Practical Vedanta – An Introduction

Page 1 of 6

Practical Vedanta – An Introduction

What is Vedanta?

Since time immemorial, human energy has tried to express itself on two spheres

of activity. One has been on the external sphere. The other has been in the internal

sphere. While the outcome of the former has been Art & Science, the latter resulted in

mystical experience of the core of human existence. While the former was the forte of the

West, India has been the stronghold of the latter. And this entire body of mystical

experience has been termed as Vedanta. Many of the best brains of the land dedicated

their entire lives for this research into their own consciousness. All their efforts were

recorded. All their findings too were recorded. It must be admitted that these ancient

Indians had a different view of time & history and hence we do not find any mention of

dates. Nor is there any reference to contemporary events, natural or political, which

could help us infer their approximate dates. Nevertheless, the method of recording the

efforts & the findings is nothing short of an elaborate laboratory manual. These records

have been called the Upanishad.

It has often been contended that the Upanishads propagate a particular

philosophy. Philosophers in India have gone to great lengths to hammer out their pet

philosophies from the seemingly incoherent recordings in the Upanishads. Thus, the

same entries of the Upanishads have been used by Shankara to explain his Advaita

Vedanta Philosophy, while Madhva does so for his Dvaita Vedanta Philosophy and

Ramanuja does the same for his Qualified-Advaita Philosophy. Each of these

philosophies gave rise to innumerable schools within the main body of the philosophy;

and as is common in India, from each of those schools in turn blossomed out hundreds

of religious sects. It is important to note that all of them use the very same Upanishad

mantras to justify their lines of thought & arguments. What exactly do the Upanishad

mantras signify then? Which of these philosophies are true? Or in other words, which of

these sects is Universal?

While talking to Indians at Lahore on the ‘Common Bases of Hinduism’, Swami

Vivekananda himself clarifies this question. He says, “There are certain principles which

are common to all sects that call themselves Hindu. Firstly, we believe the Vedas to be

the eternal teachings of the secrets of religion. Secondly, we all believe in God, the

creating and preserving power of the whole universe. [Of course, while some hold that

God is entirely Personal, some others believe that God is Personal but not human, while

a few believe that God is entirely Impersonal]. Thirdly, we all agree in the theory of

Samsara and the eternity of souls. [Nature & man were not created at any point of time.]

Fourthly, we all accept that soul is essentially the spirit, pure & perfect, infinite &

blissful. Fifthly, all of us believe that religion means realization, and nothing short of it.”

So, although there seems to be cacophony in all these philosophies & sects in

India, Swami Vivekananda showed us that there was underlying unity among them in

these five ideas. Now what about the question as to which of these schools is universal?

Swami Vivekananda proposed a new concept that answers this question. He says that

there is a definite gradation in the different Vedanta philosophies that have been

propounded over the ages. If we consider a spectrum of ideas from gross to the subtle,

then, a clear hierarchy will be discerned among the different Vedanta Philosophies with

Practical Vedanta – An Introduction

Page 2 of 6

Materialism & Advaita at the extremes, and all others occupying their positions in

between. And this entire spectrum of ideas constitutes Vedanta. Hence, Swamiji

contends that while no one single school of thought or sect can claim to be Universal,

Vedanta as a whole can certainly claim to be Universal.

Meaning of the term ‘Practical’:

The general use of this word is to indicate something that is useful. It is also

generally used to mean that an idea can be translated into some action instead of

remaining in the form of mere frothy words.

Indian Religion has always had to face this onslaught from the western mind. The

Western Religion [mainly Christianity] had a great ‘practical’ purpose. It was a politically

unifying force. The Cross actually unified the different warring tribes in Europe into

great kingdoms. Under the benign rule of these great kingdoms arose subsequent social

& scientific developments. Later on, commerce flourished. Again the Christian religion

bolstered the endeavors of the Joint Stock Companies and guided by the Protestant Ethic

of frugality & hard-work, the world saw an unprecedented growth of economic power.

Thus the Western people were quite justified in questioning the utility of the Indian

Religion.

What purpose did the Indian Religion serve? It could not bring political unity

among them. It could not bring social & scientific growth among them. It could not bring

economic prosperity among them. Was it then a liability on the society? Would it be

better to throw all Indian religious ideas overboard and turn to other ‘practical’

religions?

