Vivekananda ReviewVOLUME 1 NUMBER 6 • DECEMBER 2013

Swami Kripamayananda, The Vivekananda Review ...................................................................................................2

Vikraman Balaji, Was Maitreyi answered fully by Yajñavalkya?...............................................................................3

M. Ram Murty, Buddha, Shankara, and Vivekananda...................................................................................................8

Abhishek Banerjee, Vedanta Society Trustee Awarded Honorary Degree........................................................13

Shukla Datta, Vivekananda Public Speaking Competition.......................................................................................14

CONTENTS

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2 Vivekananda Review

With this issue, the Vivekananda Review completes its first year. Started in 2013 as part of the Vedanta Society of Toronto’s celebration of the 150th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, the Review has considered aspects of

Swami Vivekananda’s thought in several fields including education, history, re-ligion and science. In the coming years, we hope to consider many more topics that were of interest to this phenomenal being. Swami Vivekananda’s thought is so grand and universal and so full of unexplored potential that we invite all scholars to study his thought. The aim of the Review is to stimulate that study by providing a forum for the discussion of his ideas.

In this final issue of Volume 1, we have Prof. V. Balaji’s continued analysis of Upanishadic verses and Prof. Ram Murty’s insightful essay on Buddha, Shankara and Vivekananda, where he begins a comparative study of these three extraordinary thinkers. We also report on news from the Institute for Vivekananda Studies, including the results of the second Vivekananda Public Speaking Competition for high school students and an honorary doctorate conferred on one of our Trustees. Swami Kripamayananda • Vedanta Society of Toronto, 120 Emmett Avenue, Toronto, ON, Canada M6M 2E6 • kripamayananda@gmail.com

The Vivekananda ReviewSWAMI KRIPAMAYANANDA

Swami Kripamayananda is a monk of the Ramakrishna Order and President of the Vedanta Society of Toronto.

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V. Kumar Murty – Chief EditorAndrea MacLeod – Layout Editor

Pamela Brittain – Production EditorThomas Loree – Copy Editor

Published by the Vedanta Society of Toronto

VIVEKANANDA REVIEWA bimonthly publication dedicatedto the study of Vivekananda’s ideas

© Vedanta Society of Toronto, 2013

The views expressed in the articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Vedanta Society of Toronto.

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In this series of articles, we will be guided by the following general principle: the deeper one comprehends the Veda, the more one unravels the mysteries in the Upanishads. Our pri-mary sources of inspiration are the writings of Sri Aurobindo

(Secret of the Veda, 1972), (The Upanishads, 1972) and Ananda Coomaraswamy (Perception of the Vedas, 2000). In this article we will make an attempt to comprehend the conversation between the seer Yājñavalkya and his wife Maitreyī from the Brihadāraṇyaka Upanishad II.4.12 (and again a little differently in IV.5.13).

Was Maitreyī answered fully by Yājñavalkya?

The episode of the seer Yājñavalkya and his wife Maitreyī in the Brihadāraṇyaka Upanishad is one of the glorious chap-ters of our spiritual heritage. It contains extraordinary spiritual truths which form the foundation of much of the later spiritual developments in India. Yājñavalkya had two wives, Kātyāyani and Maitreyī, of whom Maitreyī was the younger one. When Yājñavalkya was about to “take up the other path” (anyad-vṛttaṁ upākaraṇa) “to become a wanderer” (parivrājaka), he offers all his worldly riches to both his wives to be divided equally among themselves. It is mentioned that Kātyāyani has only her strī-prajña1 with which she accepts this dictum of her husband while Maitreyī, being the seeker (brahma-vādinī), asks him whether these riches would give her the experience of That Highest Truth. On hearing this, Yājñavalkya is delighted and begins to instruct Maitreyī .

We take up the profound conversation (which occurs in Brahmaṇa IV.5.13 of the Brihadāraṇyaka Upanishad) between the realized Teacher and the aspiring disciple. The disciple Maitreyī is fully aware of the depth and subtleties involved in the discus-sion and her questions come from an enquiry clearly arising from the seeking Ātman of the disciple. After many profound words on experiences of Brahman, Yājñavalkya says:

Sa yathā saindhava-ghanaḥ anantaro bāhyaḥ, kṛtsno rasaghana eva, evaṁ vā are’yam ātmā, anantaro bāhyaḥ, kṛtsnaḥ prajñāna-ghana eva, IV.5.13

As an ocean-dense is with neither a within nor a without, through and through a mass of delight is this Ātman my dear one, a dense (compact) block of consciousness which has neither a within nor a without, through and through only a compact mass of apprehend-ing consciousness.

In II.4.12, Yājñavalkya further describes this experience as: Evam vā ara idaṁ mahad bhūtaṁ

anantaṁ apāraṁ vijñāna-ghana eva; II.4.12

Truly this immense Being, endless, with nothing beyond, is nothing but a Gnostic-denseness.

The terms employed are vijñāna ghana, (Gnostic-mass), mahat (with the quality of “mahas”, immense,), anantaṁ (endless, not in its linear indefiniteness but like a circle without beginning or end), apāraṁ, (nothing beyond or above). Then he goes on to say,

etebhyo bhūtebhyaḥ samutthāya, tāny evā anuvinaśyati na pretya saṁjñāsti, IV.5.13

if this Ātman were to ascend out of the manifested being, then the sense-mind and associated faculties, following it would vanish (vinaśyati).

He says na pretya saṁjñāsti. In other words,

having gone forth from this, there is no apprehending conscious-ness or cognoscence (saṁjñāna); the one having entered the Absolute is no longer conscious of things external to itself, but conscious only as itself. When everything has become the Ātman, whereby and whom would one know of?

Maitreyī, on hearing the phrase na pretya saṁjñā asti, is perplexed and shaken, and seems to say “Lord, this makes no sense, what on earth do you mean by this annihilation after so Grand an experi-ence”. Yājñavalkya responds by saying,

na vā are’ham moham bravīmi,avināśī vā are’yam Ātman, an-ucchitti-dharmā, IV.5.14

I did not say anything perplexing. This Ātman is truly imperish-able, the matrix which cannot be rent asunder.

Yatra hi dvaitam iva bhavati, tad itara itaram paśyati...jighrati, rasayati, abhivadati, śṛṇoti, vijānāti, yatra tu asya sarvaṁ ātmaivābhūt, tat kena kim paśyet, ..jighret, rasayet, abhivadet, śṛṇuyāt..vijāniyāt,yenedaṁ sarvaṁ vijānāti, tam kena vijānīyāt, Sa esa neti nety Ātman; …vijñāram aré kena vijānīyāt, IV.5.15

For where there is duality, there one sees another, touches, thinks, knows of other. But when one sees all as the Ātman, by what shall one see it, smell it, taste it, by what and whom should one know

VIKRAMAN BALAJI

Was Maitreyi Answered Fully by Yajñavalkya?––

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it. By what should one know him by whom all this is known? The Ātman is not this, not this... Indeed my dear, by what should one comprehend the Knower?2

