3 Review(s)

You don't simply read a man like Vivekananda. In reading him, you meet him. And if you don't meet him and feel him contemporaneously, you can understand little of the meaning of what he is saying.' In the course of a short life of thirty-nine years, Swami Vivekananda came to be regarded as the patriot— saint of modern India. Despite all that has been written about his life and his epoch-making address at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, 1893, Swami Vivekananda remains a paradox: much is known about him, but very little is understood about the man and his relevance to our own troubled times. In Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta, Chaturvedi Badrinath looks behind the iconic façade, seeking to liberate Vivekananda from the confines of the worship room. He examines the various facets of a man who was as much at ease with philosophical discourse as he was with cooking; whose childlike love for ice cream went hand in hand with his stature as a prophet. The author also throws light on the various relationships that shaped Swamiji's philosophy of Vedanta and formed the core of his teaching— with his spiritual guru Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, his mother Bhubaneswari Devi, and his many followers in the West, mostly women, who became central to his life and work. Well researched and brimming with a wealth of detail, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta offers an unforgettable insight into the life and times of this renaissance figure— a one who was the very embodiment of the Vedanta that he preached.