Swami Vivekananda showed that this word ‘Practical’ has some interesting colors

when used with respect to religion. The so-called consequences of religion that Europe

derived from religion, which they termed as the practicality of their religion, had nothing

to do with religion per se. The political advancements, military successes & economic

prosperity were actually the outcome of social awareness in Europe. Christianity was

able to achieve social cohesion in Europe, and these followed from that social cohesion.

In India, people lack social cohesion and hence there is backwardness in political,

military & economic areas. But these have nothing to do with religion. What then is

practicality with respect to religion?

Swami Vivekananda says, “Religion means realization of the spiritual

ideal.” And that religion can be termed the most practical that helps in this realization

of the spiritual ideal in man.

We may need to stop and understand the importance of this statement.

Realization of the spiritual ideal is the central idea here. Religion doesn’t mean

realization in general parlance. Even World Religions like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism,

Judaism, etc. do not insist that you need to realize the spiritual ideal by making use of

their teachings. Most religions have some specific ideas, which are called ‘Dogma’. You

need to accept these ideas without questioning their rationality. Accepting the dogmas of

religions makes you religious. This is what all religions, even the World Religions

profess. Not so with Swami Vivekananda. He says that you are religious only if you have

realized the spiritual ideal in yourself.

Practical Vedanta – An Introduction

Page 3 of 6

The spiritual ideal:

This brings up the question – what is the spiritual ideal? Is it always a singular

ideal? Aren’t there more than one spiritual ideal? Let us try to answer these questions.

Man is a composite of body, mind and consciousness. Every person has a sense of

individual identity. Where is the locus of this individuality? What part of a man is his

essence? Sages of ancient India, people who dedicated their entire life’s energy to

discovering this truth have proclaimed that the essence of man is consciousness. This is a

staggering, paradigm-altering proclamation. Why? Because, in our daily experience, we

don’t feel this is so. We all feel we are the body. If the body is hurt, we feel we are hurt.

We all feel we are the mind. If our ideas are laughed at, if our feelings are trifled with, we

feel hurt. As regards consciousness, yes, we all feel we are conscious; but, then, nothing

more about it. We never feel that we are consciousness itself. Since we never feel that we

are consciousness itself, this proclamation of the Indian sages seems preposterous!

However, this is the greatest benefit that the Indian Religion – Hinduism – [or

Vedanta, as Swami Vivekananda calls it] confers on us. This is a fact that Vedanta claims

is its discovery. “Srunvantu Vishwe…Vedahametam Purusham Mahantam” it says.

Which means – “Listen, everyone…I have discovered the essence of my being.” A

particular sage, now unknown, but definitely one of the greatest persons to have walked

on Earth, discovered that the essence of his personality was neither the body, nor the

mind, but pure consciousness! And that is the spiritual ideal. Since the essence has to be

singular, the spiritual ideal has always to be one and not two or more.

This being cleared, we shall again turn our attention to the term ‘Practicality’ with

respect to religion.

Swami Vivekananda says that Vedanta specifies the spiritual ideal for us; it

presents a particular framework of ideas regarding Man, God & Universe that are in

consonance with this ideal; then it delineates a procedure by following which we can

realize this ideal in ourselves. And therefore, he says, Vedanta can justifiably be called a

most ‘practical’ religion.

Why the term Practical Vedanta?

From what we have explained above, it is clear that according to Swami

Vivekananda, Vedanta is the most practical religion. Now, if Vedanta is a practical

religion, why would he coin the term ‘Practical Vedanta’? It is would seem to be

tautology, since it would mean ‘Practical practical religion’!

In order to understand the probable reason why Swami Vivekananda coined that

term, we need to briefly study the history of Hinduism. The sages of the Vedic age busied

themselves with discovering facts related to man. All those attempts and their results

were recorded in what are now called ‘Upanishad’, as mentioned above in the first

section of this article. When the essence of man was discovered, there remained nothing

more to discover regarding man. Then the Indian genius started formulating

philosophies that would string as many of these truths as possible in a logical fashion.

Basically, a philosophy has to explain three issues – Man, God & Universe. Many

philosophies were hammered out over the ages in India, each trying to best explain the

wonderful truths enshrined in the Upanishad. Of all of them, the most logical one has

Practical Vedanta – An Introduction

Page 4 of 6

been Advaita Vedanta. Acharya Shankara has been generally hailed as the formulator of

this philosophy.

