SRI RAMAKRISHNA
[1836-1886]
Sri Ramakrishna, who was born in 1836 and passed away in 1886, represents the very core of the spiritual realizations of the seers and sages of India. His whole life was literally an uninterrupted contemplation of God. He reached a depth of God-consciousness that transcends all time and place and has a universal appeal. Seekers of God of all religions feel irresistibly drawn to his life and teachings. Sri Ramakrishna, as a silent force, influences the spiritual thought currents of our time. He is a figure of recent history and his life and teachings have not yet been obscured by loving legends and doubtful myths. Through his God-intoxicated life Sri Ramakrishna proved that the revelation of God takes place at all times and that God-realization is not the monopoly of any particular age, country, or people. In him, deepest spirituality and broadest catholicity stood side by side. The God-man of nineteenth-century India did not found any cult, nor did he show a new path to salvation. His message was his God-consciousness. When God-consciousness falls short, traditions become dogmatic and oppressive and religious teachings lose their transforming power. At a time when the very foundation of religion, faith in God, was crumbling under the relentless blows of materialism and skepticism, Sri Ramakrishna, through his burning spiritual realizations, demonstrated beyond doubt the reality of God and the validity of the time-honored teachings of all the prophets and saviors of the past, and thus restored the falling edifice of religion on a secure foundation. Drawn by the magnetism of Sri Ramakrishna's divine personality, people flocked to him from far and near -- men and women, young and old, philosophers and theologians, philanthropists and humanists, atheists and agnostics, Hindus and Brahmos, Christians and Muslims, seekers of truth of all races, creeds and castes. His small room in the Dakshineswar temple garden on the outskirts of the city of Calcutta became a veritable parliament of religions. Everyone who came to him felt uplifted by his profound God-consciousness, boundless love, and universal outlook. Each seeker saw in him the highest manifestation of his own ideal. By coming near him the impure became pure, the pure became purer, and the sinner was transformed into a saint. The greatest contribution of Sri Ramakrishna to the modern world is his message of the harmony of religions. To Sri Ramakrishna all religions are the revelation of God in His diverse aspects to satisfy the manifold demands of human minds. Like different photographs of a building taken from different angles, different religions give us the pictures of one truth from different standpoints. They are not contradictory but complementary. Sri Ramakrishna faithfully practiced the spiritual disciplines of different religions and came to the realization that all of them lead to the same goal. Thus he declared, "As many faiths, so many paths." The paths vary, but the goal remains the same. Harmony of religions is not uniformity; it is unity in diversity. It is not a fusion of religions, but a fellowship of religions based on their common goal -- communion with God. This harmony is to be realized by deepening our individual God-consciousness. In the present-day world, threatened by nuclear war and torn by religious intolerance, Sri Ramakrishna's message of harmony gives us hope and shows the way. May his life and teachings ever inspire us.
Sri Ramakrishna
Altar of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda
Center of New York
[ Statue by Malvina Hoffman ]
UNIVERSAL TEACHINGS OF SRI RAMAKRISHNA
SEE GOD IN ALL
I have now come to a stage of realization in which I see that God is walking in every human form and manifesting Himself alike through the sage and the sinner, the virtuous and the vicious. Therefore when I meet different people I say to myself, "God in the form of the saint, God in the form of the sinner, God in the form of the righteous, God in the form of the unrighteous."GOD IS WITHIN YOU
Do you know what I see? I see Him as all. Men and other creatures appear to me only as hollow forms, moving their heads and hands and feet, but within is the Lord Himself.PERSEVERE IN YOUR SEARCH FOR GOD
There are pearls in the deep sea, but one must hazard all to find them. If diving once does not bring you pearls, you need not therefore conclude that the sea is without them. Dive again and again. You are sure to be rewarded in the end. So is it with the finding of the Lord in this world. If your first attempt proves fruitless, do not lose heart. Persevere in your efforts. You are sure to realize Him at last.TRUST COMPLETELY IN GOD
What are you to do when you are placed in the world? Give up everything to Him, resign yourself to Him, and there will be no more trouble for you. Then you will come to know that everything is done by His will.LOVE OF GOD IS ESSENTIAL
Unalloyed love of God is the essential thing. All else is unreal.
SRI SARADA DEVI,
THE HOLY MOTHER
[1853 - 1920]"When Holy Mother came to Dakshineswar at the age of sixteen, Sri Ramakrishna asked her whether she had come to pull him down to a worldly life. Without hesitation she said, "No, I am here to help you realize your Chosen Ideal." From then on, Holy Mother lived with Sri Ramakrishna as his spiritual companion, devoted wife, disciple, and always the nun. She was the embodiment of purity. Her mind was never sullied by the faintest breath of worldliness, though she lived with Sri Ramakrishna for the greater part of fourteen years. She never missed communion with God, whom she described as lying in the palm of her hand, though she was engaged day and night in various activities.
