UNDERSTANDING SWAMIJI ... 2
Saturday, 3 July 2021
A PRECEPTOR SPEAKS TO A PUPIL ... 2
A PRECEPTOR SPEAKS TO A PUPIL ... 2
The life of the Spirit is to be lived on the material plane -- this is the decree of the Divine. Education plays a major role in effecting this. The history of the happenings of human civilisation will have to be learnt and its significance comprehended. Only then will the aspirant succeed in discovering his place in the long tide of events. A severed asceticism is not worth much but far more is an associated asceticism worth. One must manifest one's spiritual powers to effect real changes in human society. This is the dialectical demand of the times and this has ever been the fundamental feature of human creative affirmation that has led to social change.
The West has liberated society largely and India has freed religion. The West has constricted religion within dogmatic bounds and India has harnessed society by a myriad priestly regulation. Now a world civilisation is necessary where society and religion will both be free. These two complementary aspects of human life developing in isolation on opposite sides of the planet now seek a synthetic wholeness. This is the work before the world, the mission of future humanity. In it every conscious individual must play his part, every bit of affirmative action contributing to its final fulfilment. Thus, isolated asceticism and aspiration for personal liberation is to viewed as selfish engagement in this age when humanity seeks solidarity, the integration of interests for mass conservation.
Action has been the key to human progress and it must ever be so. But it has to be guided action and not randomly sprayed activity resulting in nothing substantial. Our actions must be two-fold in their effect. They must conduce to human welfare and lead to Self-realisation. This is how Swamiji spelled it out in his epic formulation for the Age - 'Atmano mokshaarthang jagaddhitaayacha' (Engagement in services conducing to world welfare for the liberation of the Self). But this formulation has deep connotations which are lost on the individual owing to a dull interpretation and vested interests governing such understanding and propagation. The status quo of human society, the decadent, stagnating world of man which great thinkers, savants, sages and seers attempt to change unto a better order of earthly existence is not followed after they are gone and the old reactions set in, keeping up the foul order of things. The Church and the corporates and all such agencies that stand to benefit from the existent exploitative order become the barriers to socioeconomic changes. Aspiration for personal spiritual liberation in such a scenario where the masses suffer the ignominy of animal existence is not only the most selfish thing to crave for but, being so, is virtually impossible to attain. Hence, Swamiji's programme of work for this Age. This is the 'Yugadharmachakra' (the Wheel of Virtue, of Righteousness) that he has set rolling for us whose accelerated motion we must set our hands to. In it lies any chance, if at all, of becoming free from slavery to the senses. This is the Way now.
Written by Sugata Bose
Thursday, 1 July 2021
THE PLUMMETING CULTURE
THE PLUMMETING CULTURE
Brutality of behaviour is gradually replacing the civility of yesteryear. This is a regrettable yet, perhaps, inevitable consequence of the advent of the Age of the Proletariat. Culture is plummeting fast. The grand regal culture has vanished. What remained of the civility of the gentleman is also disappearing like morning mist. It is coarseness replacing culture now. The signs are ominous and the trend seems widespread, hence, seemingly irreversible.
