THE ART OF LIVING IN THE EYES OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

THE ART OF LIVING IN THE EYES OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA 

Swami Vivekananda was the Prophet of the Age. He was a Vedantist through and through in the hoary line of the Arya Rishis and the successor to that grand medieval exponent of it, Adi Shankaracharya. Disciple of the peerless Paramahamsa of Dakshineshwar who was himself at heart a Vedantist by the admission of his holy consort Sri Sarada Devi, Swami Vivekananda absorbed the lessons of both theoretical and practical Vedanta at the hallowed feet of his spiritual master. What the preceptor passed on to the pupil was later in the light of life's broader experience enunciated by Swamiji at home and abroad as prophesied by his divine preceptor in his dying days at Kashipur in 1886.

Sri Ramakrishna passed away on 16 August, 1886. The mantle of spiritual mentorship now fell on the broad shoulders of his most able disciple, the anointed one of God, Narendranath, who emerged in the broad avenue of life as the unknown mendicant monk Vividishananda, Sachchidananda and often the nameless sadhu on the dust-laden streets of cities and towns, the muddy pathways of villages and the trackless paths of deserts and forests, up the mountains now and down the depths right into the watery arms of the seas where he ultimately found sanctuary for a grand solution to his life's problems till then besetting him like a plague that had caught him but would not let go of him. And this was the great mystery that had thus far lain in front of him, the perplexing cause of India's downfall from her stupendous civilisational heights and the way to raising her back to her pristine Sanatan glory. And there on the last bit of the motherland lying out in the Indian Ocean, what today has been duly dubbed 'the Vivekananda Rock', Swamji meditated for three days and three nights, amidst the watery mass surrounding him, on the past, the present and the future of India. What he witnessed was the panoramic vision of the past glorious history of Bharatvarsha, her present degradation and her future unprecedented glory that would position her as the spiritual preceptor to the whole of humanity and the civiliser of the world. In short, Swami Vivekananda had discovered 'the science of being and the art of living', to quote Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, as applied to India whose variant as per cultural considerations were to be applied to the rest of the world. Swamiji had thus discovered the art of spiritual living for all of humanity the content of which we are about to discuss in depth and in detail.

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Vivekananda had come to the end of his wanderjahre in India and was now poised to scatter the seeds of the Sanatan Dharma broadcast over the West. 1492 was the year Christopher Columbus had in his quest for India stumbled upon the discovery of America. Now America was celebrating the quatercentenary of that epochal event and Chicago was preparing to host the World Parliament of Religions in connection with it. Vivekananda sailed across the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic to land in America in July, 1893. On September 11, now of terrible memory post the 9/11 attacks, stood the young sage from hoary India who was since hailed as being young in years, ages in experience, on the podium of the Parliament. The opening five words of his address and a new direction had been given to the future world. The 7000 strong audience was enraptured by his endearing address "Sisters and brothers of America" and broke into a two minute applause for an address that lasted a mere two minutes otherwise. America's heart had been touched by the magic wand of the East and Vivekananda was an instant celebrity the hem of whose garment people dived to touch, whose visage but to have a vision of, crowds thronged the streets, halting traffic indefinitely.

Swamiii stayed on in America after the Chicago Parliament of Religions was over. For the next three years and a half he toured the States extensively and even visited England, delivering lectures throughout the landmass, pouring his spirituality into the nerves of sensitive souls to kindle the awakening consciousness of the West. The philosophy of the Vedanta that he laid bare before his western audience became the rationale for their new-found way of thinking and living post the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment and the French Revolution had dealt sledgehammer blows into the heart of Papal Christianity and liberated the subjects of erstwhile Christendom from the overwhelming dominance of the Church. Reason was the new god and science the new religion. But the soul of man cannot be satisfied by mere reason nor can the satiation of the senses through material gratification suffice to give it perennial peace. A void was thus created in western society, especially among thinking people, which had to be filled. Here Vivekananda stepped in with his Vedantic philosophy and watered the withering roots of western civilisation to give it a fresh lease of life.

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Now, what is the Vedānta? What is life? And what is the relation between the two?

The word 'Veda' comes from the root word 'vid' which means, 'to know'. Knowledge is of two types: relative and absolute. Relative knowledge is phenomenal, empirical, and dubbed 'aparā vidyā' whereas absolute knowledge is transcendental, intuitive, and dubbed 'parā'. All of material science, art, philosophy, literature et al form the corpus of parā vidyā whereas direct perception of spiritual truth is what is parā vidyā. The Vedas are the vast storehouse of knowledge, recorded versions of which is aparā vidyā but its spiritual essence in perceptive immaterial realisation is parā vidyā. It is the repository of all spiritual truths of the world revealed to seers who are called 'Rishis'. The Vedas, originally unorganised and existent as a single mass of mantras/shlokas/verses and, hence, unwieldy to deal with, were later organised into four books called Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda and Atharvaveda by a great sage called Maharshi Krishnadvaipāyan Vedavyas. Each Veda in turn was divided by him into three sections, namely, Brāhmana, Āranyaka and Upanishad, the last one being called the Vedānta as it is the climactic development of the Vedas in terms of philosophical pronouncement as also its concluding part.

There are two sections in the Vedas in another sense as well. They are the 'Karmakānda' or the work-portion and the 'Jnānakānda' or the knowledge-portion. The former deals with rituals, sacrifices, oblations and mystic incantations whereas the latter is entirely philosophical.