"Holy Mother was an unusual awakener of souls. With her disciples she served as teacher, dissolving their doubts, as mother, who through love and compassion won their hearts, and as the Divinity, who assured them of liberation. Herself nearly illiterate, through simple words she taught them the most profound truths. Her affectionate maternal love tamed their rebellious spirits; but her great power lay in her solicitude for all. Often she said, "I am the Mother, who will look after them if not I ?" She encouraged them when they were depressed because of slow spiritual progress, and she took upon herself their sins and iniquities, suffering on that account.
"Holy Mother was conscious of her divine nature, but she rarely expressed this awareness. For many years Sri Ramakrishna practiced great austerities and formally renounced the world, but Holy Mother lived as a simple householder, surrounded by quarrelsome and greedy relatives. As a teacher she taught the realization of God alone is real, and everything else, impermanent. The human body so treasured by most people, survives cremations as only three pounds of ashes. Holy Mother -- humility itself -- claimed that she was in no way different from other devotees of the Master. Her disciples felt awed and uplifted when she blessed them by touching their head with the same hand which had touched the feet of God. She was fully aware of her disciples' present limitations and their future possibilities. No one went away from her with a downcast heart.
"The outstanding virtues of Indian womanhood are courage, serenity, self-control, sweetness, compassion, wisdom, and an intuitive relationship with God. Holy Mother possessed all these virtues. Since the acquisition of such gifts is the dream of all women, Holy Mother may aptly be seen as the symbol of aspiration of women everywhere."
-- Swami Nikhilananda
"Holy Mother and the Ideal of Indian Womanhood."
Published by Sri Ramakrishna Math, Madras, India.Holy Mother
Sri Sarada Devi
UNIVERSAL TEACHINGS OF HOLY MOTHER
SEE GOD IN ALL
If you want peace of mind, do not find fault with others. Rather see your own faults. Learn to make the whole world your own. No one is a stranger, my child; the whole world is your own.GOD IS WITHIN YOU
When one realizes God, He grants knowledge and illumination from within; one knows it oneself. In the fullness of one’s spiritual realization one will find that He who resides in one’s heart, resides in the hearts of others as well - the oppressed, the persecuted, the untouchable, and the outcast.PERSEVERE IN YOUR SEARCH FOR GOD
Continue to pray without losing heart. Everything will happen in time.TRUST COMPLETELY IN GOD
If anyone surrenders himself totally at his feet, the Master will see that everything is set right.LOVE OF GOD IS ESSENTIAL
One’s love of God depends entirely upon one’s inner feelings. Love of God is the essential thing.
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
[1863-1902]SWAMI VIVEKANANDA'S inspiring personality was well known both in India and in America during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth. The unknown monk of India suddenly leapt into fame at the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893, at which he represented Hinduism. His vast knowledge of Eastern and Western culture as well as his deep spiritual insight, fervid eloquence, brilliant conversation, broad human sympathy, colourful personality, and handsome figure made an irresistible appeal to the many types of Americans who came in contact with him. People who saw or heard Vivekananda even once still cherish his memory after a lapse of more than half a century.
In America Vivekananda's mission was the interpretation of India's spiritual culture, especially in its Vedantic setting. He also tried to enrich the religious consciousness of the Americans through the rational and humanistic teachings of the Vedanta philosophy. In America he became India's spiritual ambassador and pleaded eloquently for better understanding between India and the New World in order to create a healthy synthesis of East and West, of religion and science.
In his own motherland Vivekananda is regarded as the patriot saint of modern India and an inspirer of her dormant national consciousness, To the Hindus he preached the ideal of a strength-giving and man-making religion. Service to man as the visible manifestation of the Godhead was the special form of worship he advocated for the Indians, devoted as they were to the rituals and myths of their ancient faith. Many political leaders of India have publicly acknowledged their indebtedness to Swami Vivekananda.
The Swami's mission was both national and international. A lover of mankind, be strove to promote peace and human brotherhood on the spiritual foundation of the Vedantic Oneness of existence. A mystic of the highest order, Vivekananda had a direct and intuitive experience of Reality. He derived his ideas from that unfailing source of wisdom and often presented them in the soulstirring language of poetry.
The natural tendency of Vivekananda's mind, like that of his Master, Ramakrishna, was to soar above the world and forget itself in contemplation of the Absolute. But another part of his personality bled at the sight of human suffering in East and West alike. It might appear that his mind seldom found a point of rest in its oscillation between contemplation of God and service to man. Be that as it may, he chose, in obedience to a higher call, service to man as his mission on earth; and this choice has endeared him to people in the West, Americans in particular.
