How Swami Vivekananda won over the world?-2

How Swami Vivekananda won over the world?-2

Journey to the west

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, reaching Chicago on 30 July 1893.

Meeting with Jamsetji Tata

In the journey from Yokohama to Canada on the ship Empress, Vivekananda accidentally met Jamsetji Tata who was also going to Chicago. Tata was a businessman who made his initial fortune in the opium trade with China and had started one of the first textile mills in India, was going to Chicago to get new business ideas. In this accidental meeting on the Empress, Vivekananda inspired Tata to set up a research and educational institution in India. They also discussed a plan to start a steel factory in India. He reached Vancouver on 25 July. From Vancouver (of Canada) he travelled to Chicago by train and arrived there on Sunday, 30 July 1893.

Boston

After reaching Chicago Vivekananda learned no one could attend the Parliament as delegate without credential or bonafide. He did not have one at that moment and he felt utterly disappointed. He also learned the Parliament would not open till first week of September. But, Vivekananda did not give up his hope. To cut his expenditure he decided to go to Boston which was less costly than Chicago.

Professor John Henry Wright

However, he was disappointed to learn that no one without credentials from a bona fide organisation would be accepted as a delegate. Vivekananda contacted Professor John Henry Wright of Harvard University, who invited him to speak at Harvard.

Asking sun for credentials

On learning that Vivekananda lacked credentials to speak at the Chicago Parliament, Wright said "To ask for your credentials is like asking the sun to state its right to shine in the heavens". Vivekananda wrote of the professor, "He urged upon me the necessity of going to the Parliament of Religions, which he thought would give an introduction to the nation".

11 September, 1893

The Parliament of World's Religion started on 11 September 1893 at the Art Institute of Chicago as part of the World's Columbian Exposition. Vivekananda gave his first lecture on that day. Towards the afternoon his turn came. Though initially nervous, he bowed to Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning and he felt he got new energy in his body, he felt someone or something else had occupied his body– "The Soul of India, the echo of the Rishis, the voice of Ramakrishna, the mouthpiece of the resurgent Time spirit".

The words that shook the worlds

Then began his speech with salutation, "Sisters and brothers of America!". To these words he got a standing ovation from a crowd of seven thousand, which lasted for two minutes. When silence was restored he began his address. He greeted 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.!"

15 September, 1893

In this speech, Vivekananda tried to explain the reason of disagreement between each other and different sects and religions. He told a story of a frog. In the story he told, a frog used to live in a well. It was born there and brought up there and it used to think his well was the biggest waterland of the world. One day, a frog from a sea came to that well. When the frog from the sea told the frog of the well that sea is much much bigger than that well, the frog of the well did not believe it and drove the frog of the sea away from his well. Vivekananda concluded– "That has been the difficulty all the while. I am a Hindu. I am sitting in my own little well and thinking that the whole world is my little well. The Christian sits in his little well and thinks the whole world is his well. The Mohammedan sits in his little well and thinks that is the whole world."

Om Namah Shivay