Swami Vivekananda

Narendranath Datta was born in Calcutta on 12 January 1863, into a kayastha family of means and argument. As a young man he was restless, musical, athletic, and unconvinced by easy piety. He met Sri Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar and was undone by him: the saint who could be a child, a devotee, and a knower of Brahman in the same afternoon. After Ramakrishna’s death in 1886, Narendra took sannyasa as Vivekananda and wandered India as a monk, seeing famine, princely courts, and the Himalaya.

In 1893 he spoke at the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago. The turbaned monk who opened with ‘Sisters and brothers of America’ became, almost overnight, the public face of Vedanta in the West. He taught that the soul is already free; that weakness is a habit of identification; that the Hindu, the Christian, and the Muslim drink from one ocean. He lectured, founded Vedanta societies, and refused to let Advaita become an excuse for sitting still while people starved.

Back in India he established the Ramakrishna Mission in 1897 — monks who would both meditate and serve. He set out the four yogas as four valid doors: jnana (knowledge), bhakti (devotion), karma (selfless work), and raja (meditation). Strength was a spiritual medicine. ‘Arise, awake’ was not a slogan for the young only. It was the reversal of the inner slump that calls itself humility.

He died at Belur Math on 4 July 1902, at thirty-nine. The Mission remains. So does the demand: you are the Atman — now do the next honest piece of work as the Divine.