Skip to main content

Enlightenment



Enlightenment is losing the world and gaining the universe. That doesn’t mean that you get out of the world as the ascetics in the Himalayas do. On the contrary, enlightenment takes you deep into the world. Enlightenment enables you to see the world more clearly. You see the connectedness between everything. Nobody is your enemy now.

Swami Vivekananda was an enlightened person.

Swami Vivekananda is often projected by India’s right wing as a champion crusader of Hinduism. His Chicago speech is cited as an example for his claims on the superiority of Hinduism. The truth, however, is that Vivekananda had an enlightened approach to reality. Let us look at his stand on Christianity for example.

Vivekananda translated The Imitation of Christ into Bengali. The Imitation is a Christian devotional book which gives practical guidelines on spirituality while it also serves as a meditation book. It is based entirely on the life of Jesus. In an article published in a special edition of The Frontline [8 Feb 2013] issued on the occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, Anantanand Rambachan wrote that The Imitation of Christ was the only text, other than the Bhagavad Gita, that Vivekananda kept with him while he travelled around in India after the death of his guru, Sri Ramakrishna.

Swami Vivekananda did not like the Christian missionaries for two reasons. One, they let down Jesus absolutely. Their life was an absolute antithesis of all that Jesus stood for. Two, their insistence that their religion was the only right path to spiritual truths and God.

What would Swami Vivekananda say seeing the present day ‘missionaries’ of Hindutva?

Swami Vivekananda liked The Imitation of Christ because of its emphasis on renunciation and its unabated thirst for purity. He compared the concept of self-surrender advocated by that book to the similar spirit exuded by the Gita. He was of the opinion that the teachings of Jesus had the spirit of Advaita in essence. When Jesus said, “I and my father are one,” he was expressing the Advaita concept of Aham Brahmasmi. The human and the divine are not different entities.

We may or may not accept Vivekananda’ s views. The point that this post is trying to make is that he did not oppose other religions in order to propagate Hinduism. Instead, he accepted whatever was good in other religions. He was an enlightened soul. Those who uphold his love for Hinduism nowadays need to delve deeper into his teachings and become enlightened.


PS. I'm participating in #BlogchatterA2Z 

Previous Post: The Desert Teaches

Tomorrow: Forest eats forest

 

Comments

  1. Rajeev MoothedathApril 6, 2022 at 7:31 AM

    An enlightening post on enlightenment. As for example, I was not aware of the book " Imitation of Christ " and that it was very dear to Swami Vivekananda.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 6, 2022 at 8:19 AM

      Glad I could contribute this little bit of information. Sometimes small details like this can change whole perspectives.

      Delete
  2. Yamini MacLeanApril 6, 2022 at 1:29 PM

    Hari OM
    Energising! Every word a gem. I am certain Vivekananda-ji would be Exceptionally Exasperated at current Events...

    As a point of interest, one of my favourite pastimes is to compare the Sermon on the Mount with Shruti Shlokas... I have no doubt at all that Yeshu spent is missing 14 years in study of a Hindu guru! YAM xx
    E=Eternalnot

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 6, 2022 at 1:54 PM

      I don't know whether Jesus was a disciple of an Indian guru. I have a book which 'proves' that Jesus died in Kashmir. Whatever that is, Jesus and all other genuine teachers were very open-minded about the paths to the divine. Their followers are just the opposite, more often than not.

      Delete
  3. Afshan ShaikApril 6, 2022 at 4:34 PM

    Am aware of his teachings and quotes but didn't know about the imitation of Christ book. It's enlightening to know that he picked good from every religion. I also never felt he advocated a specific religion....like u said prophets teach well ..followers twist them

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 6, 2022 at 5:10 PM

      That is the real tragedy of prophets: they are misinterpreted and their teachings are manipulated.

