Swami
Vivekananda: Paradoxical Prophet (Concluded)
One of the more fascinating of
the anomalies in Swami Vivekananda is the scintillating interplay
of a god-like bent for austerity and asceticism on the one hand,
and a very down-to-earth humanness on the other. This is the
man who was shocked by the way his Western friends always gave
expression to their feelings -- of pain, admiration or surprise
-- yet who, in his letters to the Hale sisters for instance,
bubbled over with fun, teasing and jokes of all kinds. He had
a superb sense of humor; we may recall his replies when Christians
would ask him if the Hindu mothers threw their baby girls to
the crocodiles: "Yes," he replied on one occasion,
"and nowadays all the babies are born to men." One
day in America he finished the food on his plate, then picked
up the plate and licked it clean. "Oh, Swami!" his
hostess exclaimed in horror.
"That's the trouble with
you people," Swamiji said, "You want to make everything
so nice and proper on the outside." Those were indeed Victorian
days.
This is the man who trained his
own novices so strictly that he threatened with expulsion a lad
who had delivered a letter in person, to a house where women
renunciates were living. Yet he had an easy forgiveness, and
could declare on another day that asceticism was savagery and
fiendish, and spoke of the "torture of religion." When
the diagnosis of cancer was made, on Sri Ramakrishna's sore throat,
at Cossipore, the nature of cancer was not well understood. The
doctor had warned the boys nursing him of the danger of contagion.
Narendra (the future Vivekananda) came into the room when they
were sitting around discussing what to do. At once he picked
up the cup of gruel which the Master had not been able to finish
and swallowed all of it. This put an end to all the talk and
hesitation. Such was the one chosen to be their leader. Yet see
how unassumingly he would enter the kitchen of some Western friend
and begin to prepare a curry for the devotees, or accept a pipe
of tobacco, smoke it and throw all the ashes on the carpet!
Swamiji could tell the devotees
in California that the reason for his success at the Chicago
Parliament was his lifelong mastery over every form of sexual
expression. Still, realizing that Goodwin, his secretary, was
living with him in a house full of vegetarians and was not one
himself, he had the tenderness to send him out with money to
buy himself a restaurant meal. We know that when he visited in
the home of Margaret Noble (Nivedita) in Northern Ireland, he
went walking one day with her young brother. "My boy,"
he said, "it is my religion which has deprived your family
of your beef. Come on, let us go to this café and buy
you a steak!" In London people would remark on how relaxed
and natural he was, just before giving a powerful and mesmerizing
lecture; yet the same man would come back from his periodic retreats
in such a lofty mood one would not dare approach him.
In attempting to comprehend this
particular paradox we may think of two of the Swami's observations.
One is that religion should be the most joyful thing in the world.
And the other is that one should look for greatness in the little
things of a person's life -- what they eat and wear and how they
speak to their subordinates. He looked for and saw both of these
in his Master's life as well.
His Language
Swami Vivekananda used simple
language in presenting to us the profoundest philosophical truths.
It makes us forget or ignore what a scholar he was. It would
be an injustice to call his style "popular": for it
was never shallow. It was clear, direct, uncomplicated and appealing.
Wherever he went among his own people, the peasants loved him
just as much as the statesmen. Boatmen on the river would watch
for his return; servants would dispute with guests for the chance
to do him service. Swamiji spoke constantly of how the future
would belong to "women and the masses", and described
his presentation as an attempt to put the highest Vedantic truths
so simply that a child could understand them. This, the speaker
who at both Harvard and Columbia was asked to take the position
of guest lecturer in philosophy and Sanskrit! We have to realize
that he had read widely and so retentive was his memory that
he could give the substance of whole pages of his favorite reading
-- the encyclopedia -- or repeat verbatim something he had heard
only twice. At Belur Math he urged upon the young trainees the
study of the latest researches and critical methods in sciences
and letters as well as religion. Because of his popular, unprofessorial
style the academic world, East and West, has not appreciated
Swami Vivekananda; you would not find his name in the bibliographies
of the textbooks on Hinduism, and one is ashamed to say that
even great men of the "Hindu Renaissance", who freely
used his ideas and insights, felt, for various reasons, that
they could not afford to acknowledge the source.
We come, finally, to that paradox
which may be the most important of all, the traditionalist versus
the innovator -- the orthodox Hindu and the Promethean proletarian.
Swamiji was both a preserver of the past and a harbinger of the
future; truth for him did not depend on whether it was old or
new. You recall that in ancient Greece, mythology told of a monster
called Scylla and a whirlpool called Charybdis, with ships having
to ply narrowly between the two. Now when Swami Vivekananda returned
to India this is what he said: "There are the two great
obstacles on our path in India, the Scylla of old orthodoxy and
the Charybdis of modern European civilization. Of these two I
vote for the old orthodoxyfor the old orthodox man may be ignorant,
but he has strength and stands on his own feet." Yet the
Swami himself was in many ways unorthodox. He saw the Indians
of his day as chained -- by superstitions, by political subjugation,
by sheer tamas. He would shock them by crossing the seas,
eating food from a Muslim vendor, bringing Western students into
high-caste homes, challenging outmoded ideas. He told pupils
of a Calcutta art school, "Why do you always have to represent
Kali in exactly the same way: same pose, same ornaments, same
expression; where is your creativity?" Asked about socialism,
the political rage of the day, he replied, "Why not? Let
it be tried. Half a loaf is better than no bread!"
With all that, his reverence for
the Vedas is extraordinary, beyond question; his respect for
and delight in the tirthas, the places of pilgrimage is
incomparable; he vehemently upholds homage to the line of teachers,
and as a result of his Master's revelations he finally places
himself at the feet of the Hindu gods as well. His conversations
were filled with new ideas relating to the problems of
man -- and particularly of woman -- for he was a pro-feminist
and deeply dyed with Western humanism; yet he could give this
message to the women of modern times: "If, in the midst
of your new tasks, in office, school or kitchen, you will remember
now and then to say 'Siva! Siva!', that will be worship enough."
Yet again, he said, "I am
no preacher of momentary social reform. I am not trying to remedy
evils. I only ask you to follow the ways of your ancestors and
realize more and more fully the Vedantic ideal. But this must
be brought down out of the caves and monasteries and into the
huts of the cobblers and fishermen." And he felt, you know,
that it was in America that Advaita could come into its own.
So let me close by saying that
if Swami Vivekananda seems to you to be plagued by contradictions,
remember, it is as if he were experimenting with different brands
of Hinduism, to the very end. He placed the stress where he
knew it was needed. "A foolish consistency, " Emerson
reminds us, "is the hobgoblin of little minds." There
was nothing little about Vivekananda. Again, he is paradoxical
because Hinduism itself is paradoxical, and he was the embodiment
of it.
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