Vivekananda

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Vivekananda
Vivekananda Sig.jpg

Vivekananda ( Bengali বিবেকানন্দ Bibekānanda , born January 12, 1863 in Kolkata , † July 4, 1902 in Haora ; real name: Narendranath Datta ) was a Hindu monk , swami and scholar. Vivekananda spoke in 1893 in Chicago as the first Hindu before the World Parliament of Religions (World Parliament of Religions), thereby gained great fame.

Life

Vivekananda Address, World Parliament of Religions 1893

Vivekananda was the son of a lawyer from Calcutta (today: Kolkata), one of the most important intellectual centers of colonial India. During his college years at the Presidency College in Calcutta from 1880 onwards, he dealt with Western philosophers and intellectuals such as Hegel , Herbert Spencer and August Comte . At first he belonged to a Hindu reform movement, the Sadharana-Samaj , in which, however, he missed personal religious experience. At the age of 18, Narendranath Datta first visited the mystic Ramakrishna in the Kali temple Dakshineshwar . He is said to have received him with tears in his eyes. However, Narendranath, who was educated in English schools and tended to atheism, initially remained skeptical. Ramakrishna gave him very personal instruction and little by little he overcame his inner resistance and became his favorite student. In 1884 Vivekananda became a member of the Freemasonry Association , his lodge , Anchor and Hope No. 1 , is based in Calcutta . After the death of his master in 1886, Vivekananda went on a religious pilgrimage through India . He visited Benares (now Varanasi), Ayodhya , Mysore and Madras (now Chennai) , among others . In 1893 he stayed in the USA and became known to a wide audience in the West as an uninvited guest at the World Parliament of Religions at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago after a much acclaimed appearance as a radiant representative of Indian religiosity.

In his address there on September 11th, Vivekananda presented Hinduism as a world religion open to all people, with a philosophical core that he identified with the Advaita Vedanta. He also addressed other, contemporary questions, such as the question of the relationship between Hinduism and other religions, or the question of the relationship between Hinduism and the then newly established natural sciences.

It was important for Vivekananda to emphasize the extraordinary importance of spirituality. The challenge, however, was to promote India's material prosperity while maintaining its spiritual life. When he came to the United States in December 1893, he was impressed by much of what he saw. In a letter, he wrote that while Indians were way ahead of Americans in spirituality, American society was far superior to Indians in other things. He admired western science, technology, the methods for increasing the standard of living, the righteousness of the people, as well as the greater discipline, the organizational talent and the social commitment. On the one hand, he wanted to integrate all of this into Hinduism. On the other hand, he wanted to win the West over to Hinduism. In this way he tried to overcome the contradictions of the "spiritual West" and the "material West" that had arisen through negotiation processes and to emphasize the mutual complementarity of spirituality and materiality.

Vivekananda defined Hinduism, with all its different currents, as a religion for the first time in the discussion of the western religious debate of the 19th century at the World Parliament of Religions. His 13th and final speech at the Congress concluded with the following words:

“If the Parliament of Religions has shown the world anything, it is this: It has shown the world that holiness, purity and charity are not the exclusive property of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the greatest character . In the face of these facts, I wholeheartedly pity those who dream of the sole survival of their own religion and the destruction of others; and I show him that in spite of resistance, the banner of every religion will soon read: 'Help and not fight', 'Mutual penetration and not destruction', 'Harmony and peace and not contradiction'. "

His speeches were so well received in America that he founded the Vedanta Society in New York. Contrary to the wishes of some of his Western followers, from then on he did not concentrate exclusively on his work in the West, but saw his activities in the East and West as complementary. His travels were financed by the Maharaja of Mysore, among others .

During Vivekananda's activities in the United States, his understanding of his mission gradually changed. In his view the Indian religion was important to America, and so he developed the idea of ​​world mission. She was to teach the Vedanta, which Vivekananda interpreted universally. According to this reinterpretation, spirituality was compatible with materialism, progress with belief, science with mysticism, and work with reflection. In this way Vivekananda tried to overcome the contradictions of the “spiritual East” and the “material West” that had arisen through negotiation processes and to emphasize the complementarity of spirituality and materialism. Because the “spiritual east” can only be differentiated from a “material west” if it exists. This means that the definition of a “spiritual East” and a “material West” as well as their differences must be negotiated or determined, since the opposites are not given by nature.

After returning to India, Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission in 1897 . He acquired the area in Belur ( Haora ), now known as Belur Math , which is the seat of the Ramakrishna Mission and Ramakrishna Math. In close connection with the order, the organization strives to spread the teachings of the master and to do cultural and especially social work through the establishment and care of many schools, hospitals, orphanages, clubs and libraries.

Vivekananda made another trip through northern India and devoted himself in the solitude of the mountains of the Himalayas of meditation . He died of diabetes in Belur Math.