      Delete
  4. ArtiApril 6, 2022 at 5:00 PM

    Sometimes, I wonder why more 'well-read' people can't see the 'read to regurgitate' mode employed by all 'fanatics'. Perhaps, we're not reading anything deeply enough any more. Else, such accusations/ideas wouldn't stand a chance in sane society.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 6, 2022 at 5:12 PM

      What I understand is that it's about politics rather than spirituality. People who misuse religion for political power do not want to understand religion.

      Delete
    2. ArtiApril 7, 2022 at 7:41 PM

      True.

      Delete
  5. Pandian RamaiahApril 7, 2022 at 8:39 PM

    He was a rational reformist too. He tried his best. He should have lived longer.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 7, 2022 at 8:50 PM

      True. India lost him too early. Otherwise he would have made a bigger impact.

      Delete
  6. Chinmayee Gayatree SahuApril 10, 2022 at 10:39 PM

    Swami Vivekananda was way ahead of his times! Can we ever have anyone like him, in today's chaotic India?

    I did not know about the book The Imitation of Christ. An enlightening post.

    ReplyDelete
  7. जितेन्द्र माथुरApril 25, 2022 at 1:05 PM

    I am in complete agreement with the thoughts expressed herein. Let me just add from my side that those who uphold his love for Hinduism nowadays will never delve into his teachings because they are relentlessly in search of historical figures (barring from the Nehru family) whose love for Hinduism (real or perceived) is to be upheld to further their vested interests. Skilled in distorting facts and figures (all meanings included), such people are already enlightened (as to what they want for themselves). They do not need any Vivekananda.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 4

The footpath between Park Avenue and Subhash Bose Park The Park Avenue in Ernakulam is flanked by gigantic rain trees with their branches arching over the road like a cathedral of green. They were not so domineering four decades ago when I used to walk beneath their growing canopies. The Park Avenue with its charming, enormous trees has a history too. King Rama Varma of Kochi ordered trees to be planted on either side of the road and make it look like a European avenue. He also developed a park beside it. The park was named after him, though today it is divided into two parts, with one part named after Subhash Chandra Bose and the other after Indira Gandhi. We can never say how long Indira Gandhi’s name will remain there. Even Sardar Patel, whom the right wing apparently admires, was ousted from the world’s biggest cricket stadium which was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by Narendra Modi.   Renaming places and roads and institutions is one of the favourite pastimes of the pres...
11 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 1

Inside St Francis Church, Fort Kochi Moraes Zogoiby (Moor), the narrator-protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel The Moor’s Last Sigh , carries in his genes a richly variegated lineage. His mother, Aurora da Gama, belongs to the da Gama family of Kochi, who claim descent from none less than Vasco da Gama, the historical Portuguese Catholic explorer. Abraham Zogoiby, his father, is a Jew whose family originally belonged to Spain from where they were expelled by the Catholic Inquisition. Kochi welcomed all the Jews who arrived there in 1492 from Spain. Vasco da Gama landed on the Malabar coast of Kerala in 1498. Today’s Fort Kochi carries the history of all those arrivals and subsequent mingling of history and miscegenation of races. Kochi’s history is intertwined with that of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Arbas, the Jews, and the Chinese. No culture is a sacrosanct monolith that can remain untouched by other cultures that keep coming in from all over the world. ...
7 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let...
36 comments
Read more

Yet another Christmas

  “Please, I beg you not to turn us away,” Joseph says to the innkeeper once more. He has been pleading with the innkeeper for some kind of a place where his wife Mary could give birth. Joseph, Mary, innkeeper - they were all kids from the primary school of the parish. Jenny was sitting in the audience watching the Christmas skit presented by the little children. She knew what would come: the innkeeper would shut the door saying rudely that he didn’t have any more rooms left. Especially for a couple that didn’t have anything much to give in return for all the troubles they were going to create with a delivery and what not. Then Joseph and Mary would go to a cowshed and the cows will be far more benign than humans. Cows are great creatures, Jenny learnt recently from her country’s dominant political party. If they give birth to a female calf, they are greater still. That bastard in your belly ! Her mother shouts at her a million times a day referring to the baby she is carry...
38 comments
Read more