Swami Vivekananda at the Tari Ghat Station
A One-Act Play in Four Scenes with Choral Support
Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi: Truth Is One, Paths Are Diverse
One was a Hindu monk who looked like a prince, whereas the other—a British educated barrister turned politician—looked like “a half-naked fakir,” as Churchill described him deridingly. The monk in the princely garb was none other than Swami Vivekananda, who mesmerized Eastern and Western audiences not only by his magnificent looks and magnetic personality, but also by the forceful delivery of his universal message of Vedanta in the last decade of the nineteenth century.
Swami Vivekananda: Authentic Role of Religion
In her biography of Swami Vivekananda, The Master as I Saw Him, Sister Nivedita writes: “ Our Master has come and he has gone, and in the priceless memory he has left with us who knew him, there is no other thing so great, as this his love of man.”
Swami Vivekananda’s Appeal for America
At the dawn of the 20th century Swami Vivekananda challenged his Western audiences with language and concepts they found deeply inspiring. As Ann Louise Bardach put it in a recent article in The New York Times, “[Vivekananda] simplified Vedanta thought to a few teachings that were accessible and irresistible to Westerners, foremost being that ‘all souls are potentially divine’. His prescription for life was simple, and perfectly American: ‘work and worship’.”
Vivekananda the Revolutionary
Most revolutionaries are remembered for one particular revolution: George Washington for the American revolution against British imperial rule, Adam Smith for the creation of modern political economics, Lenin for the Communist revolution in Russia, Einstein for superseding Newton and creating modern physics, Haydn for creating modern musical structure.
