The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 3/Lectures from Colombo to Almora/Reply to the Address of Welcome at Madura
REPLY TO THE ADDRESS OF WELCOME AT MADURA[1]
The Swami was presented with an address of welcome by the Hindus of Madura,
which read as follows:
Most Revered Swami,
We, the Hindu Public of Madura, beg to offer you our most heartfelt and
respectful welcome to our ancient and holy city. We realise in you a living
example of the Hindu Sannyasin, who, renouncing all worldly ties and
attachments calculated to lead to the gratification of the self, is worthily
engaged in the noble duty of living for others and endeavouring to raise the
spiritual condition of mankind. You have demonstrated in your own person
that the true essence of the Hindu religion is not necessarily bound up with
rules and rituals, but that it is a sublime philosophy capable of giving
peace and solace to the distressed and afflicted.
You have taught America and England to admire that philosophy and that
religion which seeks to elevate every man in the best manner suited to his
capacities and environments. Although your teachings have for the last three
years been delivered in foreign lands, they have not been the less eagerly
devoured in this country, and they have not a little tended to counteract
the growing materialism imported from a foreign soil.
India lives to this day, for it has a mission to fulfil in the spiritual
ordering of the universe. The appearance of a soul like you at the close of
this cycle of the Kali Yuga is to us a sure sign of the incarnation in the
near future of great souls through whom that mission will be fulfilled.
Madura, the seat of ancient learning, Madura the favoured city of the God
Sundareshwara, the holy Dwadashântakshetram of Yogis, lags behind no other
Indian city in its warm admiration of your exposition of Indian Philosophy
and in its grateful acknowledgments of your priceless services for humanity.
We pray that you may be blessed with a long life of vigour and strength and
usefulness.
The Swami replied in the following terms:
I wish I could live in your midst for several days and fulfil the conditions
that have just been pointed out by your most worthy Chairman of relating to
you my experiences in the West and the result of all my labours there for
the last four years. But, unfortunately, even Swamis have bodies; and the
continuous travelling and speaking that I have had to undergo for the last
three weeks make it impossible for me to deliver a very long speech this
evening. I will, therefore, satisfy myself with thanking you very cordially
for the kindness that has been shown to me, and reserve other things for
some day in the future when under better conditions of health we shall have
time to talk over more various subjects than we can do in so short a time
this evening. Being in Madura, as the guest of one of your well-known
citizens and noblemen, the Raja of Ramnad, one fact comes prominently to my
mind. Perhaps most of you are aware that it was the Raja who first put the
idea into my mind of going to Chicago, and it was he who all the time
supported it with all his heart and influence. A good deal, therefore, of
the praise that has been bestowed upon me in this address, ought to go to
this noble man of Southern India. I only wish that instead of becoming a
Raja he had become a Sannyasin, for that is what he is really fit for.
Wherever there is a thing really needed in one part of the world, the
complement will find its way there and supply it with new life. This is true
in the physical world as well as in the spiritual. If there is a want of
spirituality in one part of the world, and at the same time that
spirituality exists elsewhere, whether we consciously struggle for it or
not, that spirituality will find its way to the part where it is needed and
balance the inequality. In the history of the human race, not once or twice,
but again and again, it has been the destiny of India in the past to supply
spirituality to the world. We find that whenever either by mighty conquest
or by commercial supremacy different parts of the world have been kneaded
into one whole race and bequests have been made from one corner to the
other, each nation, as it were, poured forth its own quota, either
political, social, or spiritual. India's contribution to the sum total of
human knowledge has been spirituality, philosophy. These she contributed
even long before the rising of the Persian Empire; the second time was
during the Persian Empire; for the third time during the ascendancy of the
Greeks; and now for the fourth time during the ascendancy of the English,
she is going to fulfil the same destiny once more. As Western ideas of
organization and external civilisation are penetrating and pouring into our
country, whether we will have them or not, so Indian spirituality and
philosophy are deluging the lands of the West. None can resist it, and no
more can we resist some sort of material civilization from the West. A
little of it, perhaps, is good for us, and a little spiritualisation is good
for the West; thus the balance will be preserved. It is not that we ought to
learn everything from the West, or that they have to learn everything from
us, but each will have to supply and hand down to future generations what it
has for the future accomplishment of that dream of ages — the harmony of
nations, an ideal world. Whether that ideal world will ever come I do not
know, whether that social perfection will ever be reached I have my own
doubts; whether it comes or not, each one of us will have to work for the
idea as if it will come tomorrow, and as if it only depends on his work, and
his alone. Each one of us will have to believe that every one else in the
world has done his work, and the only work remaining to be done to make the
world perfect has to be done by himself. This is the responsibility we have
to take upon ourselves.
In the meanwhile, in India there is a tremendous revival of religion. There
is danger ahead as well as glory; for revival sometimes breeds fanaticism,
sometimes goes to the extreme, so that often it is not even in the power of
those who start the revival to control it when it has gone beyond a certain
length. It is better, therefore, to be forewarned. We have to find our way
between the Scylla of old superstitious orthodoxy and the Charybdis of
materialism — of Europeanism, of soullessness, of the so-called reform —
which has penetrated to the foundation of Western progress. These two have
to be taken care of. In the first place, we cannot become Western; therefore
imitating the Westerns is useless. Suppose you can imitate the Westerns,
that moment you will die, you will have no more life in you. In the second
place, it is impossible. A stream is taking its rise, away beyond where time
began, flowing through millions of ages of human history; do you mean to get
hold of that stream and push it back to its source, to a Himalayan glacier?