Written by Sugata Bose
দাও ফিরে 'বন্দে মাতরম্'
দাও ফিরে 'বন্দে মাতরম্'
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'বন্দে মাতরম্'কে জাতিয় মন্ত্ররূপে পুনঃগ্রহণ করা উচিত | 'জয় হিন্দ' এর সমকক্ষ নয় | 'বন্দে মাতরম্' যেভাবে বিপ্লবীদের অনুপ্রাণিত করেছিল তেমন অনুপ্রেরণা তাঁরা আর কোনো মন্ত্রোচ্চারণে পাননি | একযুগ ধরে পরাধীন দেশের আকাশ-বাতাস মুখরিত হয়েছিল বিপ্লবীকন্ঠে এর বজ্রনিনাদে |
মুসলমানদের আপত্তি মেটাতে এর পরিবর্তন করা 'জয় হিন্দ' দিয়ে সম্ভবত ঐতিহাসিক অনিবার্যতাসত্ত্বেও আজ প্রাসঙ্গিকতা অনেকাংশেই হারিয়েছে | আজ তাই দেশমাতৃকার উদ্দেশে উত্থিত স্বতঃস্ফূর্ত এই ধ্বনির স্বমহিমায় পুনঃস্হাপনের সময় এসেছে |
'জয় হিন্দ' ধ্বনিতে না আছে সেই ওজস্বিতা না আছে সেই মর্মস্পর্শি আবেদন যা দেশকে 'মা' বলার মধ্যেই একমাত্র থাকতে পারে | 'বন্দে মাতরম্' সনাতন ভারতের শাশ্বত রূপটি বহন করছে অবলীলায়, অতি স্বাভাবিকভাবে | তার একটি সনাতন অধ্যাত্ম রূপ আছে যা ভৌগলিকতার বেড়াজালে আবদ্ধ নয়, যা বরং দেবীর মাতৃত্বের বিশ্ববোধ জাগিয়ে তোলে ও দেশকে দিব্যসত্তা প্রদান করে তাকে অপার্থিব মাত্রায় বরণীয় করে তোলে | 'জয় হিন্দ' কি পারে তা ? অধ্যাত্মবোধ প্রণোদিত দেশপ্রেম আর ভৌগলিক জয়গাথা পরিচালিত দেশভক্তি কি একই স্তরে সকলকে উন্নীত করতে পারে ? 'বন্দে মাতরম্' রাজনৈতিক তথা সার্বিক মুক্তির আকাঙক্ষায় সনাতন অধ্যাত্ম ভারতের ডাক আর 'জয় হিন্দ' রাজনৈতিক সমঝোতার প্রয়োজনে সামাজিক স্তরের এক মিমাংসাসূচক ব্যবস্হা | দুয়ের প্রভেদ অনেক | এ বিষয়টি অনুধাবনের সময় উপস্থিত |
রচয়িতা : সুগত বসু (Sugata Bose)
UNDERSTANDING SWAMIJI ... 1
UNDERSTANDING SWAMIJI ... 1
Organisation has consolidated Swamiji, true, but organisation has limited him as well. The vastness of his contribution to the prospective future development of the human species from the time of his advent has been scarce understood by his devoted disciples and followers thereon in all its comprehensiveness.
Passive and truncated emphasis on his spiritual self in the main on account of intellectual innocence has led to the seer being sidelined largely by his devotees from the mainstream of socioeconomic and sociopolitical developments and he being relegated as one more in the long line of India's spiritual seers, albeit with a slight difference of course.
But this difference truly is not slight but monumental. Swamiji's political side has been kept largely in the shadow barring publication of pertinent material in books, but the essential content of his volcanic message which shook India from her stupor and galvanised her into revolutionary action for freedom has been largely lost on the public owing to a general avoidance of public mention of such revolutionary stuff from the pulpit to keep Ramakrishna Mission clear of entanglement in politics as was the expresss wish of Swamiji, and also because of an overstatement of certain passages from Swamiji's works which when deliberately or inadvertently wrongly interpreted makes Swamiji appear as a seer concerned about his country's redemption only through the type of activities which the Mission more or less engages in, although, to be fair to the Mission it must be said that the Mission does take a lot of care to extend the boundaries of influence of Swamiji in the wide world along its own line of work following its own limited understanding of the mind and mission of the seminal sage.
Bhupendranath Datta, Swamiji's youngest brother, took a radically different view from the above-stated view of the Mission regarding Swamiji's philosophy and aspirations and reading him (refer 'Swami Vivekananda Patriot-Prophet') does bring into sharp focus this lacuna in the Mission's one-sided emphasis on Swamiji and almost an unconscious or perhaps a conscious watering down of his revolutionary ideals on the basis of his cautioning men, "Let no undue political significance be given to my statements..." Well, such a warning, taken out of its historical context and passed on as a perennial dictum does injustice to the interpretation of the man and his message.
It is time to rediscover Swamiji in all his layered aspirations and attributes, in all his catholic complexity of character and in all his endeavours and actions, sometimes failed attempts on account of the unripeness of the times and the immaturity of his people. Let us study Swamiji deep and understand him true, beyond the limitations set forth by our own selfish cravings and the compromise made by specific individuals and organisations with the powers that be, the status quo that serves them so well. May Swamiji emerge from the forests and the groves as well, much like the masses he had envisaged would do one day, to give direction to a nation gone wrong gradually after his demise !
