What Is Vedanta?
Vedanta teaches the liberation of the Self.
The fundamental teaching of Vedanta is that all that exists is divine and that the goal of human life is to realize and manifest this divinity within. The compound word Veda+anta means the culmination or goal of the Vedas. The Vedas are the world’s oldest sacred scriptures, which record the experiences of India’s ancient sages. These sages experienced the unified, divine reality of the entire universe and thus propounded the doctrine of Oneness. Vedanta is not faith-based; it is experience-based. Vedanta teaches us to awaken that universal divinity within our own hearts.
The Yogas
There are different paths one can take to manifest the divinity within. These paths are called Yogas. There are broadly four Yogas:
1) Bhakti-Yoga—path of devotion to God.
2) Raja-Yoga—path of concentration and meditation.
3) Jnana-Yoga—path of knowledge; and
4) Karma-Yoga—path of selfless action.
The human personality is a combination of all these faculties, one generally being predominant. And the aspirant is instructed to use all the Yoga paths for a harmonious development of spirituality. Swami Vivekananda, who was a great Yogi, says, “I have a clear light now, free from all hocus-pocus. I want to give them dry, hard reason, softened in the sweetest syrup of love and made spicy with intense work, and cooked in the kitchen of Yoga, so that even a baby can easily digest it.”
The harmony of religions is inherent in Vedanta.
The Rig Veda declares, “Truth is one; sages call it by different names”. This truth or God can be reached through different spiritual paths or religions, practiced with sincerity. Sri Ramakrishna teaches: “God has made different religions to suit different aspirants, times, and countries. All doctrines are so many paths; but a path is by no means God Himself. Indeed, one can reach God if one follows any of the paths with whole-hearted devotion.”
Vedanta and Hinduism
Traditionally, Hinduism is called Vedic religion or Sanatana Dharma, Eternal Religion, for it is based on universal principles that are eternally true and are meant for all humankind. Vedanta is one of the six orthodox systems of Indian philosophy; the others are Sankhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, and Purva Mimamsa. As there was full religious freedom to experiment with Vedic truths, it resulted in a variety of streams of thought and traditions, that evolved over thousands of years. Each stream of religious thought could be called a religion by itself! Thus modern Hinduism is a collection of many traditions, philosophies, mythologies, rituals, ethics, and so on, but they are all rooted in the Vedas. Each system borrowed heavily from other traditions at times. Vedanta is one of the crest jewels of Hinduism, the fairest flower of superfine religious thought. Vedanta has three broad divisions—dualism, qualified non-dualism, and non-dualism.
One of the greatest exponents of the Vedic religion in modern times was Swami Vivekananda. He came as a delegate to the historic “Parliament of Religions” held in Chicago in 1893. It was he who first effectively preached Hinduism in the West. According to him, Hinduism should be called Vedantism. That is why he named the first Society he established in 1894 in North America as Vedanta Society of New York. In time other Vedanta Societies were established in the USA. The Vedanta Society of Western Washington in Seattle is one of them. In one of Swami Vivekananda’s letters he says, “The dry, abstract Advaita must become living—poetic—in everyday life; out of hopeless intricate mythology must come concrete moral forms; and out of bewildering Yogi-ism must come the most scientific and practical psychology—all this must be put in a form so that a child can grasp it. This is my life’s work.”
Vedanta teaches the liberation of the Self.
The fundamental teaching of Vedanta is that all that exists is divine and that the goal of human life is to realize and manifest this divinity within. The compound word Veda+anta means the culmination or goal of the Vedas. The Vedas are the world’s oldest sacred scriptures, which record the experiences of India’s ancient sages. These sages experienced the unified, divine reality of the entire universe and thus propounded the doctrine of Oneness. Vedanta is not faith-based; it is experience-based. Vedanta teaches us to awaken that universal divinity within our own hearts.
The Yogas
There are different paths one can take to manifest the divinity within. These paths are called Yogas. There are broadly four Yogas:
1) Bhakti-Yoga—path of devotion to God.
2) Raja-Yoga—path of concentration and meditation.
3) Jnana-Yoga—path of knowledge; and
4) Karma-Yoga—path of selfless action.
The human personality is a combination of all these faculties, one generally being predominant. And the aspirant is instructed to use all the Yoga paths for a harmonious development of spirituality. Swami Vivekananda, who was a great Yogi, says, “I have a clear light now, free from all hocus-pocus. I want to give them dry, hard reason, softened in the sweetest syrup of love and made spicy with intense work, and cooked in the kitchen of Yoga, so that even a baby can easily digest it.”
The harmony of religions is inherent in Vedanta.
The Rig Veda declares, “Truth is one; sages call it by different names”. This truth or God can be reached through different spiritual paths or religions, practiced with sincerity. Sri Ramakrishna teaches: “God has made different religions to suit different aspirants, times, and countries. All doctrines are so many paths; but a path is by no means God Himself. Indeed, one can reach God if one follows any of the paths with whole-hearted devotion.”
Vedanta and Hinduism
Traditionally, Hinduism is called Vedic religion or Sanatana Dharma, Eternal Religion, for it is based on universal principles that are eternally true and are meant for all humankind. Vedanta is one of the six orthodox systems of Indian philosophy; the others are Sankhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, and Purva Mimamsa. As there was full religious freedom to experiment with Vedic truths, it resulted in a variety of streams of thought and traditions, that evolved over thousands of years. Each stream of religious thought could be called a religion by itself! Thus modern Hinduism is a collection of many traditions, philosophies, mythologies, rituals, ethics, and so on, but they are all rooted in the Vedas. Each system borrowed heavily from other traditions at times. Vedanta is one of the crest jewels of Hinduism, the fairest flower of superfine religious thought. Vedanta has three broad divisions—dualism, qualified non-dualism, and non-dualism.
One of the greatest exponents of the Vedic religion in modern times was Swami Vivekananda. He came as a delegate to the historic “Parliament of Religions” held in Chicago in 1893. It was he who first effectively preached Hinduism in the West. According to him, Hinduism should be called Vedantism. That is why he named the first Society he established in 1894 in North America as Vedanta Society of New York. In time other Vedanta Societies were established in the USA. The Vedanta Society of Western Washington in Seattle is one of them. In one of Swami Vivekananda’s letters he says, “The dry, abstract Advaita must become living—poetic—in everyday life; out of hopeless intricate mythology must come concrete moral forms; and out of bewildering Yogi-ism must come the most scientific and practical psychology—all this must be put in a form so that a child can grasp it. This is my life’s work.”