The source for comprehending anything in the Vedic texts is the Vedic text itself, a constant refrain in all our expositions. In the Upanishad, the word pretya is used widely and its verbal meaning would be after having gone forth. This has come to connote death or departure. For the one who is not initiated into the path, any go-ing forth from an established state would naturally mean death of sorts. Not surprisingly, the extreme experience of losing all sense-faculties in an experience of dense-oneness naturally appears as an experience of death or departure. But for the initiate, his inner light of consciousness is not blown-out even in the experience of death. Therefore, in the sense of the uninitiated, the word pretya would mean after death and for the learned initiate or Yogin, it means having left the human shore. This crossing-over of consciousness is termed preti in the Rig Veda3. The other striking word that appears is vinaśyati, a word which occurs in the Isha Upanishad, where we see vināśena mṛtyuṁ tīrthvā, i.e., by vināśa one traverses across death. Nachiketas’ third seeking in the Katha Upanishad is also a prétya saṁjñā. He asks whether consciousness has its reality even after entering and crossing over the death-world. We encounter the word pretya yet again, now in the Taittiriya Upanishad:

Sa yaś cāyaṁ puruṣe yaś cā sāvāditye sa ekaḥ, III.10.4saya evaṁ-vit asmāl lokāt pretyaetaṁ anna-mayam ātmānam upasaṁkramya, etaṁ prāṇa-mayam ātmānam upasaṁkramya, etaṁ mano-mayam ātmānam upasaṁkramya, etaṁ vijñāna-mayam ātmānam upasaṁkramya, etaṁ ānanda-mayam ātmānam upasaṁkramya,

The Person who is here and who is there in Āditya, he is the One. One who is an Evamvit, the Comprehensor, when he crosses over these loci, having entered the Annamaya-Ātman; having entered the Prānamaya-Ātman; having entered the Manomaya-Ātman; having entered the Vijñānamaya-Ātman; having entered the Ānandamaya-Ātman.

We note the capital phrase upasaṁkramya4 used repeatedly here. A technical phrase, it means having proximately entered and attained union with, and in a sense in-gathered, and drawn within. After the re-entry into all these planes of existence, and a drawing-within, as it were, the Knower ranges these worlds5 as He desires, participates as He desires, and takes on any form as He desires in his ranging (anusaṁcaraṅ).

etat sāma gāyannaste. Haa u Haa, u Haa, u Haa uu, III.10.5

ahaṁ annam, ..; ahaṁ annādaḥ, .. ahaṁ ślokakṛt,…, ahaṁ asmi prthamajā ṛtāsya,

pūrvaṁ devebhyo aṃṛtasya nābhā I,yo mā dadāti, sa id eva mā vāḥ, ahaṁ annam annam adantam ādmi, III.10.5

He sings the mighty Sāma, Haa u Haa, u Haa, u Haa uu, I am all this Substance, I am this Food, I am the participant in this Sub-stance, the eater of this Food, ...I am the One who has scripted all this, I am the creator of the rhythms of the revelatory Word, I am the First born of the Ṛta, prior to the Gods, I am at the nodus of immortality, he who gives me, verily preserves me, I am Food and eats him who eats.

Clearly, this is no after-death experience or an attaining of a quietus in the ocean of non-being but a re-possession and claiming of the Kingdom of the World, as the Rishi sings triumphantly:

ahaṁ viśvaṁ bhuvanaṁ abhyabhavāṁ. Suvarṇa jyotiḥ!

I have encompassed and become this Universal existence, lo! Golden-Light!

The culminating consciousness-dense experience is the im-mense impact on the self-substance when it comes in contact with Mahas. Having entered into this immensity, the normal saṁjñāna gets dissolved, but only to emerge anew, transformed into a higher order of saṁjñāna. The Bhagavad Gita speaks always of Brahma-Nirvāṅaṁ, or being blown out in Brahman.

While the normal faculty of saṁjñāna is an experience which exists by virtue of duality and the usual apprehending conscious-ness functions only when there is a separation and frontal placing, the term saṁjñāna in Mahas becomes the contact of consciousness with an image of things by which there is a sensible possession of it in substance, the in-bringing movement of the apprehending consciousness which draws the object placed before it back to itself so as to possess it in conscious substance.

When drawn into Mahas, this saṁjñāna is now transformed into the substance of vijñāna, which is the substance of Mahas, a compact-dense concentrated Consciousness of the Infinite Being. Gnosis or vijñāna is the original comprehending consciousness which holds an image of things in its essence, totally and in parts and properties. Once drawn here into Mahas, then indeed na pretya saṁjñā asti in the usual sense; but there emerges the Supramental experience of a universal pervasion in substance, viśvaṁ bhuvanaṁ abhyabhavaṁ sung by the Rishi of the Taittiriya Upanishad or Turīyaṁ svij janayad viśvajanyaṁ as sung by Rishi Ayasya Angi-rasa6.

It seems to us that the strī-prajña in Maitreyī was clearly not satisfied with the explanation of Yājñavalkya and sought to go beyond. In the total realization of the being we seem to be encoun-tering within the Upanishad itself two aspects, two phases of the realization: one, an ascending realization, followed by the other, a descending realization. In the first phase, the being begins in a cer-tain state of limited manifestation and ascends to an identification

DECEMBER 2013 5

with its essential un-manifest principle, leading to the emergence from the cosmos and a liberation, mokśa.

The descent, or re-entry which is highlighted in the Taittiriya is quite special and Vedic in its content. The descent is a victori-ous repossession and should not be understood as a regression of any kind (which the English word “descent” might be taken to connote). This is the fundamental position of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga. In the spiritual history of the earth, this has been individually achieved and the traces of this journey of the Rishis are indelibly left in the pathways of spiritual experience. The fourth Turiya of the Māndūkya Upanishad, beyond the states of waking, dreaming and deep-sleep, or the fourth vyāhṛti, the mahas, of the Taittiriya Upanishad, is neither the manifested nor unmanifested since it is the underlying principle of both and includes within it the manifest and the unmanifest, sadasat, vyaktāvyaktaḥ. It is the synthesis of the ascent and the descent which enables the expression of the double nature which is included in His unique essence (see the previous article on “Two Birds” [Balaji, 2013] and BU II.3).

Indeed the experience of the ascent is solely for the individual being, a freeing, as it were, from the limitations of manifestation. It leads to the plunging into the all-negating Absolute of non-being, which the Isha declares is the darker among the darknesses that one experiences. Here the individual Ātman shines but fails to shine forth or radiate. The descent on the other hand enables the radia-tion, an act by which all things are illuminated, tasya bhāsā sarvaṁ idaṁ vibhāti; the golden-radiation, suvarna jyotih, after viśvaṁ bhuvanaṁ abhyabhavāṁ, is an explosive pervasion of the person in a supreme sacrifice, ātmānaṁ vibhajya, a universal distribu-tion of the Ātman. The Veda uses the phrase, viśvajanyaṁ, being universally born. This is a creative experience as the Taittiriya Upanishad says:

Asad vā idaṁ agra āsīt, tato vai sad ajāyata, II.7.1

In the beginning all this was Non-Being. Thence verily Being was born.

The individual is now a Universal participant and has become a Universal Man. In fact, Sri Aurobindo asserts that this is not an experience of an exceptional individual being alone but is the spiri-tual destiny of the collective.

