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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780911206302 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 02/01/1942 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 1085 |
| Sales rank: | 985,420 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
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Read an Excerpt
From the chapter, "Master and Disciple", that documents one of the initial conversations between M, the chronicler of The Gospel, and the Master, Sri Ramakrishna.
M had yet to learn the distinction between knowledge and ignorance. Up to this time he had thought that one got knowledge from books and schools. Later on he gave up this false idea. He was taught that to know God is knowledge, and not to know Him, ignorance. When Sri Ramakrishna exclaimed, "And you are a jnani!" M's ego was again badly shocked.
MASTER: "Well, do you believe in God with form or without form?"
M, rather surprised, said to himself: "How can one believe in God without form when one believes in God with form? And if one believes in God without form, how can one believe that God has a form? Can these two contradictory ideas be true at the same time? Can a white liquid like milk be black?"
M: "Sir, I like to think of God as formless."
MASTER: "Very good. It is enough to have faith in either aspect. You believe in God without form; that is quite all right. But never for a moment think that this alone is true and all else false. Remember that God with form is just as true as God without form. But hold fast to your own conviction."
The assertion that both are equally true amazed M; he had never learnt this from his books. Thus his ego received a third blow; but since it was not yet completely crushed, he came forward to argue with the Master a little more.
M: "Sir, suppose one believes in God with form. Certainly He is not the clay image!"
MASTER (interrupting): "But why clay? It is an image of Spirit."
M could not quite understand the meaning of this "image of Spirit." "But, sir," he said to the Master, "one should explain to those who worship the clay image that it is not God, and that, while worshipping it, they should have God in view and not the clay image. One should not worship clay."
MASTER (sharply): "That's the one hobby of you Calcutta people - giving lectures and bringing others to the light! Nobody ever stops to consider how to get the light himself. Who are you to teach others?
"He who is the Lord of the Universe will teach everyone. He alone will teach us, who has created this universe; who has made the sun and moon, men and beasts, and all other beings; who has provided means for their sustenance; who has given children parents and endowed them with love to bring them up. The Lord has done so many things - will He not show people the way to worship Him? If they need teaching, then He will be the Teacher. He is our Inner Guide.
"Suppose there is an error in worshipping the clay image; doesn't God know that through it He alone is being invoked? He will be pleased with that very worship. Why should you get a headache over it? You had better try for knowledge and devotion yourself."
This time M felt that his ego was completely crushed. He now said to himself: "Yes, he has spoken the truth. What need is there for me to teach others? Have I known God? Do I really love Him? How true is the proverb: I haven't room enough for myself in my bed, and I am inviting a friend to share it with me! I know nothing about God, yet I am trying to teach others. What a shame! How foolish I am! This is not mathematics or history or literature, that one can teach it to others. No, this is the deep mystery of God. What he says appeals to me."
This was M's first argument with the Master, and happily his last.
MASTER: "You were talking of worshipping the clay image. Even if the image is made of clay, there is need for that kind of worship. God Himself has provided different forms of worship. He who is the Lord of the Universe has arranged all these forms to suit different men in different stages of knowledge."
"The mother cooks different dishes to suit the stomachs of her different children. Suppose she has five children. If there is a fish to cook, she prepares various dishes from it - pilau, pickled fish, fried fish, and so on - to suit their different tastes and powers of digestion.
"Do you understand me?"
M (humbly): "Yes, sir. How, sir, may I fix my mind on God?"
MASTER: "Repeat God's name and sing His glories, and now and then visit God's devotees and holy men. The mind cannot dwell on God if it is immersed day and night in worldliness, in worldly duties and responsibilities; it is most necessary to go into solitude now and then and think of God. To fix the mind on God is very difficult, in the beginning, unless one practises meditation in solitude. When a tree is young it should be fenced all around; otherwise it may be destroyed by cattle."
"There are three ways of meditating: think of God while doing your duties, or meditate on Him in a secluded corner of your house, or contemplate Him in a wood. And you should always discriminate between the Real, and the unreal: God alone is real, the Eternal Substance; all else is unreal, that is, impermanent. By discriminating thus, one should shake off impermanent objects from the mind."
M (humbly): "How ought we to live the world?"
MASTER: "Do all your duties, but keep your mind on God. Live with all - with wife and children, father and mother - and serve them. Treat them as if they were very dear to you, but know in your heart of hearts that they do not belong to you.
"A maidservant in the house of a rich man performs all the household duties, but her thoughts are fixed on her own home in her native village. She brings up her master's children as if they were her own. She even speaks of them as 'my Rama' or 'my Hari.' But in her own mind she knows very well that they do not belong to her at all.
"If you enter the world without first cultivating love for God, you will be entangled more and more. You will be overwhelmed with its danger, its grief, its sorrows. And the more you think of worldly things, the more you will be attached to them."