Teaching

Vivekananda statue in Mumbai (Bombay)

Vivekananda's teaching is shaped by experience and inwardness and, in his opinion, does not contradict natural science. On the contrary, he described his philosophy as the result to which all other sciences will arrive, for spirituality and science are compatible. Vivekananda's ideas were based on the philosophy of Vedanta . Vivekananda claimed to be in the tradition of the classical Advaita Vedanta, as represented by Shankara in the 8th century on the basis of the Upanishads . In 1893 at the World Parliament of Religions, he established this as the central philosophy of Hinduism. In fact, Vivekananda made a fundamental redefinition: Shankara's Advaita Vedanta is an exclusive ascetic way of salvation that was practiced exclusively by Brahmins . The aim of Advaita Vedanta is the realization (knowledge, jñāna ) of the unity of Atman and Brahman , of one's own soul and Brahman. Shankara emphasized that only those who come to this realization will find salvation, while all others remain stuck in the knowledge of the world ( māyā ). The path to knowledge leads, in turning away from the world, via the Vedas, to the insight that the world is one, namely Brahman. Vivekananda, on the other hand, understood Advaita Vedanta as a universal religion whose goal is experience. According to his understanding, world knowledge has a gradual share in redemption, which justifies its claim to truth with the verifiability of experience and conformity with eternal natural laws and which the Vedas understand as testimony to personal experience. Vivekananda saw the Vedanta as the crown of all religions because it was general and in accordance with the theory of evolution. The soul ascends in three stages from bondage to heavenly freedom: in the first it only knows that it is distant from God (dualistic religion, cf. Samkhya ); in the second she recognizes the unity of God and soul, which are nevertheless different (Ramanujas Vishishtadvaita ). In the highest phase the soul recognizes the complete identity with God (Shankaras Advaita). In addition, the Advaita Vedanta also served as the foundation of a nationalist identity for all Hindus in the context of colonization.

Vivekananda accepts all classic healing paths of Hinduism: Jnana Yoga (path of knowledge), Bhakti Yoga (path of devotion to God), Karma Yoga (path of good deeds) and Raja Yoga (royal yoga). He does not understand the deeds ( karma ) in a ritual, but in a philanthropic-social way; they are done because God or the Atman is present in every being. The Bhakti (devotion), however, shows itself in sacrifice and love. Jnana Yoga, on the other hand, is the intellectual-spiritual path to knowledge. Everyone chooses the path that best suits their mentality and level of education. He also formulates a monistic image of God.

He considers it wrong to neglect or despise the world. But although it has a divine core, it is transitory. Hinduism in the sense of a Vedanta emphasizing the bhakti deserves to be defended against the materialistic civilization of the West, provided that it fulfills its social obligation. The themes of the Bhagavad Gita would have fully retained their topicality in the present. The Ramakrishna movement he founded wants to be the first Indian mission society to spread the Vedanta teachings abroad. This is only possible because he called for the opening of the Vedantic path of salvation without exception to the general public and thus rejected the exclusively ascetic-brahmanic access to the path of salvation. Vivekananda rejected the absolute scriptural authority of the Vedas and instead emphasized the religious experience. He expanded the two levels of knowledge to an inclusiveist theology of religions, in which every access to God was an image of the truth and is to be understood as part of the right path in Hinduism: “Man does not go from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from a lower to a higher truth. ”According to this doctrine he develops his social ethics, which aims that there can only be an infinite. Because the soul is part of it, the principle applies that one must not kill or injure one's neighbor. Conversely, you would otherwise injure yourself.

Vivekananda provides two founding figures that support his conception of Hinduism as a unified, serious religion. The general accusation, which has been discussed to the present day, that the term “Hinduism” merely summarizes the numerous religious currents in India, is turned into a strength of Hinduism. In this context, this is understood as a unifying, all-integrating force, not as an empty umbrella term. In order to be able to give this Hinduism even more authority, Vivekananda's second founding figure now comes into play. By viewing the core of Hinduism and that of science as in harmony, he makes it difficult to attempt to dismiss his religion as superstition. The starting point for this are the Vedas, in which he sees spiritual laws embodied. According to Vivekananda, the claim to truth contained in these spiritual laws is in turn reflected in the laws of science. Both, Hinduism and science in general, also have in common the search for unity. And in the fact that this unity should be experienced in the Hinduism described here, there is therefore another strength of this religion. It “becomes” the religion of experience and does not serve blind faith. Viewed from this angle, however, the scientific claim that Vivekananda attaches to his religion is in a sense directed against revealed religions, since these can more easily be dismissed as irrational and incompatible with science or spiritual laws.

Vivekananda's lectures, in which he often compares the Indian with the Western image of society, had a great impact on Western listeners. For him, India is the cradle of spirituality and religious devotion as well as the roots of people in the true (i.e. spiritual) values ​​of life, whereas the West, although technologically advanced, ultimately succumbed to soulless materialism and competitive thinking. In this way Vivekananda reverses Western othering. This put the active West against the passive India. In the context of rapid socio-cultural and economic changes, the reference to a self-contained, spiritually borne India represented a promising contrast, because it offered the possibility of inner distancing from one's own social reality. Fundamental to Vivekananda's view of society from the West was his reading of Herbert Spencer and his concept of “social evolution”, a forerunner of modern social Darwinism .

