Sankara, The Mighty Missionary

Swami Chinmayananda

oi-Staff

By Staff

Monday, August 31, 2009, 17:29

In recent years "Sankara Jayanti" has been gathering to itself a momentum, and it has now become almost a national festival in Bharat. We find this day celebrated in Delhi among the intelligent Government officials, and with equal ardour in Calcutta among the industrialists, in Bombay among its commercial crowd, in Madras and in Kerala. Why, upto Cape Comorin, almost everywhere, in all towns, and even in every enlightened village, "Sankara Jayanti" has become an annual festival.

All in one

No doubt, the serious students of Hindu philosophy can never overlook the contributions of
Sankara, the philosopher. No devotee of the Lord can ignore Sankara, the author of the devotional invocations. No seeker can walk the path of self-unfoldment in himself without drawing upon the fund of information regarding this great pilgrimage, which lies in the bulk of Sankara's works. The utter fulfillment of all seeking is indeed in the total experience of the 'Absolute Oneness', and this alone is the theme of Sankara, the Advaitin.

Striking lesson from his life

Be it as it may, the one ideal which Sankara preached throughout his life, not through his commentaries, not with his chants, nor through his famous disquisitions, but by the vigorous cadence of his very dynamic life, which he lived during a short thirty-two years - the one ideal which we find eloquently preached through his actions - is the missionary zeal of this Kerala Brahmin. This ideal is not found very much emphasized in our country, in anyone of the innumerable platforms at which the great Advaitic master is now rightly invoked and devotedly worshipped.

Ideal blend Indeed, among the Hindus, there are two different theories regarding the authorship of the Vedas. One school believes that the immortal scriptures are "God-revealed" (Iswara Kritam), and the other insists that the Vedas are "declarations of mortal Rishis" (Rishi proktam).

If the Vedas, of the Hindus are God-given then they are assuredly immortal and eternal, and if at all there be any danger of the Vedas dying away it becomes the responsibility of the Supreme to revive them. But on the other hand, when a community believes that its scriptures are Rishi-declared, then a sacred responsibility rests upon the community to see that they are spread and lived by the maximum number of people. Sankara declared the former belief in his life, and this is an ideal that Bharat should now imitate and practise.

The missionary in Acharya Sankara not only understood and realized the "Revelations" of the scriptures, but he constantly lived endeavouring to expound, revive, and revitalize them. He made popular that the very basis of our national life is a sacred philosophy, which was not borrowed but had sprung from the very genius of Bharat.

Our Need

Basically it is a false notion that a national life can be created merely by an industrial progress. True prosperity can never be ushered in by any amount of increased production - agricultural or industrial. Wealth so produced may, with an intelligent economic vision, get redistributed equitably; and yet, man cannot be happy, nor the community united, nor the nation made strong, unless the people living in the country have cultivated in themselves a healthy philosophy of right living. A philosophy of life, when lived by people, during eras of history, becomes the warp and woof of the very cultural life of that people. Thus viewed, it is not very difficult for us to realize how the missionary work of the indomitable Acharya contained in itself the plan for a heroic cultural revival in our country.

Swami Chinmayananda

Swami Chinmayananda the great master's lectures were an outpour of wisdom. He introduced the Geetha Gnana Yagna. He wrote a lot of books on spirituality, commentaries to Vedantic texts, children books etc. He then started spreading His teachings globally.....