Sri Ramakrishna describes the substance of the Absolute dense experience in his inimitable style: “First you have to follow the process of ‘Neti, Neti’...it is like reaching the roof leaving the steps behind one by one. But the vijnāni, who is more intimately ac-quainted with Brahman (substance) (Brahmavastu in the Katham-rita), realizes something more. He realizes that the steps are made of the same substance as the roof, bricks, lime and sand-dust.”7

And what of the annihilation of sense perception in the saṁjña vinaśyati? Curiously, elsewhere in the Brihadāraṇyaka Upanishad, IV.3.23, 32, Yājnavalkya does go deeply into this question. Hear what Yājnavalkya says, although here the Upanishadic word seems visibly to struggle in giving expression to the experience!

Yad vai tan na paśyati, paśyan vai tan na paśyati;na hi draṣṭur dṛṣṭer viparilopo vidyate, avināśitvāt; na tu tad dvitīyaṁ asti, tato’nyad vibhaktaṁ yat paśyet | IV.3.23

Truly, when one is in That state, he is not “seeing”, he sees truly but, yet he sees not; for there is no complete breaking or the an-nihilation of the seeing of the seer. But there is no “second one” or “other”, distinct from himself to behold…

Salila eko draṣṭādvaito bhavati | IV.3.32

he becomes like One Vast Ocean, the Witness-Seer without a sec-ond one to behold!

Yes indeed, na pretya saṁjñā asti, truly, there is an ending of Time, a sinking of Space, but what emerges is an eyeless percep-tion, a silent-speech reverberating behind mortal speech, a silent-ear for the unstruck note, a thought-free conception, a dense-Void which gives way to a new Order of Space, where Time is an endur-ing moment. As the Bhagavad Gita XV 8-10, puts it, there arises a jñānacakṣuḥ, an eye of Gnosis for the new order of perception.

The Kena Upanishad speaks of Brahman as the Speech behind speech, Sight behind sight, Hearing behind hearing, the Mind behind the mind, which reveals a new order of sense perception. This emerges when I no longer see as a mere sensation; what my eye saw earlier was only an aspect of which I had no knowledge by identity. When Brahman sees in me, he sees an object by simul-taneously knowing it and giving it being. He sees naught else but Himself, sees himself stationed in all beings and all beings in Him-self8. The “ascent” is now a “going within” to the deepest core, and from there, the “descent” begins and Brahman, now arisen gradu-ally, comes up front as the leader taking charge of his Kingdom. Then, as the Maitri Upanishad II.6 (The Principal Upanishads, page 802) puts it:

ataḥ khānīmāni bhittvoditaḥ pañcabhī raśmibhir viṣayān atti, II.6

having arisen, he breaks opens these doors of the senses (or perception) and by means of his five rays participates in the sense-objects.

Here we quote Sri Aurobindo (Synthesis of Yoga, page 884): “The action of the supramental sense is founded on this true truth of sense; it is an organization of this pure, spiritual, infinite, abso-lute, saṁjñāna. The supermind acting through sense feels all is God and in God, all as the manifest touch, sight, hearing, taste, perfume, all as the felt, seen, directly experienced substance and power and energy and movement, play, penetration, vibration, form, nearness, pressure, substantial interchange of the Infinite. Nothing exists independently to its sense, but all is felt as one being and move-ment and each thing as indivisible from the rest and as having in it all the Infinite, all the Divine. This supramental sense has the

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direct feeling and experience, not only of forms, but of forces and of the energy and the quality in things and of a divine substance and presence which is within them and round them and into which they open and expand themselves in their secret subtle self and ele-ments, extending themselves in oneness into the illimitable...it is an oceanic and ethereal sense in which all particular sense knowledge and sensation is a wave or movement or spray or drop that is yet a concentration of the whole ocean inseparable from the ocean”.

Although Yājñavalkya, in his characteristic manner, dismisses Maitreyī’s bewilderment as incomprehension, we feel that her question was pregnant with the aspiration for the experience of the descent, an aspiration which arises from her strī-prajña, the feminine-consciousness.

Was she seeking the Supramental consciousness which solves the riddle of this world — not an escape from this world but a triumphant re-ntry and rulership of it, a svarājya and sāmrājya?

Vikraman Balaji • Chennai Mathematics Institute, Chennai, India •balaji@cmi.ac.in NOTES1 Sankara adds his gloss strī-prajña = gṛhapati yojanāvesana-laḳśaṇa, i.e., “busied about household matters” andbrahma-vādinī = brahmavadana-śila, i.e., “ having the habit of ex-egesis“. This gloss does not seem to have support anywhere in the Vedic texts. A trenchant division is being made by Sankara between this worldly and the other worldly experiences and riches. In our opinion, the phrase strī-prajña needs a more careful consideration.2 It does not seem inconceivable that the ‘neti, neti’ experience which occurs here is the origin of the Buddhist Nirvana, and Bud-dha’s statement na me so attā, as well as Sankara’s Maya.3 Agni is the leader or guide in this passage. He is called pretiṣaṇiṃ or preti – iṣaṇiṃ or the mover to the journey beyond, who drives us in this journey in the Bharadvaja Hymn 6.1.8 of the Rig Veda.4 saṁ-kramaṇa = going or meeting together, union with, entrance into, transference to (Monier-Williams, page 1127). The prefix upa = towards, near, together with (loc. cit., page 194), and in the Vedic texts, the verb gets supplied by the context; hence our rendering of the word upa- saṁ-kramya.5 loci = lokas6 Rig Veda Book X, Hymn 67. See the previous essay on “Two birds” (Balaji, 2013).7 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Abridged Edition, tr. Swami Nikhilananda, p. 155, Ramakrishan-Vivekananda Vedanta Society of New York, New York.8 Sarvabhūtastham ātmānaṁ, sarvabhūtāni ca ātmani īḳṣate (Bhagavad Gita VI.29).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

V. Balaji, Exegetical Notes and Translations III, Vivekananda Re-view, 1 (2013), Number 4, pp. 5-7

S. Radhakrishnan. (1996). The Principal Upanishads. Harper-Collins.

Coomaraswamy, A. K. (2000). Perception of the Vedas. New Delhi: Indra Gandhi National Centre for Arts.

Sri Aurobindo. (1972). The Upanishads, The Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo (Birth Centenary Library), Volume 12. Sri Aurobin-do Ashram, Pondicherry.

Sri Aurobindo. (1972). Secret of the Veda, The Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo (Birth Centenary Library), Volume 10. Sri Aurobin-do Ashram, Pondicherry.

Sri Aurobindo. (1972). The Synthesis of Yoga, The Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo (Birth Centenary Library), Volume 20-21. Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry.

DECEMBER 2013 7

Buddha, Shankara and Vivekananda stand like majestic Himalayan peaks on the vast landscape of the spiritual history of India. Five hundred years before Christ, Bud-dha taught the value of reason and how to rid ourselves

of the shackles of superstition. He set in motion the ‘wheel of dhar-ma’ and a moral order for humanity. But he was also compassion-ate and taught the gospel of non-violence. About a thousand years later, Shankara appeared on the scene and again taught the value of logic and reason and thus set in motion the modern philosophi-cal tradition of Vedanta. About a thousand years after Shankara, Vivekananda taught that the highest religion is a combination of these two temperaments, the compassion of Buddha married with the intellect of Shankara. Thus will we have a religion of the future. This essay is about these three spiritual giants and their contribu-tion to world philosophy.