Even if that were practicable, it would not be possible for you to be
Europeanised. If you find it is impossible for the European to throw off the
few centuries of culture which there is in the West, do you think it is
possible for you to throw off the culture of shining scores of centuries? It
cannot be. We must also remember that in every little village-god and every
little superstition custom is that which we are accustomed to call our
religious faith. But local customs are infinite and contradictory. Which are
we to obey, and which not to obey? The Brâhmin of Southern India, for
instance, would shrink in horror at the sight of another Brahmin eating
meat; a Brahmin in the North thinks it a most glorious and holy thing to do
— he kills goats by the hundred in sacrifice. If you put forward your
custom, they are equally ready with theirs. Various are the customs all over
India, but they are local. The greatest mistake made is that ignorant people
always think that this local custom is the essence of our religion.
But beyond this there is a still greater difficulty. There are two sorts of
truth we find in our Shâstras, one that is based upon the eternal nature of
man — the one that deals with the eternal relation of God, soul, and nature;
the other, with local circumstances, environments of the time, social
institutions of the period, and so forth. The first class of truths is
chiefly embodied in our Vedas, our scriptures; the second in the Smritis,
the Puranas. etc. We must remember that for all periods the Vedas are the
final goal and authority, and if the Purânas differ in any respect from the
Vedas, that part of the Puranas is to be rejected without mercy. We find,
then, that in all these Smritis the teachings are different. One Smriti
says, this is the custom, and this should be the practice of this age.
Another one says, this is the practice of this age, and so forth. This is
the Âchâra which should be the custom of the Satya Yuga, and this is the
Achara which should be the custom of the Kali Yuga, and so forth. Now this
is one of the most glorious doctrines that you have, that eternal truths,
being based upon the nature of man, will never change so long as man lives;
they are for all times, omnipresent, universal virtues. But the Smritis
speak generally of local circumstances, of duties arising from different
environments, and they change in the course of time. This you have always to
remember that because a little social custom is going to be changed you are
not going to lose your religion, not at all. Remember these customs have
already been changed. There was a time in this very India when, without
eating beef, no Brahmin could remain a Brahmin; you read in the Vedas how,
when a Sannyasin, a king, or a great man came into a house, the best bullock
was killed; how in time it was found that as we were an agricultural race,
killing the best bulls meant annihilation of the race. Therefore the
practice was stopped, and a voice was raised against the killing of cows.
Sometimes we find existing then what we now consider the most horrible
customs. In course of time other laws had to be made. These in turn will
have to go, and other Smritis will come. This is one fact we have to learn
that the Vedas being eternal will be one and the same throughout all ages,
but the Smritis will have an end. As time rolls on, more and more of the
Smritis will go, sages will come, and they will change and direct society
into better channels, into duties and into paths which accord with the
necessity of the age, and without which it is impossible that society can
live. Thus we have to guide our course, avoiding these two dangers; and I
hope that every one of us here will have breadth enough, and at the same
time faith enough, to understand what that means, which I suppose is the
inclusion of everything, and not the exclusion. I want the intensity of the
fanatic plus the extensity of the materialist. Deep as the ocean, broad as
the infinite skies, that is the sort of heart we want. Let us be as
progressive as any nation that ever existed, and at the same time as
faithful and conservative towards our traditions as Hindus alone know how to
be.
In plain words, we have first to learn the distinction between the
essentials and the non-essentials in everything. The essentials are eternal,
the non-essentials have value only for a certain time; and if after a time
they are not replaced by something essential, they are positively dangerous.
I do not mean that you should stand up and revile all your old customs and
institutions. Certainly not; you must not revile even the most evil one of
them. Revile none. Even those customs that are now appearing to be positive
evils, have been positively life-giving in times past; and if we have to
remove these, we must not do so with curses, but with blessings and
gratitude for the glorious work these customs have done for the preservation
of our race. And we must also remember that the leaders of our societies
have never been either generals or kings, but Rishis. And who are the
Rishis? The Rishi as he is called in the Upanishads is not an ordinary man,
but a Mantra-drashtâ. He is a man who sees religion, to whom religion is not
merely book-learning, not argumentation, nor speculation, nor much talking,
but actual realization, a coming face to face with truths which transcend
the senses. This is Rishihood, and that Rishihood does not belong to any
age, or time, or even to sects or caste. Vātsyāyana says, truth must be
realised; and we have to remember that you, and I, and every one of us will
be called upon to become Rishis; and we must have faith in ourselves; we
must become world-movers, for everything is in us. We must see Religion face
to face, experience it, and thus solve our doubts about it; and then
standing up in the glorious light of Rishihood each one of us will be a
giant; and every word falling from our lips will carry behind it that
infinite sanction of security; and before us evil will vanish by itself
without the necessity of cursing any one, without the necessity of abusing
any one, without the necessity of fighting any one in the world. May the
Lord help us, each one of us here, to realise the Rishihood for our own
salvation and for that of others!
- Notes
- ↑ Spelt now as Madurai.