Resist Not Evil

“Resist Not Evil” is merely a three lettered phrase. Swamiji explained this in great details in his discourse of Karmayoga in the collection of Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. However, conventional belief teaches that highest moral is non-resistance. Non-resistance implies no resistance to anything that comes to your way. Of course practically in today’s world that hardly makes any sense but that’s the living ideal for a better world! Here he says “resist not evil”. Swamiji himself asking to offer resistance (However, he has credited his belief, as he almost always does, to those wise sages who taught him on his journey). But there is a rider to this and I believe that’s what makes it so rich in this context. That’s ‘not evil’ – implying that in the process don’t commit any sin, don’t do anything bad.

Got reminded of anybody? The man whom the “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever walked upon this earth in flesh and blood”. The man who offered resistance of highest order and no evil at all and what he achieved is what we are today! So a phrase, like this, which in first reading appears to be religious diction has been tested and certified by none other than Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. I put this great example in the very beginning of this article because that will evince everything that Swamiji explained in his article.

Non-resistance is understood as the highest order of ideal. In his words - “if a certain number of us attempted to put this maxim fully into practice, the whole social fabric would fall to pieces. Even only if one day of such non-resistance were practiced, it would fall to disaster. This seems to us to be the highest ideal; yet to teach this doctrine only would be equivalent to condemning a vast portion of mankind. Not only so, it would be making men feel that they were always doing wrong, and cause in them scruples of conscience in all their actions.”

“Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. He who has no faith in himself can never have faith in God. Therefore, the only alternative remaining to us is to recognize that duty and morality vary under different circumstances; not that the man who resists evil is doing what is always and in itself wrong, but that in the different circumstances in which he is placed it may become even his duty to resist evil.”

“… We must always be careful about what we really mean when we speak of this non-resistance and ideal love. We must first take care to understand whether we have the power of resistance or not. Then, having the power, if we renounce it and do not resist, we are doing a grand act of love; but if we cannot resist, and yet, at the same time, try to deceive ourselves into the belief that we are actuated by motives of the highest love, we are doing the exact opposite. Arjuna became a coward at the sight of the mighty array against him; his "love" made him forget his duty towards his country and king. That is why Shri Krishna told him that he was a hypocrite: Thou talkest like a wise man, but thy actions betray thee to be a coward; therefore stand up and fight!”

Hato va prapsyasi svargaa / jitva va bhokyase mahim

Tasmad uttistha kaunteya / yuddhaya krta-nischayah

‘O Kaunteya, if you are killed in the battle you will attain heaven, and if you are victorious you will enjoy this earthly kingdom. Therefore, stand up and fight with determination.’

Wherever and whenever he speaks, it’s a sheer audacity and sacrilegious blasphemy to say anything. Therefore I am ashamed. However, I am just trying to think aloud by jotting down my points to get some picture of it. So coming back to the point in discussion, killing seems an evil of highest order! Now think of those soldiers who die fighting and killing the enemies for a greater cause – that’s the nation, us. That’s the circumstances. Now if a policeman kills somebody in some encounter following some political agenda or some personal vendetta, it’s a different circumstance and therefore a terrible sin.

Coming back to our independence, who was right in his approach Gandhiji, Tilak and other satyagrahis or the fugitive forces of Netaji, Bhagat Singh and other revolutionary activists? The comparison is pointless? Simply because they were all freedom fighters and performing their duties in their own circumstances. One was more focused on ‘not evil’ and others were more focused on ‘resistance’. That’s perhaps the only difference.

Needless to say, we can make an attempt to practice it in our own way – at home, on road, in office and most importantly against ourselves. We might be able to resist almost anybody and everybody but one – that’s ourselves. Resisting the temptation of the most delicious dishes or the lecherous look at somebody on road or the thought of telling a lie to avoid an untoward situation – we have got so many things to resist and yet hardly we need to commit any evil in doing that!

Experimentation Continues

His childhood experimentation with all dogmatic practices continued. He was very touched with the concept of untouchables. His father's drawing room had several hookahs. There were two queues - one for the upper classes and the other for the so called lower class people. He tasted all the hookahs one by one and went back to his father to tell him that nothing he realized had changed his caste. Later at the Dharmasabha (Parliament) he explains his position regarding caste in Hindu religion. He said these are prevalent practices in society and should not be associated with any religion. Like caste in India you have apartheid. This has brought the whole world today to think of reforming the society through religion.

A little background of his family would surprise many people. But I think the set-up was completely fabricated for him to experiment with his own life.

His father Mr. Biswanath Dutta was a man of virtue, discipline and humanity. Being magistrate in those days brought him sufficient financial stability. However, this also made him become a little profligate. But the thing that influenced Vivekananda the most was that he was an ardent follower of the “Brahmmo” society which sprouted in Kolkata as a substitute to idolatry system of Hinduism and non-spiritual aspect of Christianity.