So, what we have seen up to now is this – first some truths were discovered. Then

came the formulation of a philosophy that was logically tenable. But, the peculiarity of

India has been that things never stopped at this stage. The circle had to be completed.

Using that philosophy, anyone should be able to re-discover those truths for oneself. So

anyone who formulated a philosophy here had to draw up a scheme of ethical & religious

practices that would enable the votary to reach to the empyrean state from which the

ancient, unknown Indian sage had proclaimed, “Srunvantu Vishwe…Vedahametam

Purusham Mahantam”.

Just as everyone had done before him, and just as everyone has done after him,

Acharya Shankara too spelled out a ‘Praxis’ related to Advaita Vedanta. The crux of this

praxis has been ‘Renounce all activity’. Such was the force of his personality over the

Indians that for over a thousand years, Acharya Shankara’s methods of thinking & the

ethical & religious procedures he popularized, colored every school of mainstream

religious thought. As a result, two things happened.

Firstly, religion became more and more remote, out of reach, as far as the man in

society was concerned. If anyone was interested in religion, he had to take to

monasticism. For the married man of the world, there remained only some vague rituals.

Moreover, religion became heavily encrypted into social norms for the man of the world.

Why? Because he was unable to renounce all activity, without which he was debarred

from hardcore religion!

Secondly, the nation became mired in a confusion of interests. How did this

happen? Since activity itself was considered as an obstacle to the higher aspirations of

life, people who engaged in activity in the world did so with lot of guilt, not

wholeheartedly, but always feeling that they were compromising with the highest ideals

of religion. So, the incentive for active work disappeared from Indian society. Thus began

the famous 1000 years of darkness in India.

Swami Vivekananda was able to diagnose the national malady with great

precision. He said that it was wrong to blame Advaita Vedanta or Acharya Shankara [or

even Buddha] for India’s degradation. Despite the phenomenal national fiasco in the

wake of popularizing Advaita Vedanta, the Vedanta was wrong, neither as religion nor as

philosophy. Of course, a correction was needed. And that he presented in the form of his

now famous ‘Practical Vedanta’.

Practical Vedanta: what is it?

So what exactly is this ‘Practical Vedanta’? Is it a new concept given by Swami

Vivekananda?

In a way, yes, it is indeed something entirely new. We shall try to explain how this

is so.

Vedanta was accessible only to people who had sufficient knowledge of Sanskrit.

This was because the Upanishad and the later text books on Vedanta were all couched in

that archaic language. And Sanskrit education was accessible to mainly those from the

upper class of the caste system who formed a miniscule percentage of the entire society.

Thus, even an intellectual understanding of Vedanta was unavailable for the masses.

Practical Vedanta – An Introduction

Page 5 of 6

Swami Vivekananda threw open this gold mine of Vedanta literature by allowing it to be

translated into the local vernaculars and into English and other foreign languages. Thus

Vedanta was brought down from the empyrean heights of the Himalayas onto the plains

below where the multitudes live their daily life. Thus the Vedanta was brought down

from the ivory towers of the elite into the homes, classrooms, factories and shops of the

common man. While all along, Vedanta was meant to cater only to a handful of elite in

the land of its discovery, Swami Vivekananda presented it in a form that made sense to

the man busy in everyday society.

Long ago, Acharya Shankara had already established, using his polemical

philosophy, that all men are essentially the spirit. He had also established that Spirit

alone exists; anything else you may see or perceive is but a wrong reading of the divine.

As we explained just a little while before, due to various exigencies of history, this grand

philosophy could not get translated into a meaningful social practice. Swami

Vivekananda said, “If all men & living beings are indeed the same divine being [which is

established by logical reasoning, pragmatic experience & as the final conclusion of the

Upanishad], then, we will have to interact with them as one divine being interacts with

other divine beings. If divinity is all that exists, then this world that we see as Evil,

impinging on us day & night [and therefore worthy of being renounced] has to be

worshipped as such, for, doesn’t the divine being deserve to be worshipped? This change

in our behavior has to start right now and has nothing to do with monasticism or formal

renunciation of activity or any such thing. If we truly believe in the conclusions

presented by Advaita Vedanta, then that belief has to be reflected in our behavior right

now, right here.” The ideal of Vedanta must cover the whole field of life and must enter

into all our thoughts and find expression in all our actions. This is the gist of Practical

Vedanta.

