. He took up the
ceremonies, the accretions that had gathered, made them pure so
far as they could be, and instituted new ceremonies, new methods
of worship, for the people who absolutely required them. At the
same time he opened the door to the highest; spiritual worship
from the Brahmin to the Pariah. That was Ramanuja's work. That
work rolled on, invaded the North, was taken up by some great
leaders there; but that was much later, during the Mohammedan
rule; and the brightest of these prophets of comparatively
modern times in the North was Chaitanya.
The one had a great head, the other a large heart, and the time
was ripe for one to be born, the embodiment of both this head
and heart; the time was ripe for one to be born who in one body
would have the brilliant intellect of Shankara and the
wonderfully expansive, infinite heart of Chaitanya; one who
would see in every sect the same spirit working, the same God;
one who would see God in every being, one whose heart would weep
for the poor, for the weak, for the outcast, for the
downtrodden, for every one in this world, inside India or
outside India; and at the same time whose grand brilliant
intellect would conceive of such noble thoughts as would
harmonise all conflicting sects, not only in India but outside
of India, and bring a marvellous harmony, the universal religion
of head and heart into existence. Such a man was born, and I had
the good fortune to sit at his feet for years. The time was
ripe, it was necessary that such a man should be born, and he
came; and the most wonderful part of it was that his life's work
was just near a city which was full of Western thought, a city
which had run mad after these occidental ideas, a city which had
become more Europeanised than any other city in India. There he
lived, without any book-learning whatsoever; this great
intellect never learnt even to write his own name,* but the most
graduates of our university found in him an intellectual giant.
He was a strange man, this Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.
(CWSV : VOL : 3 Sages of India, Lecture of Swami Vivekananda
on 11 Feb 1897 in Madras) Read
Full Lecture
Join the year long 150th Birth Anniversary of Swami Vivekananda : sv150.org Vivekananda Kendra, Kanyakumari
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