Swami Vivek­a­nanda (1863-1902)

Swami Vivek­a­nanda in San Francisco

Swami Vivek­a­nanda was the chief monas­tic dis­ci­ple of Sri Rama­kri­shna and the bearer of his mes­sage to the West. Swamiji, as he was affec­tion­ately known, intro­duced the lib­eral and uni­ver­sal teach­ings of Vedanta to the West­ern world at the World Par­lia­ment of Reli­gions in Chicago in 1893. The enthu­si­as­tic response to his mes­sage and per­son­al­ity marked the begin­ning of the Vedanta move­ment in the United States and the found­ing of cen­ters in many of the major cities of the coun­try. Swamiji, on his return to India, also founded the Rama­kri­shna Order of Monks and the Rama­kri­shna Mis­sion, which car­ries on edu­ca­tional and social ser­vice work through­out India and the world in addi­tion to spread­ing the spir­i­tual teach­ings of Sri Ramakrishna.

Swamiji’s main empha­sis was on the direct expe­ri­ence of truth. “Reli­gion is not in books, nor in the­o­ries, nor in dog­mas, nor in talk­ing, nor even rea­son­ing. It is being and becoming.”