In the course of a short life of thirty-nine years (1863-1902), of which only ten were devoted to public activities-and those, too, in the midst of acute physical suffering-he left for posterity his four classics: Jnana-Yoga, Bhakti-Yoga, Karma-Yoga, and Raja-Yoga, all of which are outstanding treatises on Hindu philosophy. In addition, he delivered innumerable lectures, wrote inspired letters in his own hand to his many friends and disciples, composed numerous poems, and acted as spiritual guide to the many seekers, who came to him for instruction. He also organized the Ramakrishna Order of monks, which is the most outstanding religious organization of modern India. It is devoted to the propagation of the Hindu spiritual culture not only in the Swami's native land, but also in America and in other parts of the world.
Swami Vivekananda once spoke of himself as a "condensed India." His life and teachings are of inestimable value to the West for an understanding of the mind of Asia. William James, the Harvard philosopher, called the Swami the "paragon of Vedantists." Max Muller and Paul Deussen, the famous Orientalists of the nineteenth century, held him in genuine respect and affection. "His words," writes Romain Rolland, "are great music, phrases in the style of Beethoven, stirring rhythms like the march of Handel choruses. I cannot touch these sayings of his, scattered as they are through the pages of books, at thirty years' distance, without receiving a thrill through my body like an electric shock. And what shocks, what transports, must have been produced when in burning words they issued from the lips of the hero!''
NIKHILANANDA
Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center
New York
January 5, 1953UNIVERSAL TEACHINGS OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
Swami
Vivekananda
SEE GOD IN ALL
This is the gist of all worship - to be pure and to do good to others. He who sees Siva in the poor, in the weak, and in the diseased, really worships Siva, and if he sees Siva only in the image, his worship is but preliminary. He who has served and helped one poor man seeing Siva in him, without thinking of his cast, creed, or race, or anything, with him Siva is more pleased than with the man who sees Him only in temples.GOD IS WITHIN YOU
It is impossible to find God outside of ourselves. Our own souls contribute all of the divinity that is outside of us. We are the greatest temple. The objectification is only a faint imitation of what we see within ourselves.PERSEVERE IN YOUR SEARCH FOR GOD
To succeed, you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will. "I will drink the ocean," says the persevering soul, "at my will mountains will crumble up." Have that sort of energy, that sort of will, work hard, and you will reach the goal.TRUST COMPLETELY IN GOD
Stand up for God; let the world go.LOVE OF GOD IS ESSENTIAL
Giving up all other thoughts, with the whole mind day and night worship God. Thus being worshipped day and night, He reveals himself and makes His worshippers feel His presence.
HEADQUARTERS OF THE RAMAKRISHNA MATH AND MISSION
BELUR MATH, CALCUTTA, INDIA
Address: Ramakrishna Math & Mission Phone: 011-91-33-6541144
P.O. Box Belur Math 711 202 011-91-33-6541180
District Howrah Fax: 011-91-33-6544346
West Bengal, India Email: rkmhqbm@cal.vsnl.net.in
Ramakrishna Math and Mission, Belur Math, Calcutta, India - View from the Ganges with the Temples of Sri Ramakrishna, Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi and Swami Vivekananda
The Ramakrishna Temple at Belur Math is a place of international pilgrimage, significant because Swami Vivekananda placed the relics of Sri Ramakrishna there and envisioned a unique temple to house them. To pay tribute to the multifaceted all-embracing divine personality of Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda envisioned a great edifice combining various architectural features of monuments and temples in various parts of the world.
RAMAKRISHNA TEMPLE
Temple of Sri Ramakrishna at Belur Math
"Today Swamiji (Swami Vivekananda) is to perform a sacrifice and install Sri Ramakrishna on the site of the new Math. Swamiji himself took on his right shoulder the ashes of Sri Ramakrishna’s body preserved in a copper casket, and led the van. The disciple in company of the other Sannyasins brought up the rear. There was the music of bells and conches. On his way Swamiji said to the disciple: "Sri Ramakrishna said to me, ‘Wherever you will take me on your shoulders, there I will go and stay, be it under a tree or in a hut.’ It is therefore that I am myself carrying him on my shoulders to the new Math grounds. Know it for certain that Sri Ramakrishna will keep his seat fixed there, for the welfare of the many, for a long time to come."
- Talks With Swami Vivekananda: From the Diary of a Disciple
INNER SHRINEInner Shrine of the Temple of Sri
Ramakrishna at Belur Math