In his essay on “The Absolute and Manifestation,” Swami Vivekananda wrote1:

In Buddha, we had the great, universal heart and infi-nite patience, making religion practical and bringing it to everyone’s door. In Shankaracharya, we saw tremen-dous intellectual power, throwing the scorching light of reason upon everything. We want today that bright sun of intellectuality joined with the heart of Buddha, the wonderful infinite heart of love and mercy. This union will give us the highest philosophy. Science and religion will meet and shake hands. Poetry and philosophy will become friends. This will be the religion of the future, and if we can work it out, we may be sure that it will be for all times and peoples.

One should not conclude from this that Vivekananda is advocating a marriage of Buddhism and Vedanta, nor any specific religion or system of philosophy. Rather, what is being emphasized is the attitude towards life and experience as providing a universal religion that satisfies all people and all temperaments. For Vive-kananda, religion did not mean an allegiance to a particular dogma or creed but rather a framework of thought with which to under-stand and process the myriad experiences of life and ultimately

attain enlightenment.The advent of the Buddha was perhaps the most transforma-

tive event in world history, and yet the vast majority of Eurocentric history books make little mention of it. At a time when the world was torn apart by wars and conflicts, Buddha arose and gave the message of love and peace. Long before the advent of Christ, Asia was gripped by Buddha and his teachings. How did this phenom-enal event come to be? It is true that Buddha’s message was not fully understood by his disciples (which is why we have the varied forms of Buddhism). Even so, his core teaching survives to this day.

Around 600 BCE, Buddha was born as Prince Siddhartha in the town of Lumbini near the town of Kapilavastu in modern day Nepal. The astrologers predicted he would be a monk and a world teacher and this startled the king. Thus, for almost thirty years, young Siddhartha lived a sheltered life in the royal palace inun-dated with every sensual pleasure one can imagine. In fact, he was forbidden to leave the palace. At the age of 16, he was married to a princess and they had a son. Yet young Siddhartha wondered what was beyond the palace gates. Around the age of 29, he secretly ventured out with an assistant of the palace to see what the world outside was like. The story goes that he had four dramatic encoun-ters that changed his life. The first was the sight of an old man and he asked his assistant, “who is this and why is he limping?” The assistant replied, “He is an old man, and aging is a process of every human body.” Next, he encountered a sick man, and again, he asked his assistant, to which he replied, “That is a sick man. Illness afflicts everyone.” The third encounter was that of a dead body, and again when he asked his assistant, he replied, “That is a dead body. Death is the end of everyone.” Finally, he encountered a monk in a saffron robe, and he asked him why he adopted such a life, and the monk replied, “To be free of misery.”

These four encounters raised a host of existential questions in young Siddhartha’s mind. Old age, illness and death were facts of life. Yet he had been sheltered from this truth all his life and made to believe that life was an immense pleasure garden. This is not the experience of the multitude of people. But then there was the monk, who said he chose the mendicant life to be free of misery. This appealed to the young prince. He could continue living in

Buddha, Shankara, and VivekanandaM. RAM MURTY

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the palace or he could renounce this comfortable life and take up the path of the mendicant. Truly, that must have been a night of crisis in the mind of the young prince. Then and there, he decided to renounce his comfortable life and rode off in the dead of night into the wilderness. The next day, he joined a group of monks who practised meditation and learned from them several techniques to elevate his level of consciousness. Although he advanced in this technique, he was not satisfied, as he had not found the answers to mitigate human misery. With five other monks, he left the group and wandered off to the Neranjara River in Uruvela and began to practise severe austerities. The monks believed enlightenment could be achieved by progressive fasting and so the young prince fasted until he was surviving on only tiny morsels of food. Legend has it that he was at death’s door when a young village girl named Sujatha was passing by and offered him a bowl of rice pudding which he ate and which revived him. He realized that such extreme self-mortification which he had adopted as the means for salvation was not the way. This was a moment of enlightenment: Buddha had discovered the ‘middle way,’ or the madhya marga, as it is called in Sanskrit.

Sadly, his brother monks felt he had strayed from the path when he ate the bowl of rice pudding. When he taught about the middle path, they abandoned him. And so Buddha walked alone to the outskirts of the town of Bodh Gaya, and this experience finds expression2 in the Dhammapada, a Buddhist text compiled after Buddha’s death and in which are recorded many of his teachings: “If you do not find a companion, intelligent, one who associates with you, who leads a good life, lives soberly, ...walk alone like a king who has renounced his kingdom or like an elephant roaming at will in the forest. It is better to live alone rather than have the companionship of a fool. Let a man walk alone with few wants, like the elephant roaming in the forest.”

On reaching Bodh Gaya, he sat under the Bo tree with a firm resolve not to get up until he had solved the mystery of life. Ihaiva sthane shusyatu me shariram – “Let my body decay at this spot; I will not get up until I have found the way out.” As his meditation went deeper during the night, a profound silence embraced his mind after he had put an end to all thoughts. His mind was like a vast lake on a windless day. Buddhist mythology says the demon Mara came to tempt him but that the Buddha remained unflinching and firm in his resolve. One may surmise that these are the hidden impressions of the past and that the Budhha silenced them all. But after silencing them, there emerged the thought of ‘I’ and when he examined this, it too disappeared. His ego-centric personality was literally blown off by this scrutiny and he attained nirvana. It was early morning and he had attained enlightenment. His joy was unbounded and he wanted to share it. But who was there? No one except the Earth goddess, and so in many Buddhist paintings depicting his enlightenment, we see him touching the earth with his index finger, to indicate that the Earth goddess was his only witness.

It is said the Buddha remained there for seven weeks alone after achieving enlightenment and that he was concerned that his

message was too profound for others to understand. Indeed, he had walked away from both of the extremes — from those who were engrossed in sensuality and those who were absorbed in asceticism. The mythology relates that Brahma appeared with the request that he teach for the good of humanity. Here again, we see the mytholo-gization of what must have been a process of of deep reflection for the Buddha. He must have seen that he must set in motion the great wheel of Dharma.

He walked back to the Deer Park outside the modern city of Varanasi and met his five companions whom he had he left behind. They were still practising their austerities and were suspi-cious of the Buddha when they saw him approaching. But as soon as they conversed with him, they realized he had attained illumina-tion and so they sat at his feet to be taught. The message of this first sermon is known as the ‘four noble truths’: everything is wrapped in suffering; suffering originates in desire; by eliminating desire we eliminate suffering; and the cessation of desire and suffering is achievable by following the eight-fold path. It is said that during this first sermon of the Buddha, one of the monks instantly attained enlightenment. The monk’s mind must have been ripe and prepared for the teaching. Such is the advantage of spiritual practice: it pre-pares the mind for enlightenment and we never know when it may come.

Although Buddha’s message was to think for oneself and not to follow tradition simply because one has been brought up that way, the old traditions and rituals re-emerged and this is why we have so many varieties of Buddhism today. Even the Lalitavistara, believed to be compiled around the 3rd century C.E., is a mytholo-gized form of his biography.