Vivekananda's central themes are positive worldview and charity . Rabindranath Tagore is said to have said to his French colleague Romain Rolland : “If you want to understand India, you have to study Vivekananda.” Such statements make it clear how strong Vivekananda's interpretation of Hinduism is on the image of India in the West, but also that of the westernized elites in India has shaped itself. The German Indologist Paul Deussen was one of his friends . Vivekananda visited Deussen in August 1896 in Kiel.

With his version of Hinduism as a religion, which is characterized by experience and inwardness and does not contradict natural science due to the different subject areas, Vivekananda took part in the global religious discourse of the 19th century. For example, liberal Protestantism, z. E.g. through Ernst Troeltsch , the own religion of Christianity dealing with the new discipline of religious history and with the natural sciences analogously through inwardness and experience. These new concepts of different religions thus took place within a global negotiation process.

Women: Education, Nationalism and Sister Nivedita

For Vivekananda not only education in general, but also the education of women in particular was the focus of his social commitment. For him, as for many other reformers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the necessity of women's education was based on the fact that he assigned women a major role in the preservation of culture and thus in the emerging nationalism. He saw women's education as the key to the awakening of India. In addition, Vivekananda often dealt with the issue of the rights of Hindu women.

Here he postulated a difference between Western women and the women of India. The first are "wives", the latter first and foremost "mothers". This coincides with many anti-colonial efforts of the early 20th century, within which the Victorian image of women, which defined women as mothers, as preservers and producers of culture and race, was adopted. Vivekananda's conviction that women can only be educated by foreign women, such as Magaret, who are distinguished by sincerity, purity and love, ambition:

Here Vivekananda was in agreement with his student Margaret Noble ( Sister Nivedita ). Margaret Noble came to India, Bengal, in 1895, and worked there together with Vivekananda for the rights of Hindu women, especially their education. As part of this, in 1898 she founded a girls 'school, the Ramkrishna Sarada Mission Sister Nivedita Girls' School for Indian girls, in a room in a poor district in Calcutta , which still exists today. She was involved in youth work and had a great influence on the younger generation. Soon she understood her teaching as a charity work not only for the Indian population, but as part of the Vivekanandas global project to show all humanity the way through Indian spirituality .

Fonts

Others

At the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent , Cape Komorin , the Vivekananda rock monument is located on a small rock island about 400 meters from the mainland , a memorial to Vivekananda who was erected in 1970 and who spent three days meditating there in 1892. Right next to this is a second island with the Tiruvalluvar statue . There is a ferry connection to the islands from Kanyakumari .

literature

Web links

Commons : Vivekananda  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Swami Vivekananda  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Famous Freemasons Swami Vivekananda , Homepage: Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon (accessed April 15, 2012)
  2. ↑ Swami, Vivekananda: Hinduism. Address given at the International Religious Congress, Chicago, 1893 . Rascher, Zurich 1935.
  3. ↑ Ursula King : Indian Spirituality, Western Materialism. An Image and its Function in the Reinterpretation of Modern Hinduism. In: Social Action. New Delhi 1978. 28, pp. 62-86, here: pp. 69-70.
  4. ^ Radice, William (Ed.): Swami Vivekananda and the Modernisatio nof Hinduism . Oxford University Press, Delhi 1998, pp. 72 .
  5. ↑ Translation by Jyotishman Dam from Nikhilananda, Swami: Vivekananda, A Biography. Calcutta 1987.
  6. ↑ Ursula King: Indian Spirituality, Western Materialism. An Image and is Function in the Reinterpretation of Modern Hinduism. In: Social Action. New Delhi 1978. 28, pp. 62-86.
  7. ↑ Ursula King: Indian Spirituality, Western Materialism. An Image and its Function in the Reinterpretation of Modern Hinduism. In: Social Action. New Delhi 1978. 28, pp. 62-86, here: pp. 70-71.
  8. ↑ Michael Bergunder: “Religion” and “Science” within a Global Religious History . In: Aries . No. 16 , 2016, p. 86-141 .
  9. ↑ Kumari Jayawardena: Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World . Zed Books, London.
  10. ↑ Kumari Jayawardena: The White Woman's Other Burden . Routledge, New York 1995.
  11. ^ Website of the Ramkrishna Sarada Mission Sister Nivedita Girls' School
  12. ↑ Ursula King : Indian Spirituality, Western Materialsim: An Image and is Function in the Reinterpretation of Modern Hinduism. In: Social Action. 28, New Delhi 1978, pp. 62-86. here: p. 72ff.
personal data
SURNAME Vivekananda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Datta, Narendranath
BRIEF DESCRIPTION hindu monk and scholar
DATE OF BIRTH January 12, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH Kolkata
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1902
Place of death Haora