Table of Contents
Foreword by Aldous HuxleyPreface
Notes on Pronunciation
Illustrations
Introduction
1. Master and Disciple
2. In the Company of Devotees
3. Visit to Vidyasagar
4. Advice to Householders
5. The Master and Keshab
6. The Master with the Brahmo Devotees (I)
7. The Master and Vijay Goswami
8. The Master's Birthday Celebration at Dakshineswar
9. Advice to the Brahmos
10. The Master with the Brahmo Devotees (II)
11. With the Devotees at Dakshineswar (I)
12. The Festival at Panihati
13. The Master and M
14. Instruction to Vaishnavas and Brahmos
15. Last Visit to Keshab
16. With the Devotees at Dakshineswar (II)
17. M. at Dakshineswar (I)
18. M. at Dakshineswar (II)
19. That Master and His Injured Arm
20. Rules for Householders and Monks
21. A Day at Dakshineswar
22. Advice to an Actor
23. Festival at Surendra's House
24. Pundit Shashadhar
25. Advice to Pundit Shashadhar
26. Festival at Adhar's House
27. At Dakshineswar
28. At the Star Theatre (I)
29. The Durga Puja Festival
30. The Master in Various Moods
31. Advice to Ishan
32. Visit to the Sinthi Brahmo Samaj
33. With Various Devotees
34. Bankim Chandra
35. At the Star Theatre (II)
36. The Master's Birthday
37. The Master and Narendra
38. With the Devotees in Calcutta
39. The Master's Reminiscences
40. The Master at the Houses of Balaram an Girish
41. At Ram's House
42. Car Festival at Balaram's House
43. Visit to Nanda Bose's House
44. The Master on Himself and His Experiences
45. Sri Ramakrishna at Syampukur
46. The Master and Dr. Sarkar
47. The Master's Training of His Disciples
48. In the Company of Devotees at Syampukur
49. The Master at Cossipore
50. The Master and Buddha
51. The Master's Love for His Devotees
52. After the Passing Away
Appendix A: With Keshab at Dakshineswar
Appendix B: A Letter Written to M. by Aswini Kumar Dutta
A Chronology of Sri Ramakrishna's Life
Glossary
Index of Songs and Hymns
Index
What People are Saying About This
The GospeI. . . is a work of absorbing interest. Your biographical introduction sets the reader at once into the atmosphere of India, its customs and its ways of thinking about the unseen world and about deity. I take it to be a high merit of the book that you have not omitted the details which will seem most strange to the Western reader; you have allowed them to bear their own message and to offer themselves intact for judgment. As you tell the life of Sri Ramakrishna, it engages with so much of the spiritual history of India during the last century that one gains a living sense of the forward movement of that history. The whole promises to be a document of importance for every one who wishes to gain a personal impression of Indian religious aspiration and to realize how naturally it spans the wide gamut from the particular and local symbols to the most universal conceptions.
—William Ernest Hocking, Alford Professor of Philosophy in Harvard University
East and West agree that he was the most radiant religious personality of the nineteenth century. The record of his life and teachings is a mine of inspiration, wisdom, theology, and metaphysics. It is also a tremendous adventure story, the odyssey of a man who set out on the mystical way and journeyed to its end. The English version is a triumph of creative translation.
I have examined the proofs of your new volume, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, and send you herewith my praises for a work of noble scholarship and utter devotion. You have added to the scriptures of our English tongue a new Bible. When the volume appears, I shall add it proudly and reverently to my Bible of Humanity. I feel inexpressibly grateful to you for your labors thus crowned with this great achievement.
—John Haynes Holmes, Minister of the Community Church, New York
Ramakrishna was a rare combination of individuality and universality, personality and impersonality. His words and example have been echoed in the hearts of Western men and women. . . His soul animates modern India.
Swami Nikhilananda has done an excellent piece of work. His very readable English translation of the Ramakrishnakathamrita will enable the Western readers to understand the deep spiritual life of Sri Ramakrishna and the homely way in which profound truths are conveyed to ordinary mortals, and I hope that the book will have a wide publicity.
—Sir S. Radhakrishnan, Vice-chancellor of the Hindu University, Benares, India, and former Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics in Oxford University
A new portrait of Ramakrishna, and a most fascinating one, comes to us through this first complete and authentic translation of the amazing diary by his faithful disciple 'M'. The famous figure of the outstanding embodiment of India's religious wisdom and message for mankind discloses his magic secret. A fervent experimentalist and devotee, Ramakrishna passes through every kind of religious tradition. Endowed with a Proteus-like vitality and voluptuousness for metamorphosis, his soul measures the celestial heights and fathoms the abyss. He achieves an unparalleled integration of the mystic heritage of India and the West. By enacting a sequence of kaleidoscopic transformations he realizes and simultaneously transcends the tangible forms of the formless Divine.
—Henry R. Zimmer, Lecturer on Indian Art and Philosophy in Columbia University, and former Professor of Sanskrit in Heidelberg University
This highly noteworthy document . . . conveys the personality of a great mystic in such an intimate, direct, and almost astounding manner that to read it must be an enriching experience for any intellect which is receptive and open to all things human.
The story of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa's life is a story of religion in practice. His life enables us to see God face to face.
The spirit of Ramakrishna, as given in his reported conversations, and his life, as rendered in the admirable Introductions by Swami Nikhilananda, constitute a unique and absorbing document for any serious student of the philosophy of religion. Ramakrishna is revealed as that rarity, the real thing in metaphysical mysticism and saintliness. He belongs in the great tradition of classic religious leaders. His teachings and his spirit here come wonderfully alive, and Western readers will have a new dimension added to their conception of the religious life.
—Irwin Edman, Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University
Certainly this is one of the notable books of our time, one of the marvelous books in all time. It is a book where gentle, deathless goodness softens whatever humiliation I might feel for any inadvertent glibness of comment; and where the piety - in the deepest Latin sense of the word - and the brilliant, easy scholarship of the translation are enough to knock us down.