The message of the Buddha then travelled across the Asian continent and to Europe and Indonesia. The original teaching, simple as it was and embodied in the four noble truths, turned out to be too difficult for the multitude. Buddha’s rejection of all sym-bology and mythology had the opposite effect. The masses needed symbols and so Buddha himself became the symbol. His teaching that each individual reaps what he sows and thus manufactures his own karma evolved into an elaborate theory of transmigration and gave rise to an exotic and colourful mythology of wrathful deities who help the aspiring devotee on the path of enlightenment. This iconography can be seen, for instance, in Tibetan Buddhism and varieties that exist in China, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia. In his lifetime, Buddha did not speculate on the existence of God, insisting that one should think for oneself and reform one’s charac-ter. His philosophical teaching is non-dualistic in tone, as is seen, for instance, in the Diamond Sutra. “Does a Buddha say, ‘I have attained enlightenment?’ No, if he were to say so, he would be ad-mitting that he had an identity and thus would not be enlightened.” Echoing the words of Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, namely, ‘veda aveda bhavati’, the Buddha continues: “As a raft is used to cross a river, and once crossed, the raft is of no use and should be discarded, so also, all words, concepts, symbols must be discarded on being illumined.”

The pristine message of the Buddha resonates again in the

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teachings of Shankara, almost a thousand years later. Born in the eighth century C.E., Shankara lived a short life of 32 years. But in that time, he revived the teachings of Advaita Vedanta and wrote commentaries on all of the major Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Brahma Sutras. His most prominent work, Vivekachuda-mani, extols the power of reason and inquiry on the path towards enlightenment. In this teaching, he is again in accordance with the Buddha’s fundamental teaching, “atma dipo bhava”, which means, “be a lamp unto yourself.” Although Shankara insisted on the de-velopment of the power of reason and inquiry, he also realized the importance of devotion, or bhakti, and in this emphasis he diverges from the Buddha. In the Buddha, we see an emphasis on the moral and ethical side of human conduct, and with Shankara, we see an emphasis on the intellect. In this context, Swami Vivekananda wrote3:

Buddha brought the Vedanta to light, gave it to the peo-ple and saved India. A thousand years after his death ... Shankaracharya arose and once more revived the Vedan-ta philosophy. He made it a rationalistic philosophy. In the Upanishads, the arguments are often very obscure. By Buddha the moral side of the philosophy was laid stress upon, and by Shankaracharya, the intellectual side. He worked out, rationalised, and placed before men the wonderful coherent system of Advaita.

In his famous Bhaja Govindam, Shankara endorses the path of bhakti. The fabled story is that when Shankara was in Varanasi accompanied by his 14 disciples, he heard an elderly man teaching a student about grammatical rules. He was pained to see this since the old man, at his advanced age, should really have been spending his valuable time in cultivating devotion for the divine. Inspired by the moment, Shankara composed his famous hymn extolling the man to worship Govinda. Apart from its poetic beauty, the com-position also conveys the essence of Vedanta. Shankara composed many more poems to the Mother Goddess and Shiva and taught the multitude the path of Bhakti, though this is generally unacknowl-edged and is often overshadowed by his writings on non-dualism.

The details of the life of Shankara are sketchy, much of it shrouded in myth and legend. Even the date of his birth is not cer-tain. Most scholars agree that he was born sometime in the eighth century. The traditional dates ascribed to his life are from 788 to 820 CE. Born in Kerala, situated in southern India, Shankara demonstrated extraordinary intellectual powers at a young age. He was a srutidhara, one who could remember anything that he heard even if it was only once. Vivekananda, too, is said to have had this ability. It is said that by the age of three, Shankara could speak and read Sanskrit fluently. By the age of five, he had mastered the Vedas and the Vedangas. By the age of seven, he wrote his first book, titled Balabodha Samgraha. At the age of eight, he took up the life of the mendicant, giving a promise to his mother that he would return at the end of her life to console her, liberate her soul and perform the traditional brahminical rites.

Thus did Shankara begin his life as a monk at the age of eight. Walking towards the Narmada River, he met his guru, Govinda Bhagavatapada. On seeing his teacher, he spontaneously burst out with an advaitic hymn, now called Nirvanasatakam, familiar to all students of Vedanta. This hymn begins with the declaration, “I am neither the mind nor the intellect, neither the ego nor the mind stuff, I am pure consciousness and bliss, I am Siva, I am Siva.” It is conjectured that Shankara lived with his guru for a period of at most four years and during this time composed various hymns and wrote several books, the most famous being the Vivekachudamani, or The Crest Jewel of Discrimination. After his period of disciple-ship, Shankara began his pilgrimage towards Kasi, at the young age of 12. With his guru’s blessings and instruction to compose commentaries on the Brahma Sutras, Shankara proceeded towards northern India. On reaching Kasi, he stayed there four years writ-ing his commentaries on the major philosophical works.

One of the traditional stories told of Shankara in Kasi is his meeting with a chandala, a person of lower caste. While walking through the narrow lanes of Kasi, he encountered the chandala, who he asked to move aside so that he could pass by and not touch him. To this, the chandala replied,

O wise sage. Who are you asking to move aside? If it is the body, then this body is made of the same material as your body and is inert and thus cannot move. If it is pure awareness, then this awareness is identical with yours and is omnipresent and thus there is no place where it is not. Thus we are the same. So who are you asking to move and for whom?

Shankara immediately recognised that he was in the presence of a realised being and composed a poem on the spot.

At the age of 16, Shankara surmised that the last days of his mother were near, and to keep his promise to her, ventured back to South India. On reaching home, he learned his mother was unwell and comforted her with his message of Advaita and the inde-structibility of the soul. Finding that this message was not getting through, he switched to the singing of hymns in praise of Vishnu and Shiva and thus assuaged her pain. After she passed away, he performed the last rites. It is said that the local Brahmin priests did not want to assist him in that they felt he had violated the rule that a sanyasin should not perform the last rites. But as Shankara prom-ised it to his mother, he performed these rites on his own, ignoring the injunctions of the priests.

Shankara’s advent in India was at a time when Buddhism had already degenerated into ritualism and the pristine message of the Buddha had evaporated. Shankara revived the earlier Vedanta and, it is said, transformed many of the Buddhist temples into Hindu temples. Shankara was often called a hidden Buddhist. In his essay “The Sages of India,” Swami Vivekananda wrote4:

Shankara … showed that the real essence of Buddhism and that of the Vedanta are not very different but that the disciples did not understand the Master and have degraded themselves, denied

10 Vivekananda Review

the existence of the soul and of God, and have become atheists. That was what Shankara showed, and all the Buddhists began to come to the old religion. But then they had become accustomed to all these forms: what could be done?

Vivekananda emphasizes that in this connection the contribu-tions of Ramanuja were also important. As a result of his emphasis on bhakti, the masses began to rally ‘round the worship of the divine ideal’.

Elaborating on the historical causes for the degradation of Buddhism, Swami Vivekananda wrote5, in his essay “The Sages of India,” that the teaching of the Buddha, with its insistence on reason and high moral standards, did not adhere to the masses.

Unfortunately, such high ideals could not be well assimi-lated by the different uncivilised and uncultured races of mankind who flocked within the fold of the Aryans. These races, with varieties of superstition and hideous worship, rushed within the fold of the Aryans and for a time appeared as if they had become civilised, but before a century had passed, they brought out their snakes, their ghosts, and all the other things their ancestors used to worship, and thus the whole of India became one de-graded mass of superstition.

