SWAMI VIVEKANANDA’S SPEECH AT WORLD PARLIAMENT OF RELIGION, CHICAGO, 1893
Sisters and Brothers of America, I
am obliged with such a great and warm welcome. I thank you all in the name of
the most ancient order of monks ,religions; and also on behalf of million of
Hindus. I am thankful to lord and my master to spread values of a religion that
has taught the world tolerance and universal acceptance both. We believe that
each and every religion is true. I feeL greatly honoured to be associated with
the nation that has been providing shelter to million of refugees.When the Holy
temple of Israelites was demolished by roman tyranny we did provided shelter to
the people who came as refugee to southern india. Referring to a hymn from my
childhood: "As the different streams having their sources in different
places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which
men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or
straight, all lead to Thee." A wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita:
"Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are
struggling through paths which in the end lead to me."Referring to Sectarianism,that has prevailed for a long
period has filled the earth with violence and often with human blood, Civilizations
have been destroyed and the nation is set to despair. If it would not have
prevailed the mankind would have been lot better. Now its high time and I hope
with the power of sword or pen it has fanaticism needs to come to a dead end.
Major
Reason for our Disagreement;15 Sep 1893
You would have heard the speakers
saying, "Let us cease from abusing each other,"and also he felt sorry.
Here’s a story which would throw light
on the cause of this disagreement. A frog lived in a well and had lived at that
place for a long time. Born and bought up there. There is no evident whether the frog had eyes or not, lets assume
that it had eyes, and with his vision
he used to clear the contamination of water by getting rid of worms and bacteria
that lived in it with an energy that would do credit to our modern
bacteriologists. With this habit and passing time the frog became sleek and
fat. Now a day came wherein another frog from sea came and fell in to the well.
And then a round of questions started between both of them "Hey!Where are
you from?" "Another one replied:I am from the sea." "The
sea! How big is that? Is it as big as my well?" and he took a leap from
one side of the well to the other. "Frog from the sea very calmly replied,
"how can you compare the vast sea with your little well?" Then the
frog again after taking another leap asked,
"Is your sea so big?" "Out of anger the frog from sea relied:What
nonsense you speak, to compare the sea with your well" Frog of the well
taking a lead, "nothing can be bigger than my well; there can be nothing
bigger than this; you are a liar, so turn him out." That has been the
biggest challenge for me all the while. I am a Hindu. I am sitting in my own
little well and thinking that the whole world is my little well. The Christian
sits in his little well and thinks the whole world is his well. The Mohammedan
sits in his little well and thinks that is the whole world. I feel really great
and would like to thank all the people of America who are trying to break and
overcome this barrier and you shall succeed in coming future.
Paper on Hinduism Read at the
Parliament on 19th September, 1893 throws
light on three prehistoric religion,Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. They
have all received tremendous shocks and all of them prove by their survival
their internal strength. The Hindus have got their religion through revelation, the Vedas
which are”without beginning and without end”. Now you may think that how can a
book be written without a beginning and an end.However we do not consider
Vedas as books. They are a source of spiritual laws identified by different
individuals in different times. Just like
the law of gravity that even existed before we discovered it, and would have
continued to exist if we would not have discovered it, so is it with the laws/rules
that prevail in the spiritual world. The moral, ethical, and spiritual
relations existed even before its discovery. Rishis Who are known to discover these
laws, are honoured as perfected beings. Both Men and Women included.if there
was a time when nothing existed, where was all this manifested energy? Some say
it was in a potential form in God. In that case God is sometimes potential and
sometimes kinetic, which would make Him mutable. Everything mutable is a compound,
and everything compound must undergo that change which is called destruction.