In a nutshell, Swami Vivekananda seems to point out that Advaita Vedanta needs

to be worked out right now, right here. No further conditions are to be imposed. One

doesn’t necessarily need to renounce activity in order to realize the ideal presented by

Vedanta. An all-renouncing monk can realize this ideal [which has been demonstrated

repeatedly over the ages], but so can anyone who wishes to do so, no matter what his

social standing is. Be he a student, a farmer, a baker, blacksmith, a leader, a monk, if he

wishes, and applies himself rightly to it, he can realize the ideal presented by Vedanta.

This is the gist of Practical Vedanta.

It has been traditionally claimed that formal renunciation is a sine-qua-non for

realizing divinity, in India. On the contrary, Swami Vivekananda goes on to specify that

people who are actively involved in the activities of this world stand a better chance of

realizing the ideal of Vedanta! Why is that so? Because, by deifying the world, by deifying

all living beings, and by working in this deified world and interacting with these deified

persons, you clearly have a greater chance of realizing the ideal than you have by

meditating on the conscious core of your being for an hour and a half every day. Just do

the arithmetic yourself and see. For how long in a day can you engage in ritualistic

worship in a puja-room? Or for how long in a day can you truly meditate in a formal

manner on divinity within yourself? Assuming that you are totally unencumbered by all

worldly cares and duties, it simply cannot be done for more than a couple of hours in a

day, in most cases. Now, this apotheosis that Swami Vivekananda presents before you

Practical Vedanta – An Introduction

Page 6 of 6

allows you to engage in a sustained meditation on divinity for hours at a stretch. This is

the gist of Practical Vedanta.

A new ideal for mankind:

The above deliberation certainly might have given you the impression that Swami

Vivekananda’s contribution to religion has been in providing a vital shift in the emphasis

of the Vedanta philosophy and its praxis. Many of you may have concluded that he did

not add anything substantially new to Vedanta. All he did was to change the emphasis of

Vedanta praxis from the individual to the community, which was no doubt necessitated

by the zeitgeist. In fact this is the popular view regarding this great person today.

We beg to differ.

We hold that Swami Vivekananda formulated his Practical Vedanta as a

consequence of something of much greater, much deeper significance than a mere need

to correct the course of Indian history. Let us try to explain this stand of ours very

briefly. [Details of this aspect of Practical Vedanta will be explained in a later article.]

Persons like Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda do not merely re-

emphasize the conclusions of the past ages. They show new ideals to mankind and cleave

out new paths for mankind to reach there.

We hold that Sri Ramakrishna placed a new ideal for mankind of this age. What

is that new ideal? Is it different from the spiritual ideal that Vedanta places before us?

[As explained earlier, there can only be one spiritual ideal, that which Vedanta specifies;

there cannot be any other spiritual ideal; secular ideals, on the other hand, can be many.]

The new ideal that Sri Ramakrishna has shown us is like this – we all have but one goal

before us; Vedanta has specified that for us; all religions too specify the same ideal,

although using different sets of words; and that ideal is to realize that our essence is pure

consciousness. What Sri Ramakrishna showed us is - ‘Once you realize that you are the

pure consciousness, you can use that realization to enhance your life and the lives of

those associated with you in myriad forms.’ Thus, a new ‘type’ of person is presented to

us here. Sri Ramakrishna himself was the first and best example of that new type. He

used a term to signify that new ideal – the Vijnani. And the associated mystical state

that manifested as this new type of man was termed as Bhavamukha by him.

Although Sri Ramakrishna presented a new ideal for us, there still remained the

work of working out a full-fledged philosophy that explains Man, God & Universe in

accordance with this new ideal. Then there was the need of Praxis, what is called in

Sanskrit as ‘Sadhana Pranaali’, a scheme of practices that will lift us from where we

stand now to the state of the new ideal. Swami Vivekananda has done both these things

for us. Scattered in his lectures, letters, articles, poems and conversations are a blueprint

for the philosophy that is in consonance with the new ideal. And the name he gave to the

Sadhana associated with this new ideal is ‘Practical Vedanta’.

***************** Swami Vedatitananda

Ramakrishna Mission Shilpamandira

Belur Math