Thus all ceremonials were revived and the Vedic ceremonials were replaced by new ones and there arose in their place “gor-geous temples, gorgeous ceremonies and gorgeous priests, and all that you see in India in modern times.” Vivekananda continues, “I smile when I read books written by some modern people who ought to have known better, that the Buddha was the destroyer of Brahminical idolatry. Little do they know that Buddhism created Brahminism and idolatry in India.”6

At the present moment, we are again confronted by a similar crisis in the modern world. With the advent of science and rational thought, many of the earlier traditional dualistic religions, with their theology of a creator God, are pretty much on the decline. Modern science has undermined the traditional religions and when modern man rejects these traditional religions, he also implicitly rejects the moral and ethical principles that these religions embody. As the English saying goes, the baby has been thrown out with the bath water. It is in this context that the advent of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda is significant. The central message of Swami Vivekananda is that both dualism and non-dualism are true and are essential for the human being. With his characteristic humor, he writes in his lectures on Bhakti yoga7:

If the buffaloes want to worship God, they will, in keep-ing with their own nature see God as a huge buffalo; if a fish wants to worship God, it will have to form an idea of God as a big fish. … Man, buffalo, fish all may be supposed to represent so many different vessels and all these vessels go to the sea of God to get filled with water, each according to its own shape and capacity … in each

of these vessels there is the same water of the sea of God … so we cannot help seeing God in human form and therefore are bound to worship in that form.

Dualism is part and parcel of the embodied being. Thus, even though the path of enlightenment requires the cultivation of reason, as Buddha and Shankara stressed, we also need to cultivate devo-tion. We cannot help it. It is in the very fiber of the human being. This is beautifully expressed in the famous hymn of Hanuman in the Tulsidas Ramanyana:

shri nathe janaki nathe abhede paramatmanitathapi mama sarvasvam ramah kamala-locana

“I know that Vishnu and Rama are manifestations of the same Supreme Being; still my devotion is to the lotus-eyed Rama.”

The crisis of the modern man is similar to the crisis in India at the time of Shankara. It is in this context that the message of Vivekananda is relevant. The error in Buddha’s message was its insistence on pure reason alone. However, the individual is confronted with an ocean of emotions and this emotional energy must be re-directed in a creative and constructive fashion towards a divine and universal ideal. This is the essence of bhakti yoga, or the yoga of devotion. Although Shankara realized this dimension of the human being, he did not emphasize it enough; it was Ramanuja who gave more stress to this aspect of the human being. However, what is needed is a combination of the two. But Vivekananda says there is more than that. The human being is also a being of action. Thus, one must know how to act. One must know how to harness the physical energies and direct them towards a constructive and creative ideal. This is the essence of karma yoga, or the yoga of action. Again, underlying the human being is his psyche with its myriad forms of psychic processes that represent the inner work-ings of the mind. These processes are at the root cause of human behaviour and one must know how to harness the energy to which they give rise. This is the essence of raja yoga, or the yoga of psy-chic control. Thus Vivekananda in his writings revived the teaching of the four yogas to deal with the four faculties of the human mind, namely, thinking, feeling, willing and restraining. Although the message of the four yogas is evident in the Bhagavad Gita, it is Vivekananda who brought it into prominence and he had learned it at the feet of the great master, Sri Ramakrishna.

Born in the year 1863 as Narendranath Dutta in Kolkata, India, Vivekananda had a traditional upbringing at home, where he learned the mythological lore of the Hindu tradition as well as the foundations of the Indian philosophical tradition. At school and university, he became acquainted with European thought and Western philosophy. Thus, he was perfectly poised to evaluate both the Eastern and Western traditions and prescribe for the world a remedy for its malaise. But beyond this, he showed signs of an ardent spiritual determination at a very young age. Like Buddha and Shankara, he was dubious about orthodox religions and valued

DECEMBER 2013 11

reason as the foundation of life. In 19th-century India, the adoption of the British educational

system completely undermined the cultural and religious traditions of the nation. In 1835, Thomas Babbington Macaulay introduced, in the now famous (or infamous) “Minute on Education,” his new policies for the schools and universities in India. According to this proclamation, English was to be the medium of instruction and Protestant missionary professors were to be put in charge of education. His goal was “to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.” He also wrote, in the same “minute,” that there is not a single book written by any Indian that can match the intellectual brilliance of any author of the West. Haughtily he wrote, “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”8

Thus it is ironic that in the year after his “Minute on Educa-tion” was introduced and made policy in all the Indian schools and universities, there arose in Bengal, a man who was the antithesis of all that Macaulay would have defined as a “cultured person” – Sri Ramakrishna.

Sri Ramakrishna was born in 1836 and came from a rustic background. Since childhood, he had a mystical temperament and was imbued with a fiery zeal to attain spiritual enlightenment. He never had formal education in the traditional sense of the term, but had educated himself by listening to the stories and teachings of the wandering minstrels. He practised yoga and meditation and many spiritual teachers came to him to instruct him on the various spiritual paths they had mastered. Thus he learned first-hand that religion is realization and not an adherence to a particular creed or a dogma. He realized the importance of both reason and devotion and advocated a synthesis of all the religious traditions, he himself having practised them all and having gained illumination through them.

Narendranath was eighteen years old when he first met Sri Ra-makrishna. Trained in the Western educational system introduced by the British during colonial rule, Vivekananda initially scoffed at the message of Sri Ramakrishna and its insistence on bhakti or devotion. Yet he was innately convinced that Sri Ramakrishna had attained enlightenment. Thus, here was the meeting of the century. On one hand, Sri Ramakrishna represented the ancient traditions with their mystical past and the zeal for realization. On the other, Vivekananda represented the rational man, with his emphasis on reason as a means for enlightenment. As a result of having come into contact with Sri Ramakrishna, Vivekananda saw that what was needed was a fusion of these two traditions.

Vivekananda expanded this teaching to include also karma yoga and raja yoga, that is, the yoga of action and the yoga of psychic control. This expansion arose in his mind after the pass-ing away of his Master and he took up the life of the wandering monk. Just as Buddha and Shankara had done centuries earlier, Vivekananda walked through the length and breadth of India. As he wandered through its rustic countryside, he saw the plight of the

multitude steeped in poverty and ignorance. How to revive the na-tion? He met with wealthy landlords and maharajas. They all rec-ognized his spiritual stature. To them, he taught that they were only custodians of power and wealth and that this power and wealth was meant for distribution for the welfare of the masses.

It is clear that he was a master teacher and did not make any distinction between the high and the low. In one encounter9, he met a maharaja who said he was not in favour of the symbols and idola-try that were prevalent in Hinduism. To this, Vivekananda asked,

‘Whose picture is this on the wall?’ The assistant replied, ‘Sir, it is the likeness of our Maharaja.’ ‘Please take it down and spit upon it.’ The assistant screamed, ‘What are you asking us to do, Swami? It is the likeness of our maharaja.’ Vivekananda countered, ‘Why, it is only a picture. Spit upon it. Anyone of you can spit upon it. I say Spit!’ Everyone was taken aback and shocked at the instruction. Then Vivekananda said ‘You see, maharaja, even though you are not bodily present in the picture, in a figurative sense, you are. When people see the picture, they are reminded of you. Similarly with the human be-ing. When they worship a symbol, they are reminded of the divine through that symbol.’

