Adventures of the Based Swami
The wild story of how Swami Vivekananda traveled all the way across the world to make his most famous speech.
"Never forget the glory of human nature! We are the Greatest God...Christ and Buddhas are but waves on the boundless Ocean which I AM."
Adventures of the Based Swami
He arrived in Chicago late in the evening, about 48 hours before he was to give his most famous speech.
Unfortunately, he had misplaced the address for where he was supposed to stay. So he did what was obvious to him: he found a large cardboard box at the railway station and slept in it.
His physical resilience is legendary. Here's a famous example from a few years earlier, which took place at the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. There he stood, on the coast of Kanyakumari, after a long journey during which he had almost starved to death more than once. Looking out at the ocean, he saw a small island, more like a big rock, sitting in the water a short boat ride away. Vivekananda decided he wanted to end his pilgrimage by meditating on this rock, but he had no money left with which to hire a boat.
So, he did what was obvious to him: he waded into the shark-infested waters and just swam to the damn rock.
He was in Chicago for one reason: to ask wealthy folk in the West to help him feed his brothers and sisters in India. His teacher, Sri Ramakrishna, had famously said that "religion is not for empty bellies", and so of course his most devoted student was working to first fill bellies. This was an irrational goal, but pursuing irrational goals was what he did. During his travels through India, a remarkably astute pandit (man coulda been VP of Marketing at any Fortune 500 honestly) told Vivekananda that his unique worldview would be better understood in the West than it was at home. The pandit told him to "go and take it by storm and then return!". A few weeks later, when he heard about a conference taking place the following year in Chicago called the 'Parliament of World's Religions', he decided he was going.
He was not invited to speak or attend. He did not know when the event was taking place. He had little money and little idea where to get more.
At the time, he didn't even have the name that would become immortal. He was still called Narendranath Dutt, a perfectly reasonable name for the son of a successful attorney from Calcutta.
It was his friend, the Maharaja of Khetri, who suggested the name 'Swami Vivekananda' a few days before his journey began. The Maharaja also gave him a beautiful red silk robe and ochre turban for his trip, items of clothing he still wears for us in the iconic photos that hang in Vedanta centers around the world.
These items of clothing look 👌🏽 in photos, but they are not designed for warmth. Vivekananda would almost freeze to death during the sea journey to Chicago.
It may sound a bit strange to describe a holy man as 'ambitious', but read his journals, think about his actions, and you will agree that he was deeply ambitious: for himself, for the message of his guru, for his religion, and for his country. For example, here he is in Varanasi, the night before he left for his travels through India, speaking with unabashed boldness to his friends and well-wishers:
I am going away; but I shall never come back until I can burst on society like a bomb, and make it follow me like a dog.
He set off in order to burst on Western society on May 31, 1893.
That red silk robe and ochre turban took a circuitous route to Chicago: Bombay > Colombo > Penang > Singapore > Hong Kong > Canton > Nagasaki > Yokohama > Vancouver > Chicago. Each stop deepened his understanding of the vast influence of Hinduism on the Eastern world; the varying levels of progress and poverty also steeled his resolve to fulfill basic needs in his own country.
Upon arrival in Chicago, he was initially overwhelmed with excitement by what he saw (he would also have many criticisms as time went on). Here is Romain Rolland, describing Vivekananda's initial take:
He had never imagined the power, the riches, the inventive genius of this Western world. Being of a stronger vitality than a Tagore or a Gandhi, who were oppressed by the frenzy of movement or noise, by the whole...American mechanism, Vivekananda was at his ease in it at least at first; he succumbed to its exciting intoxication, and his first feeling was of juvenile acceptance; his admiration knew no bounds.
He eventually made his way to the Information Bureau for the event, where he found out that the Parliament of World's Religions wouldn't take place until September. Also, registration was closed and wouldn't be possible without an official reference.
With almost no money left, Vivekananda cabled to friends and an official religious society. The chief of the religious society, angered at Vivekananda's hubris, responded "Let the devil die of cold!".
