VEDANTA PREACHER IN THE WEST, STOP CALLING SRI RAMAKRISHNA 'CRAZY' TO BE IN LINE WITH WESTERN WAYS OF CASUAL, COLLOQUIAL REFERENCE

VEDANTA PREACHER IN THE WEST, STOP CALLING SRI RAMAKRISHNA 'CRAZY' TO BE IN LINE WITH WESTERN WAYS OF CASUAL, COLLOQUIAL REFERENCE 

We must not use such terms as 'crazy' with regard to Sri Ramakrishna while addressing western audiences, even by way of casual reference. It is an insult unto the one we adore. There is a Ramakrishna monk who needs to be more circumspect in this regard. Such verbal usage only goes to show that these preachers of the Vedanta are as yet unfit for the job and need a deepening of self before they are sent abroad to do so. 

Restraint of speech is the sine qua non for preachers. Even Swami Vivekananda was cautious when speaking about his Master. How much more these others today need to be then. It is painful to behold how these monks after a three month stay in USA change pronunciation of certain words such as 'ask, 'task', 'past', 'last' and the like to their US forms while clinging on to their early-set Indian accent for the rest of the language spoken by them. This sort of quick capitulation to foreign influence, and imperfectly so, betrays a lack of character-strength and the tendency to be easily won over by foreign influence whose degenerate manifestation is in calling the very Master they represent 'crazy', if even by way of reference to how many people in his times viewed him. But there is a casualness in the manner in which this monk speaks such things which is highly objectionable. If he really understood the depth of the Master and had a like reverence, he could not have done what he so easily does and without compunction of conscience. After all his western audience laughs with him. Light-hearted speaker and a like audience! Gone are the days when Yama spoke to Nachiketa and the Kathopanishad called it 'Aashcharya vaktaa kushalasya labhdhaa' (Wondrous the speaker, adept the receiver). Now it is Vedanta in words, not in depth of intent or gravity in delivery. And the sufferer as usual is our Thakur!

Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi was much opposed to this use of the adjective 'crazy' in reference to her divine husband. Once when her own mother, Shyamasundari Devi, lamented her daughter Sarada as having been unfortunately married off to a madman, Holy Mother instantly remonstrated that her husband was not a madman, and she cautioned her mother never to use such an epithet on her husband again.

Levity afflicts us today as a nation, perhaps, but that ought not to affect our way of addressing our great men and women, especially, such ones who millions venerate and worship as the Avatar. That does not mean that certain ways and manners are being proscribed and only certain definite ways prescribed. Our Vedic culture does not believe in imposition of any sort but it definitely stresses on the cultivation of 'shraddhaa' which is that 'intense aspirational mood seeking perfection' (definition by Sugata Bose). If levity strikes at the root of this 'shraddhaa', then it is best given up and a more serious attitude adopted in reference to preaching these epoch-makers, these divinities of seminal significance. 

Written by Sugata Bose