So God would die, which is absurd. Therefore no as such time existed when there was no creation. God is the ever
active providence, who evolves things and puts them to an end with time. This
is what a Brahmin would preach every day. Here I stand and if I shut my eyes,
and try to conceive my existence, what is the idea before me? The idea of a
body,nothing but a combination of material substances? The Vedas say,
"No". I am a spirit residing
in a body. The body will die, but I shall not die.Currently I am in this
body; it will fall, but I shall go on living, I had also a past. The soul was
never created, As creation would mean a combination which means dissolution
after a certain time. Some are born happy with perfect health, and beautiful
body. Others are born miserable, some without hands or feet or other imparities.
if they are all created by God, The God is partial; why does a just and
merciful God create one happy and another unhappy? There must have been causes,
then, before his birth, to make a man miserable or happy and those were his
past actions.The Fact cannot be denied that
bodies acquire certain heredity tendencies, but those refer only to the
physical configuration, through which a peculiar mind alone can act in a
peculiar way. There are other tendencies to a soul caused by its past actions. And a
soul with a certain tendency would by the laws of affinity take birth in a body
which is capable for the display of that tendency. So repetitions play a vital
role to explain the natural habits of a
new-born soul. And since they were not obtained presently, they must have rolled
down from past lives. There is another suggestion. If you ask me about my
previous life;I do not remember anything of my past life? This can be easily
explained I am now speaking English. It is not my mother tongue, in fact no
words of my mother tongue are now present in my consciousness; mut let me try
to bring them up, and they rush in. That shows that consciousness is only the
surface of the mental ocean, and within its depths are stored up all our
experiences. Try and struggle, they would come up and you would by conscious
even of your past life. This is direct and demonstrative evidence. We Hindu’s
have a strong belief that every soul is a circle with no circumference.
but centre is located in the body, and that death means the change of this
centre from one body to another. Soul is Free,unbounded. holy, pure, and
perfect. The soul will go on evolving up or reverting back from birth to birth
and death to death. Thus it is that the Vedas proclaim not a dreadful
combination of unforgiving laws, not an endless prison of cause and effect, but
that at the head of all these laws, in and through every particle of matter and
force, stands One "by whose command the wind blows, the fire burns, the
clouds rain, and death stalks upon the earth." And what is His nature? He
is everywhere, the pure and formless One, the Almighty and the All-merciful. "Thou
art our father, Thou art our mother, Thou art our beloved friend, Thou art the
source of all strength; give us strength. Thou art He that beareth the burdens
of the universe; help me bear the little burden of this life." Thus sang
the Rishis of the Vedas. And how to worship Him? Through love. "He is to
be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and the next
life."
This is the doctrine of love declared in the
Vedas, and let us see how it is fully developed and taught by Krishna, whom the
Hindus believe to have been God incarnate on earth: "Lord, I do not want
wealth, nor children, nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to
birth, but grant me this, that I may love Thee without the hope of reward--love
unselfishly for love's sake." Similarly, I love and trust the Lord. He is
the source of all. He is the only object to be loved and it is my nature to love
Him, and therefore I love. I do not pray for anything; I do not ask for
anything. Let Him place me wherever He wants. I must love Him for love's sake.
I cannot trade love." The Vedas teach that the soul is divine and pure, it’s
the bondage of matter that holds it; automatically the perfection will be
reached when this bond will break, and the word they use for it is therefore,
Mukti-- freedom from the bonds of imperfection, death and misery. And this
bondage can only fall off through the mercy of God, and this mercy comes on the
pure. So purity is the condition of His mercy. How does mercy act? He reveals
Himself to the pure heart; the pure and the stainless see God, yes, even in
this life it is possible. This is the very centre, the very vital conception of
Hinduism.A proof Hindu sage gave about the soul and God, is: "I have seen
the soul; I have seen God." And that is the only condition of perfection.