He decided to travel to Boston. During his train journey to Chicago, he had met a woman from Boston who invited him to stay with her. He describes the arrangement in his journal:
Just now I am living as the guest of an old lady in a village near Boston. I accidentally made her acquaintance in the railway train, and she invited me to come over and live with her. I have an advantage in living with her, in saving for some time my expenditure of £1 per day, and she has the advantage of inviting her friends over here and showing them a curio from India!
The woman introduced him to Professor J.H. Wright of Harvard University, who made some calls and secured Vivekananda’s place at the conference, along with lodging. He used the last of his money to get back to Chicago. Dazed from the journey, he arrived back in town but forgot the address for his lodging. So that night, he slept in a box he found at the railway station.
The next day, he tried begging for food, an honorable thing for a sannyasin to do in India. No one would help him, and after being yelled at and insulted for a few hours, a random stranger saw his robes and realized he was there for the Parliament of Religions. He was, at last, given food and lodging at the event.
On the day the Parliament opened, he had no speech prepared. But once Vivekananda opened his mouth, the rest was history.
Romain Rolland writes:
His speech was like a tongue of flame. Among the grey wastes of cold dissertation it fired the souls of the listening throng. Hardly had he pronounced the very simple opening words ’Sisters and Brothers of America!’ than hundreds arose in their seats and applauded.
Thanks for reading!
Quotes from Vivekananda
First, his closing remarks from the Parliament of World's Religions, which helped the world to understand what it meant for a religion to be tolerant of other faiths:
Do I wish that the Christian would become Hindu? God forbid. Do I wish that the Hindu or Buddhist would become Christian? God forbid.
The seed is put in the ground, and earth and air and water are placed around it. Does the seed become the earth, or the air, or the water? No. It becomes a plant. It develops after the law of its own growth, assimilates the air, the earth, and the water, converts them into plant substance, and grows into a plant.
Similar is the case with religion. The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet preserve his individuality and grow according to his own law of growth.
If the Parliament of Religions has shown anything to the world, it is this: It has proved to the world that holiness, purity and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character. In the face of this evidence, if anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion and the destruction of the others, I pity him from the bottom of my heart, and point out to him that upon the banner of every religion will soon be written in spite of resistance: 'Help and not fight,' 'Assimilation and not Destruction,' 'Harmony and Peace and not Dissension.'
I selected the next two quotes because they are not the nice, gentle ones you might be accustomed to - Vivekananda was not shy in his demands that his countrymen be bold and strong…like him.
Above all, be strong, be manly! I have a respect even for one who is wicked, so long as he is manly and strong; for his strength will make him some day give up his wickedness, or even give up all work for selfsih ends, and will then eventually bring him into the truth.
And you, what are you? . . . talking twaddle all your lives, vain talkers, what are you? Come, see these people, and then go and hide your faces in shame. A race of dotards, you lose your caste if you come out! Sitting down these hundreds of years with an ever-increasing load of crystallized superstition on your heads, for hundreds of years spending all your energy upon discussing the touchableness or untouchableness of this food or that, with all humanity crushed out of you by the continuous social tyranny of ages — what are you? And what are you doing now? . . . promenading the sea-shores with books in your hands — repeating undigested stray bits of European brainwork, and the whole soul bent upon getting a thirty-rupee clerkship, or at best becoming a lawyer — the height of young India's ambition — and every student with a whole brood of hungry children cackling at his heels and asking for bread! Is there not water enough in the sea to drown you, books, gowns, university diplomas, and all? Come, be men! Kick out the priests who are always against progress, because they would never mend, their hearts would never become big. They are the offspring of centuries of superstition and tyranny. Root out priest craft first. Come, be men! Come out of your narrow holes and have a look abroad. See how nations are on the march! Do you love man? Do you love your country? Then come, let us struggle for higher and better things; look not back, no, not even if you see the dearest and nearest cry. Look not back, but forward!
His resilience and disinterest in physical comfort is nothing short of perfect
The juxtaposition of these two quotes is incredible.