Apart from the powerful philosophical message in the story, we also see the humorous side of Vivekananda.

In 1896, after his days of wandering, Vivekananda went to Chicago to attend the Parliament of Religions, which was part of the World’s Fair. In spite of its name, it was, it would seem, organized with a view to show the supremacy of Christianity. The whole event turned topsy-turvy when Vivekananda appeared and gave the Vedantic perspective that all religions, when faithfully fol-lowed, lead one to the ultimate state of enlightenment.

When we study Vivekananda’s writings, we see that he presented Vedanta not as a system of Indian philosophy but as a universal framework with which to view life. All religions and spiritual traditions, nay all disciplines of human knowledge like art and science, are included in the ideal of Vedanta. They are unified under the four yogas. He summarised the entire philosophy in four aphorisms10:

Every soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control or philosophy – by one, or more, or all of these and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines or dogmas, or rituals or books, or temples or forms are but secondary details.

After his return from the West, Swami Vivekananda estab-lished the Ramakrishna Mission in India. Through it, he was able to attract strong individuals who would dedicate their lives for the welfare of the many. The mission provided a monastic framework

12 Vivekananda Review

for those individuals who wanted to practise the four-fold yoga. However, the larger context of his vision seems to have receded into the background simply because superficial academicians saw him often as a “Hindu missionary” or cast him in the “Indian fold,” much to the detriment of global civilization.

For Vivekananda, embracing the four-fold yoga was not ‘Hindu’ or ‘Indian.’ This misconception has impeded the evolution of the human race. First and foremost, Vivekananda was a philoso-pher and his writings have simplified the esoteric thought of an-cient India and made it accessible so that a child can understand it. Secondly, scholars have compartmentalized his thought under the category of “monism” and this hindered their further understanding of Vivekananda’s thought. This categorization and compartmental-ization run counter to Vivekananda’s thought and philosophy.

From Vivekananda’s perspective, Vedanta is similar to science, and yet larger. Science is the framework by which we understand the external universe around us. It does not belong to any particu-lar nation but rather to the whole world. Moreover, science is not a finished product. It is an evolving framework for understanding the world around us and ourselves. But the mandate of Vedanta is larger. Just as science studies external nature and has given rise to manifold disciplines such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and so on, Vedanta studies the internal nature of the human being and has given rise to the multitude of religious and philosophical tradi-tions of the world. Moreover, the internal dimension also includes the external, since the division is merely one of psychological convention and convenience. In this sense, Vedanta includes sci-ence, too, since ultimately we are only sure of the internal. Thus it is most unfortunate that modern scholars have fallen into the trap of classifying Vivekananda’s thought in reductionist terms such as “Vedantism”.

To cite one example, it is well-known that Vivekananda met with the American philosopher William James when he was in Boston and spoke at Harvard University. From a recent paper11, it becomes evident that James did not have a good grasp of Vive-kananda’s philosophy and indeed that there were fundamental flaws in his understanding of it. By his own admission, James did not have a meditative temperament. In his paper, Norris Frederick writes: “Throughout his life, James suffered from depression, ner-vous conditions and a host of physical ailments. ... James described himself as someone who was not a suitable subject for things like meditative enlightenment.”12 Perhaps he was right and his under-standing was incomplete. Indeed, with a total misunderstanding of the concept of nirvana or enlightenment, James wrote, “The hindoo and the buddhist, for this is essentially their attitude, are simply afraid, afraid of more experience, afraid of life.”13 One may as well say that he who has decided to wake up from his sleep is afraid of the dream world and should really go back to sleep! Many scholars seemed to have missed the point. As Sri Aurobindo wrote, “Knowl-edge is not for the hasty mind but only for the dhira, who can sit long accumulating and arranging his store and does not rush away with fragments like a crow darting off with the first morsel of food on which it can seize.”14

Thus it is important to understand Vivekananda and his philosophy in a larger context. Even scholars err when they run off with opinions and categories. The four-fold yoga at the core of Vivekananda’s philosophy gives us a fundamental framework for the inner adventure and journey into the higher spiritual evolution. When viewed against the majestic landscape of Indian spiritual history, we see that Buddha, Shankara and Vivekananda were all insisting on the foundation of reason for the spiritual path. Given the realities of the human condition, Shankara emphasized bhakti yoga as well, though this is not so well-known. In Vivekananda’s philosophy, we see a marvellous synthesis of all the yogas. Although this message is as old as the Bhagavad Gita, it was lost over time. Vivekananda revived this perennial message and made it available for the entire world.

M. Ram Murty • Department of Mathematics, Queen’s University, 99 Uni-versity Avenue, Kingston, ON, Canada K7L 3N6 • murty@mast.queensu.ca

NOTES1 Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (hereafter referred to as CW), Volume 2, p. 140.2 The Dhammapada, Chapter 23, Verses 9-11.3 CW, Volume 2, p. 139.4 CW, Volume 3, p. 265.5 CW, Volume 3, p. 263.6 CW, Volume 3, p. 264.7 CW, Volume 3, p. 55.8 The entire text of the “Minute on Education” can be found at: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/ma-caulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html9 Life of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1, p. 269.10 CW, Volume 1, p. 124.11 See Norris Frederick, William James and Swami Vivekananda: Religious experience and Vedanta/Yoga in America, William James Studies, 2012, Volume 9, p.37-55. Available online at: http://wil-liamjamesstudies.org/9.1/frederick.pdf12 Ibid., p. 48.13 Ibid., p. 46.14 “Record of Yoga”, p. 18, in: Volume 10 and 11 of Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo.

BIBLIOGRAPHYSwami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Mayavati Memorial

Edition, Advaita Ashrama, Calcutta, 1989.Life of Swami Vivekananda by his Eastern and Western

Disciples, 5th edition, Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati, 1981.Sri Aurobindo, Complete Works, Volume 10 and 11, Sri Aurobindo

Ashram Trust, Pondicherry, 2001.S. Radhakrishnan, The Dhammapada, Oxford University Press,

Madras, 1950.

DECEMBER 2013 13

Dr. Peeyush. K. Lala, a trustee of the Vedanta Society of Toronto, has been awarded an Honorary Doctor of Sci-ence degree at the University of Western Ontario. Dr. Lala is an accomplished and distinguished medical

scientist. His major contributions to research are in the fields of On-cology and Reproductive Physiology, and creation of an interphase between the two. He has authored close to 200 research articles published in peer-reviewed medical journals and he served on the editorial boards of a number of journals. He has also devoted much of his time to teaching the next generation of aspiring scientists.

Among Dr. Lala’s numerous honours and awards are: T Ahmed Medal in Ophthalmology (University of Calcutta); Fulbright Scholar (USA); University of Melbourne Scholar; the J C B Grant Senior Scientist Award of the Canadian Association of Anatomy, Cell Biology and Neurobiology; the Certificate of Merit from the National Cancer Institute of Canada; and the Award of Excellence in Research from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Western Ontario.

