According to Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), a great spiritual leader, thinker and reformer of India, spirituality is the very backbone of India. He observes that every nation has a particular ideal running through its whole existence, forming its very background. With some it is politics, while with others it is social culture, intellectual culture, and so on. Vivekananda says, …. Our motherland has religion and religion alone for its backbone, for the bedrock upon which the whole building of its life has been based.’ Since spirituality is the essence of religion, we should mark that Vivekananda has used the term religion in the same sense as spirituality
If we study the history of Indian culture we find even in the Rig Veda, the oldest of scriptures, the Indian mind experiencing the intimation of something divine and immortal within itself. The inward search of man gathers volume and power in the Upanishads. The Upanishads seek to realize the transcendental dimension of man-the dimension of Divinity transcending humanity. In this spiritual direction human awareness goes beyond the body, the sense and the surrounding world: man realizes himself as the immortal Self. Coming in the wake of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita works out a complete philosophy of life, reconciling the sacred and the secular, work and worship. The spirituality that proceeds from the Vedas and the Upanishads, and reinforced by Sri Krishna, Buddha, Shankara and others, is liberated into universality by Swami Vivekananda. He invests religion with the power to illumine and guide human life as a whole. The present paper is an exposition and analysis of Vivekananda’s interpretation of Vedanta, which is also known as the Hindu religion. We shall strive to focus on the points where his interpretation regenerates the spiritual, heritage, making it fit for the modern world.
According to Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), a great spiritual leader, thinker and reformer of India, spirituality is the very backbone of India. He observes that every nation has a particular ideal running through its whole existence, forming its very background. With some it is politics, while with others it is social culture, intellectual culture, and so on. Vivekananda says, …. Our motherland has religion and religion alone for its backbone, for the bedrock upon which the whole building of its life has been based.’ Since spirituality is the essence of religion, we should mark that Vivekananda has used the term religion in the same sense as spirituality
ReplyDeleteIf we study the history of Indian culture we find even in the Rig Veda, the oldest of scriptures, the Indian mind experiencing the intimation of something divine and immortal within itself. The inward search of man gathers volume and power in the Upanishads. The Upanishads seek to realize the transcendental dimension of man-the dimension of Divinity transcending humanity. In this spiritual direction human awareness goes beyond the body, the sense and the surrounding world: man realizes himself as the immortal Self. Coming in the wake of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita works out a complete philosophy of life, reconciling the sacred and the secular, work and worship. The spirituality that proceeds from the Vedas and the Upanishads, and reinforced by Sri Krishna, Buddha, Shankara and others, is liberated into universality by Swami Vivekananda. He invests religion with the power to illumine and guide human life as a whole. The present paper is an exposition and analysis of Vivekananda’s interpretation of Vedanta, which is also known as the Hindu religion. We shall strive to focus on the points where his interpretation regenerates the spiritual, heritage, making it fit for the modern world.