In every temple, if one stands by
and listens, one will find the worshippers applying all the attributes of God,
including omnipresence, to the images. "The rose called by any other name
would smell as sweet.". I remember, as a boy, hearing a Christian
missionary preach to a crowd in India. he was telling them was that if he gave
a blow to their idol with his stick, what could it do? One of his hearers
sharply answered, "If I abuse your God, what can He do?" "You
would be punished," said the preacher, "when you die." "So
my idol will punish you when you die," retorted the Hindu. The tree is
known by its fruits. Superstition is a great enemy of man, but bigotry is
worse. Why does a Christian go to church? Why is the cross holy? Why is the
face turned toward the sky in prayer? Why are there so many images in the
Catholic Church? Why are there so many images in the minds of Protestants when
they pray? My brethren, we can no more think about anything without a mental
image than we can live without breathing. By the law of association, the
material image calls up the mental idea and vice versa. This is why the Hindu
uses an external symbol when he worships. He will tell you, it helps to keep
his mind fixed on the Being to whom he prays. He knows as well as you do that
the image is not God, is not omnipresent. The Hindus have associated the idea
of holiness, purity, truth, omnipresence, and such other ideas with different
images and forms. But with this difference that while some people devote their
whole lives to their idol of a church and never rise higher, because with them
religion means an intellectual assent to certain doctrines and doing good to
their fellows, the whole religion of the Hindu is centred in realisation. Man is
to become divine by realising the divine. Idols or temples or churches or books
are only the supports, the helps, of his spiritual childhood." Mark, the
same earnest man who is kneeling before the idol tells you,"Him the sun
cannot express, nor the moon, nor the stars, the lightning cannot express Him,
nor what we speak of as fire; through Him they shine." But he does not
abuse any one's idol or call its worship sin. He recognises in it a necessary
stage of life."The child is father of the man." Would it be right for
an old man to say that childhood is a sin or youth a sin? If a man can realise
his divine nature with the help of an image, would it be right to call that a
sin? Nor even when he has passed that stage, should he call it an error. Unity
in variety is the plan of nature, and the Hindu has recognised it. To the
Hindu, then, the whole world of religions is only a travelling, a coming up, of
different men and women, through various conditions and circumstances, to the
same goal. Every religion is only evolving a God out of the material man, and
the same God is the inspirer of all of them. Why, then, are there so many
contradictions? They are only apparent, says the Hindu. The contradictions come
from the same truth adapting itself to the varying circumstances of different
natures. It is the same light coming through glasses of different colours. And
these little variations are necessary for purposes of adaptation. But in the
heart of everything the same truth reigns. The Lord has declared to the Hindu
in His incarnation as Krishna,"I am in every religion as the thread
through a string of pearls. Wherever thou seest extraordinary holiness and
extraordinary power raising and purifying humanity, know thou that I am there
." And what has been the result? I challenge the world to find, throughout
the whole system of Sanskrit philosophy, any such expression as that the Hindu
alone will be saved and not others. Says Vyasa, "We find perfect men even
beyond the pale of our caste and creed.
Whatever may be the position of
philosophy, whatever may be the position of metaphysics, so long as there is
such a thing as death in the world, so long as there is such a thing as
weakness in the human heart, so long as there is a cry going out of the heart
of man in his very weakness, there shall be a faith in God. Hinduism cannot live
without Buddhism, nor Buddhism without Hinduism. Then realise what the
separation has shown to us, that the Buddhists cannot stand without the brain
and philosophy of the Brahmins, nor the Brahmin without the heart of the
Buddhist. This separation between the Buddhists and the Brahmins is the cause
of the downfall of India. That is why India is populated by three hundred
millions of beggars, and that is why India has been the slave of conquerors for
the last thousand years.
Address
at the Final Session 27th September, 1893 The World's Parliament:
Religions has become an accomplished fact, and
the merciful Father has helped those who laboured to bring it into existence.
My thanks to those souls with large hearts and love of truth first dreamed this
wonderful dream and then realised it and the shower of liberal sentiments that
has overflowed this platform. My thanks to this enlightened audience for their
uniform kindness to me and for their appreciation of every thought that tends
to smooth the friction of religions. A few jarring notes were heard from time
to time in this harmony. My special thanks to them, for they have, by their
striking contrast, made general harmony the sweeter. Much has been said of the
common ground of religious unity. I am not going just now to venture my own
theory. The seed is put in the ground, and earth and air and water are placed
around it. Does the seed become the earth, or the air, or the water? No. It
becomes a plant, it develops after the law of its own growth, assimilates the
air, the earth, and the water, converts them into plant substance, and grows
into a plant. Similar is the case with religion.
"Help and not Fight," "Assimilation and not Destruction,"
"Harmony and Peace and not Dissension."
