Swami Vivekananda Jayathi

Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda was an Hindu monk. He born Narendranath Datta, 12 January12, 1863 .  Gourmohan Mukherjee Street in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency (Now Kolkata in West Bengal during the Makar Sankranti festival. Father “Vishwanath Dutta” was an attorney at the Calcutta High Court and Mother “Bhuvaneshwari Devi “.

Swami Vivekananda was interested in spirituality from a young age and used to meditate. In 1871, at the age of eight he studied at  Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar's Metropolitan Institution, he went the school until the 1877, his family moved to Raipur.

In 1879, he was the only one student to receive first-division marks in the Presidency College entrance examination. He was the reader wide range of subjects  like Upanishads, Vedas, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita  including  philosophy, religion, history, social science, art and literature.

Narendra was trained in Indian classical music, and regularly participated in physical exercise, sports and organised activities. Narendra studied Western logic, Western philosophy and European history at the General Assembly's Institution (now known as the Scottish Church College).^[28] In 1881, he passed the Fine Arts examination, and completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1884. He translating Herbert Herbert Spencer's book Education (1861) into Bengali.

In 1880 Narendra joined Keshab Chandra Sen's Nava Vidhan, which was established by Sen after meeting Ramakrishna and reconverting from Christianity to Hinduism. Narendra became a member of a Freemasonry lodge "at some point before 1884"  and of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj in his twenties, a breakaway faction of the Brahmo Samaj led by Keshab Chandra Sen and Debendranath Tagore.  From 1881 to 1884, he was also active in Sen's Band of Hope, which tried to discourage youths from smoking and drinking.Brahmo Samaj who was strongly influenced by unitarianism, strove towards a universalistic interpretation of Hinduism

In 1888, Narendra left the monastery as a Parivrâjaka— the Hindu religious life of a wandering monk, "without fixed abode, without ties, independent and strangers wherever they go". Narendra left Bombay for Chicago on 31 May 1893 with the name "Vivekananda", as suggested by Ajit Singh of Khetri,^[85] which means "the bliss of discerning wisdom," from Sanskrit viveka and ānanda.

Vivekananda started his journey to the West on 31 May 1893 and visited several cities in Japan(including Nagasaki, Kobe, Yokohama, Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo), China and Canada en route to the United States,^[87] reaching Chicago on 30 July 1893, where the "Parliament of Religions" took place in September 1893. The Congress was an initiative of the Swedenborgian layman, and judge of the Illinois Supreme Court, Charles C. Bonney,^[91][92] to gather all the religions of the world, and show "the substantial unity of many religions in the good deeds of the religious life." ^.  It was one of the more than 200 adjunct gatherings and congresses of the Chicago's World's Fair, and was "an avant-garde intellectual manifestation of cultic milieus, East and West," with the Brahmo Samaj and the Theosophical Society being invited as being representative of Hinduism.

 The Parliament of the World's Religions opened on 11 September 1893 at the Art Institute of Chicago, as part of the World's Columbian Exposition.^{[98][99][100]} On this day, Vivekananda gave a brief speech representing India and Hinduism. He was initially nervous, bowed to Saraswati (the Hindu goddess of learning) and began his speech with "Sisters and brothers of America!".  At these words, Vivekananda received a two-minute standing ovation from the crowd of seven thousand.  According to Sailendra Nath Dhar, when silence was restored he began his address, greeting the youngest of the nations on behalf of "the most ancient order of monks in the world, the Vedic order of sannyasins, a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance".  Vivekananda quoted two illustrative passages from the "Shiva mahimna stotram": "As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take, through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee!" and "Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths that in the end lead to Me."  According to Sailendra Nath Dhar, "it was only a short speech, but it voiced the spirit of the Parliament."^.

During his first visit to the West he travelled to the UK twice, in 1895 and 1896, lecturing successfully there. In November 1895, he met Margaret Elizabeth Noble an Irish woman who would become Sister Nivedita. During his second visit to the UK in May 1896 Vivekananda met Max Müller, a noted Indologist from Oxford University who wrote Ramakrishna's first biography in the West. From the UK, Vivekananda visited other European countries. In Germany he met Paul Deussen, another Indologist. Vivekananda was offered academic positions in two American universities (one the chair in Eastern Philosophy at Harvard University and a similar position at Columbia University); he declined both, since his duties would conflict with his commitment as a monk.

He died July 4, 1902 at Belur Math, Belur, Bengal