On the other hand his mother Bhubaneswari Debi, though not very highly learned, knew all the scriptures of Puranas. So Vivekananda learnt whole of Mahabharata, Ramayana and Vedas from her. They say that his mother prayed for Vivekananda from lord Vireshwara of Kashi.

There is another important thing that people tend to miss out about him is that his grandfather Bhagabanchandra had abandoned his family at some early stage of his life in quest of God.

So father though virtuous an atheist, mother a perfect devotee, and grandfather a sannyas. This influenced his young mind very deeply. He could neither defy his mother's devotion, nor his father's conviction on atheism nor a hermit's effortless sacrifice.

His early age impression of Ramayana made him a worshipper of Rama and Sita. However, as he understood the pain of bondage more and more and the freedom of a hermit he replaced them with an idol of Sivji. At his early young age he used to regularly visit several institutions of Brahmmo society in search of spirituality. However soon he realized that something was missing in their whole discussion. Whosoever had any discourse on religion he asked them whether they had seen God! All of them had some roundabout answer which he could not understand.

The very thought that god does not exist at all puzzled him very much. Denial of anything entails that thing to exist at some point of time if not at present. A mere negation was not sufficient to quench a heart that was seeking out for an absolute truth. Later on he postulated this hypothesis in his own words.

“In the first place, all religions admit that, apart from the body which perishes, there is a certain part or something which does not change like the body, a part that is immutable, eternal, that never dies; but some of the later religions teach that although there is a part of us that never dies, it had a beginning. But anything that has a beginning must necessarily have an end. We — the essential part of us — never had a beginning, and will never have an end. And above us all, above this eternal nature, there is another eternal Being, without end — God. People talk about the beginning of the world, the beginning of man. The word beginning simply means the beginning of the cycle. It nowhere means the beginning of the whole Cosmos. It is impossible that creation could have a beginning. No one of you can imagine a time of beginning. That which has a beginning must have an end.”

The journey and the search went on. However, the plot was made a little different. All his answers were lying in some different corner of the world with a sage who was popularly known in those days as “Kshyapa Thakur” (insane sage).

Vivekananda had learnt about this man once in his F.A. class in General Assemblies Institution when Professor Hastie mentioned that as Wordsworth gets submerged with the nature seeing her beauty, Ramakrishna is the only other person who becomes inseparable when worshipping. Only a pure soul and an integrated concentration can help one achieve this state. This definitely was quite inspiring for him however he did not quite like this being compared to Wordsworth. But somewhere it marked an impression on him.

It was November 1881; Thakur Ramakrishna was coming to the house of one of his disciples Surendranath Dutta who used to be the neighbor of Vivekananda. Vivekananda got an invitation on this occasion to sing in the evening gathering. The first scene of the play was getting unfurled; the two great souls of our age were meeting each other. But ironically it’s only the master who knew about it, the servant was still ignorant and experimenting.

Age Four: Soul trains the body

In my first blog I shall try to justify the name of the blog.

He being Swamiji, my job becomes even more easier . Most living mates Hindus or not, theists or not, believers or not realize that nobody else has traversed all five dimensions (length, breadth, depth, time and space) of this universe except him. None of his theological principles is in dissonance with the modern science. I shall go on to provide with several examples in due course to show how he has tested his life through several ordeals to accept or reject a belief - a Hindu belief. At times he has been brave enough to accept the inability to comprehend certain aspects that could not have a logical explanation.

He was four or five years of age. By then, he had already set in his journey towards the truth. A soul in quest can not keep the body in rest. So Bile (nickname of Narendranath Dutta who was later named by his "Madrassi" disciples as Swami Vivekananda) was quite unrest all the time. To keep him at home, somebody (mother) at his home once said that the banyan tree at the corner of the house sheltered lots of monsters. He climbed the tree and spent the whole night to test it out.

This is a very famous story. Anybody who knows him, knows the story. At least that's true in Bengal. There are two points that draw our attention - his age and his mother.

No normal (biological or just logical) explanation would explain why a five year old had to do such an act. Some people of today might try to correlate this to the experience with their kids at home who imitate some super heroes like Shaktiman, Batman etc. However, he was neither testing his valor nor satisfying his ego.

He has been known to be an ardent worshiper of his mother. "I am indebted to my mother for the efflorescence of my knowledge". A boy goes on to defy his mother (if not, presumably somebody of her respect) to test out the truth.

'Searching the truth' is no doubt the logical explanation of the act. However, a deeper search reveals that it was merely a process of making a "mahatma". A soul was trying to detach a body from the materialistic webbing (which he calls "Maya" at later stage) of this world at such early age.

Fear and mother (love), the extreme negative and the positive forms of attachment of a human being were challenged for the truth - though not the absolute truth. This was just the beginning of the end journey of a near-perfect soul which was waiting itself to find one with the perfect soul - 'the Brahaman".