Written by Sugata Bose
A PRECEPTOR SPEAKS TO A PUPIL ... 1
A PRECEPTOR SPEAKS TO A PUPIL ... 1
Vedanta means the endpoint of the Veda, its climactic development. Its fundamental feature is the affirmation that there is an Absolute Reality which is self-conscious and stable, immutable and integrated, a wholeness without parts, behind the phenomenal universe of constantly changing discrete elements which are combining and breaking down ceaselessly, transforming and translating in the duality of space, time and causality (desh, kala, nimitta). This world of multiplicity is seemingly real but essentially unreal for it is changeable and ever-changing, its life being momentary and death a constant contradiction embedded in its structure. Brahman is the Reality and Maya is the dual phenomenon which incorporates both the puppets in perpetual dance and the Puppeteer who orchestrates the events. The senses are unreal and the vision thereof of this world is therefore equally unreal, delusion producing delusion. There can be no rationale for it and experience of the Real is the only way out of this terrible tangle. The path is called Jnana Yoga, illumination through progressive discrimination and renunciation of the unreal elements. Finally, the stumbling block will be the last bit of renunciation, that of the discriminating mind itself. This must simply dissolve under the inertia of earlier renunciation. One way of expressing it could be though that the last elemental bit rejected by the mind couples up the rejecting mind itself and the twain dissolve in tandem. Perhaps, we have a cue here from Swamiji's epic statement, 'God and the universe rise together and God and the universe fall together.' At any rate this must be the rational solution in linguistic and mathematical terms that the final act of dissolution is that of Radha and Krishna both in an integrated spiritual embrace. It is for sure difficult to understand but it must be so. No external help can be posited here, rationally speaking, to bring it about, for all externalities have by now disappeared, although it is said that Mahamaya Herself will do the final releasing act to free the soul. But this is logically untenable and this is an intractable problem really. However, the universe being a seeming reality, there should not be a problem in accepting its disappearance as such. Hence, Brahman reveals Itself to Itself in a self-conscious frozen Presence and the game of relativity is over.
Written by Sugata Bose
VANDE MATARAM ... 7
VANDE MATARAM ... 7
However much you may aver that India is a secular country, its fundamental feature remains preeminently Hindu, the Sanatan Dharma and its derivative in cultural terms permeating even today its mass consciousness. Despite India housing well over 20 crore Muslims and approximately 3 crore Christians, she remains a Hindu country for all practical purposes. The Hindu civilisation is central to India's history. It is its core character, its essential spirit and its destiny in future development.
Islamic and Christian influences have been aberrations in its spiritual polity on account of invasion and savage domination consequent on internal weakness, and cannot be counted as quintessential Indian culture. Hence, they remain in the Indian polity like loosely joined elements in its compound structure, somewhat peripheral to her preeminent philosophical mood.
But much of Hinduism that has been in vogue for well over two thousand years has been reactionary Hinduism, the very name 'Hinduism', an aberration in geographical-racial-linguistic terms substituting for the 'Sanatan Dharma', being evidence of that. The original Vedic religion has been largely supplanted in mass consciousness by this brand of neo-Hinduism arising out of resistive reaction to invasive forces that threatened to extinguish it. The pristine principles of philosophy enshrined in the Upanishads have been comprehensively covered up by proliferating common accretions and newfangled practices and thoughts thereof.
Islamic invasion eventually led to the Partition of the motherland and what lies in store for the civilisation of the Vedas in the decades and centuries ahead is not only a matter of conjecture but that of concern as well. Will Hinduism survive to reconquer its converted population and bring them back to the fold of the Mother Religion or will it pass into numerical minority eventually and be brutally destroyed by its Semitic adversary unto oblivion? The final fate of Hinduism depends on the will of the Hindus themselves, their determination to survive as a civilisation and conquer the rest of humanity with its liberating ideas. Om Tat Sat ! Vande Mataram !
Written by Sugata Bose
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