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Teachings and philosophy of Swami Vivekananda


Swami Vivekananda was a Hindu monk from India. He played significant role in the growing Indian nationalism of the 19th and 20th century, reinterpreting and harmonising certain aspects of Hinduism. His teachings and philosophy applied this reinterpretation to various aspects of education, faith, character building as well as social issues pertaining to India, and was also instrumental in introducing Yoga to the west.

According to Vivekananda a country's future depends on its people, stating that "man-making is my mission." Religion plays a central role in this man-making, stating "to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life."

Vivekananda played a major role in the growing Indian nationalism in the late 19th and the 20th century, encouraging many Indians with his success and appeal in the west. His example helped to build pride in India's cultural and religious heritage, and to stand up against the British colonial system.

Swami Vivekananda believed that India is the blessed punyabhumi, the "land of virtue":

".. the land where humanity has attained its highest towards generosity, towards purity, towards calmness, above all, the land of introspection and of spirituality - it is India. "

According to Swami Vivekananda it is coordinated willpower that leads to independence. He gave the British colonial system as an example, with forty millions of Englishmen ruling three hundred millions of people in India. According to Vivekananda, the forty millions put their wills together and that resulted infinite power, and that was the reason of their success. Vivekananda prescribed, to make a great future India the whole serest will lie in organization, accumulation of power, co-ordination of wills.

According to Vivekananda the Indian race never cared about physical wealth, although they acquired immense wealth.

Religion played a major role in Vivekananda's ideas. To Vivekananda religion was not only talk or doctrine or theory, but realization of the best and strongest powers within oneself. He said,

[I]t is being and becoming, not hearing or acknowledging; it is the whole soul becoming changed into what it believes." He also felt religion is the gist of all worship is to be pure and to do good to others.

According to Swami Vivekananda, religion is the idea which is raising the brute into man, and man unto God.

Vivekananda was deeply influenced by the Brahmo Samaj, and by his guru Ramakrishna, who regarded the Absolute and the relative reality to be nondual aspects of the same integral reality. According to Michael Taft, Ramakrishna reconciled the dualism of form and formless, regarding the Supreme Being to be both Personal and Impersonal, active and inactive. Ramakrishna:


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