VivekaVani's video: Practical Vedanta - Pravrajika Divyanandaprana

“Shankara left this Advaita philosophy in the hills and forests, while I have come to bring it out of those places and scatter it broadcast before the workaday world and society. The lion-roar of Advaita must resound in every hearth and home, in meadows and groves, over hills and plains” proclaims Swami Vivekananda. Swamiji’s new approach of presenting Vedanta for the modern age is unique in the history of humanity; never before had anyone tried so boldly to teach Advaita to everybody irrespective of caste, creed, race, religion, ashrama of life (student, house-holder, recluse, monk), and adhikara-bheda (level of competency to grasp spiritual truths). He exhorts: Conceptions of the Vedanta must come out, must remain not only in the forest, not only in the cave, but they must come out to work at the bar and the bench, in the pulpit, and in the cottage of the poor man, with the fishermen that are catching fish, and with the students that are studying. This bold approach is in sharp contrast with traditional Vedantic monasticism which generally stresses the distinction of Paramarthika (transcendental or absolute) and Vyavaharika (relative) aspects of Reality and the importance of Adhikarawada (the argument that spiritual truths are to be told only to those with subtle and pure minds). Advaita Vedanta was regarded in India as an esoteric philosophy meant for only a few all-renouncing monks, never to be practiced by the majority in day-to-day life. Swamiji’s advent changed that scenario. We shall try here to understand how Swamiji’s new approach affects all of us in every-day life. India’s collective lack of implementation of Vedanta in life for many centuries resulted in social decadence and loss of political freedom. Swami Ranganathananda points out this mistake: We failed to stress this whole gamut of social virtues and graces, and to impart the relevant secular education which is the source of them. Instead we stressed an other-worldly excellence with its passive virtues, with inaction as its watchword; we failed to understand that social welfare comes from an activist ethics in the context of interaction with other members in society. The result was that we failed to achieve the more attainable ideals of character, work-efficiency, public spirit, and general well-being, while equally failing to achieve the high ideal of mukti and the virtues and graces associated with so great an ideal. The high spiritual inaction of the mukti path and ideal became deformed into laziness, inertia, and human unconcern, along with a type of worldliness, or “a piety-fringed worldliness” as I prefer to call it, more harmful than the worldliness of the modern Western type, which has at least character-efficiency and human concern to enrich it. In the Bhagavad-Gita we find Sri Krishna explaining the practical implementation of the spiritual ideal and also manifesting in Himself the teaching. This Holy Scripture has been the backbone of Indian religious life for centuries, but we Indians failed to make it practical, to make it work in our every activity. Sri Krishna had assured us that, ‘svalpamapyasya dharmasya trayate mahato bhayat’ – ‘practicing even a little bit of this dharma saves us from great danger’ ; and had further given the principle of practicing ‘mayi sarvamidam protam sutre maniganiva’ – ‘God is the divine thread that unites all of us like the pearls in a garland’. Unfortunately for India, successive political subjugation added to her failure in practicing this great teaching regarding all spheres of life. This lacuna of Indian culture is being rectified today with Swamiji’s Practical Vedanta, which proclaims the ideal to everyone and encourages everyone to move towards it, from whatever level one finds oneself. It encompasses the whole gamut of life into this process and thus helps one move not ‘from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth.’ No step is looked down upon or condemned; no activity of life is out of reach for practicing spirituality. This is famously put by Sister Nivedita: If the many and the One be indeed the same Reality, then it is not all modes of worship alone, but equally all modes of work, all modes of struggle, all modes of creation, which are paths of realisation. No distinction, henceforth, between sacred and secular. To labour is to pray. To conquer is to renounce. Life is itself religion. To have and to hold is as stern a trust as to quit and to avoid.