Although Dr. Lala’s professional accomplishments are stel-lar, it is not only these that define him. He is also a lover of Indian classical music and plays the tabla. He has a long-standing interest in spirituality and over the years has contributed significantly to the work and activities of the Vedanta Society of Toronto, including serving as a trustee since 2003.

Dr. Lala was born in 1934 in a village in Chittagong (Chat-tagram) in present-day Bangladesh. He notes that several people influenced him from an early age. The first was his father, who was the principal of a school in the village. He instilled in his son the urge to pursue knowledge.

While he was growing up, the Indian independence struggle was at its peak and the Second World War was raging. The human suffering that unfolded left an indelible mark on him. It was during that time that the life and work of his maternal uncle, a monk, began shaping his views on life and the world around him. His uncle ran an orphanage and a hospital for destitute children and this work inspired Lala to become a medical scientist. His goal was to develop therapies for unmet medical needs and also to make them freely ac-cessible to those most in need. This virtue stayed with him through-out his career and can be seen, for example, in his decision not to patent a novel treatment to tackle melanoma and kidney cancer that

was developed in his lab at the University of Western Ontario. Dr. Lala has since engaged in nu-merous public discourses about the na-ture of cancer

and the possibilities for prevention and cure. The third influence was the late Swami Lokeswarananda of the

Ramakrishna Mission. He was in charge of a students’ home in Pa-thuriaghata, Kolkata, where Lala was nurtured as one of the students displaced from East Pakistan. It was through Swami’s encourage-ment that Lala engaged in social work in the slums of Kolkata while he was studying medicine. Later Swami founded and developed the Narendrapur educational campus in the southern suburbs of Kol-kata, where social work flourished further, receiving international recognition. Swami Lokeswarananda has remained a lifelong source of spiritual inspiration in Dr. Lala’s pursuit of science and education as tools to serve mankind and train the next generation of scientists.

Dr. Lala firmly believes in bridging the apparent gap between science and spirituality. He has written numerous articles in various popular journals, including Global Vedanta, American Vedantist, Jagriti, Gayatri, and Vedanta Kesari., such as,“Cancer: Body and Mind” (Vedanta Kesari, 1990), “Swami Lokeswarananda and Vedanta Movement in Canada” (American Vedantist, 1999), ‘Is God Unkind?’ (Global Vedanta, 2000), ‘My Glimpses of Practical Ve-danta’ (Global Vedanta 2001), “A Simple Introduction to Hinduism: A Religion or a Way of Life?” (Jagriti, 2004).

What is Dr. Lala’s own philosophy of life? In his own words: “I learned early on to be happy in life and in my career; I had to do what I loved rather than what was easiest.” And those who inter-act with him can testify to his natural happiness and positive and encouraging attitude.

Abhishek Banerjee • Department of Biochemistry, University of Toronto • banerjee.avi@gmail.com

Vedanta Society Trustee Awarded Honorary Degree ABHISHEK BANERJEE

Dr. Peeyush K. Lala

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NEWS FROM THE INSTITUTE

14 Vivekananda Review

The Second Annual Vivekananda Public Speaking Com-petition was held on November 3, 2013 from 11:00 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. as a tribute to Swami Vivekananda –one of the world’s most powerful orators and thinkers.

The competition was open to all high school students and was conducted in two categories: a) Junior Group: Students from Grades 9 and 10 and b) Senior Group: Students from Grades 11 and 12. The competition was held in two phases. In the first phase, each student delivered a speech for 6-8 minutes on a pre-assigned topic.The topic for the Junior group was: Believing in Yourself. The topic for the Senior group was The Power of Education. In the second phase, the students were given a random topic each to speak impromptu for 1-2 minutes.

The speeches were judged by a panel consisting of Rina

Chakraborty, Chaitali Senmajumder and Abhijit Bhattacharya.All of the participants spoke very well and impressed the audi-

ence present there. Swami Kripamayananda, President of The Vedanta Society of

Toronto inspired the students with his closing remarks. He empha-sized the importance of studying Swami Vivekananda’s thought. Swami Sarvarupananda from the Columbo Ramakrishna Mission handed out participation certificates to all the contestants.

The Institute for Vivekananda Studies and the Vedanta Society of Toronto congratulate these young communicators and leaders!

The tables below summarize the results of the competition.

Shukla Datta • Vedanta Society of Toronto • shukladatta53@yahoo.com

Vivekananda Public Speaking CompetitionSHUKLA DATTA

JUNIOR GROUP

Place Name Grade School

1st Lopamudra Saha 9 Sir Wilfrid Laurier C.I.2nd Raksha Devi Seeburun 9 St. Marcellinus3rd Vivekanand Seeburun 9 St. Marcellinus

SENIOR GROUP

Place Name Grade School

1st Harsh Ojha 11 York Memorial C.I.2nd Utsha Saha 11 Vaughan Secondary School3rd Brotee Dasdutta 12 East York C.I.

DECEMBER 2013 15

Swami Kripamayananda reviewing results of the Competition.

Judges Rina Chakravarti, Chaitali Senmajumder and Abhijit Bhattacharya listen intently to each speaker.

Swami Sarvarupananda with Chaitali Senmajumder (judge), Bandana Bose (time keeper), Shukla Datta (coordinator), Rina Chakravarti (judge), Ajay Sen Sharma (time keeper).

Left to Right: Vivek Seeburun, Raksha Seeburun, Harsh Ojha and Utsha Saha

VIVEKANANDA REVIEW

ISSUE 1 — FEBRUARY 2013V. Kumar Murty, Education According to VivekanandaVikraman Balaji, The Kanva and Madhyandina Recensions of the Isha UpanishadM. Ram Murty, Reason and Religion

ISSUE 2 — APRIL 2013Swami Tyagananda, Swami Vivekananda’s Restructuring of YogaM. Ram Murty, Hinduism and VedantaV. Kumar Murty, Education and DevelopmentVikraman Balaji, Exegetical Notes and Translations IIHema Murty, Pandit Ravi Shankar, George Harrison and Swami VivekanandaLipi Mukherji & V. Kumar Murty, An Unpublished Letter of Swami Vivekananda

ISSUE 3 — JUNE 2013Swami Vidyanathananda, Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University: An OverviewV. Kumar Murty, The Vedanta Vidya Mandir: A RetrospectiveHema Murty, Swami Vivekananda and Sanskrit Education: Ten Years at the Vedanta Vidya Mandir

ISSUE 4 — AUGUST 2013Swami Satyamayananda, Future Humanity Reflecting Swami VivekanandaVikraman Balaji, Exegetical Notes and Translations IIIV. Kumar Murty, Thoreau’s Essay ‘Life Without Principle’Carl Aronsson, An Unpublished Letter of Swami Vivekananda: Further Details

ISSUE 5 — OCTOBER 2013Lori Way, Swami Vivekananda and Pragmatism in AmericaV. Kumar Murty, Culture and Identity

ISSUE 6 — DECEMBER 2013Vikraman Balaji, Was Maitreyī answered fully by Yājñavalkya?M. Ram Murty, Buddha, Shankara, and VivekanandaAbhishek Banerjee, Vedanta Society Trustee Awarded Honorary DegreeShukla Datta, Vivekananda Public Speaking Competition

Volume 1, Issues 1–6