Complete works of Swami Abhedananda

by Swami Prajnanananda | 1967 | 318,120 words

Swami Abhedananda was one of the direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa and a spiritual brother of Swami Vivekananda. He deals with the subject of spiritual unfoldment purely from the yogic standpoint. These discourses represent a study of the Social, Religious, Cultural, Educational and Political aspects of India. Swami Abhedananda says t...

Chapter 4 - An Address

[To the Educational Conference in America]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I should not enter into this discussion this afternoon, but there is a reference of Dr. Jackson[1] in course of his speech. The point which he has emphasized, in spite of the question raised by Prof. Newcombe, is one, I think, of the utmost consideration on the part of the Educational Conference. Therefore, I would like to draw the attention to this of the members of this Conference—the difference between the East and the West, which had occurred to me in course of my travels in the West and the East.

Perhaps for many to accept the resolution of Dr. Jackson is a point of detail; but the fundamental question raised there, in any approachment between the East and the West for our mutual understanding of the principles, governing the East and the West, principles of Eastern and Western civilizations should be understood mutually, and is of the utmost importance, if we are at all to arrive at any solid results out of this Conference.

I believe, as I told Dr. Jackson in course of a conversation the other day, that the governing principle of Western civilization is the ‘doctrine of right, in the sense of privilege not right as distinguished from wrong. If you examine your own literature, or your own conversation, or your own discussion that takes place day by day in the daily papers, you will always find this right raised, you will find the people talking about the rights of minorities and the rights of majorities; and you will find the rights of the people, the rights of the state, the rights of women, the rights of a hundred things; and that principle it is that is governing the Western civilization, as it occurs to me. I speak subject to correction.

Now right implies certain definite things. Right implies a law to exercise your right, or to assert your right; right also implies efficiency. Right also implies individuality and all the features or the cardinal features of civilization, moral and intellectual.

Now, if you go to the East, and I speak with special reference to India (although I am convinced that the culture of Japan and of China is identical in a great measure with that of India), and examine the civilization of the East, you will find the word kartavya [kartavyam], i.e., what you owe to yourself, to your society, to your community, to your own people, to your country. and to the world at large. It has a much wider conception than the word duty in the English language, and I might pause here and draw the difference between duty and right. As I told you, when you regard right, you are thinking of what others owe to you; when you think of duty, you are thinking what you owe to others. In the first case you are rightly committing trespass on the rights of others, and in the case of duty there is no trespass there on your side. It may be that you are performing your duty for your ownself, but duty always deals with the contemplation of the attitude or the interest of the other fellows. Therefore, most of the conflicts that we have, are the results of the exaltation of right in Western civilization. But at the same time the adoption of the principle of duty is a result of the supervision of the individual interest. It also follows as a corollary that the individual interest is not the efficient instrument in the East as it is in the West. We are governed more by emotion in the East, as you are more by the intellect in the West. These are fundamental differences between the East and the West. I think the study of the Eastern and the Western civilizations ought to be confined to the growth of the two distinct civilizations, now so divergent and so little understood, yet fascinating to each other. But if you proceed further and ask how is it that in the West, you have always adopted the principle of right and in the East the principle of duty, then you come to a very difficult question. I venture to say, and I also intend to present my views on this question with considerable hesitation and subject to correction, that this principle of right has been adopted in the West largely because of its urban character of civilization. In the West, even from the time of the Roman civilization, people have congregated in towns, and the institutions of towns have always determined the character of the institutions of the people as a whole, whereas in the East, since industries have never been popularized there, people have never been concentrated to a large extent in towns, the real civilization being always a static civilization, as opposed to a dynamic civilization, which is the characteristics of urban population. When you have population congregated in large towns, when you have always people not static but dynamic, moving from one place to another and acquiring new interests, you have the suppression of new ideals in society. And it is very essential that each man should remember what rights he is going to acquire, what rights he is going to surrender. If he does not do it, he finds that he is very largely neglected by others and gets himself left behind in the race. Therefore, it is that the people in the West are more on the rights than on duty.

But in more slowly moving civilizations, where people are really static, where institutions are more or less fixed to a greater extent than other civilizations, there rights are more fixed and people learn duty more. The people are just, because they do not move so rapidly as in the urban populations. They turn more to leisure and more to the contemplation of others. I think that is why duty has been fostered more in the East than in the West. If that is so, and I think it is, we are up to this fundamental proposition, how far are we to move forward with the speed with which that civilization moves in the West? If we move in the East, as you do in the West, do we run into the danger of adopting the principle of right, and overcome this duty that we owe to communities outside of ourselves, which is a distinctive part of our ancestral inheritance? Now, on the other hand, if the population has been so static, as they have been in India and China, would it not run to the danger of bringing ruin to ourselves, and forgetting our rights?

I do not know that any one of you will agree with me in the views I have expressed. But if there is any difference in the views I have pointed out as fundamental between the two civilizations, it is of the utmost necessity that people, who like myself have come here as educators of generations to come, should put their minds together, or their organizations should, to investigate the differences and come to an understanding by which we may avoid these differences and come to a more harmonious co-operation.

That is what I want to say, to emphasize, or to put emphasis upon. I must especially refer to this fact that most of the books that are written about the East, are written by the Westerners—men who believe more of their own civilizations than they do of other civilizations and who are not in a position to measure up the standards of Eastern civilization. I think, it is time that the East should come out so that the West can understand it. The West is not to be blamed for judging the Eastern civilization, alien to them, with their own standards. If the West and the East agree to this, that people in each country will put forward a reasonable presentation of the future—essential features governing their cultural principles of getting together—it will have a forward movement, it will go far forward to overcome the misunderstanding, existing mutually between the East and the West; There I would recommend strongly as one of the proposals, if I am allowed to do it before this Conference, that the Educational Conference should invite the people who are so qualified in the various countries as to describe for the benefit of the rest of the world, the essential characters of their cultural civilizations, their difficulties and to interpret to the world their histories, and the progress they made. And by doing so, I hope we shall be able to establish a lesson of co-operation to the greatest nations of the world.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Dr. W. H, Jackson was a professor of Columbia University. He was a Sanskrit scholar as well as the professor of the Iranian language of Persia. He died on the 8th August 1937.

FAQ (frequently asked questions):

Which keywords occur in this article of Volume 2?

The most relevant definitions are: civilization, civilizations, India, China, kartavya, Roman; since these occur the most in “an address” of volume 2. There are a total of 7 unique keywords found in this section mentioned 39 times.

Can I buy a print edition of this article as contained in Volume 2?

Yes! The print edition of the Complete works of Swami Abhedananda contains the English discourse “An Address” of Volume 2 and can be bought on the main page. The author is Swami Prajnanananda and the latest edition is from 1994.

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