Andrew J.

Nicholson
Stony Brook University
andrew.nicholson@stonybrook.edu

December 14, 2014

Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta

[DRAFT COPY. PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT THE AUTHOR’S CONSENT]

ARTICLE WILL APPEAR IN Swami Vivekananda: New Reflections on His Life, Legacy, and
Influence (eds. Rita D. Sherma and James McHugh). Dordecht, Netherlands: Springer,
2016.
A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 1

It is accepted wisdom in scholarly circles today that the picture of Sri

Ramakrishna painted by Swami Vivekananda and his followers exaggerates

Ramakrishna’s allegiance to the non-dual philosophy of Śaṅkara, and downplays the

tantric elements in Ramakrishna’s teaching. In an important 1976 essay, “The

Transformation of Śrī Rāmakrishna,” Walter Neevel analyzed those portrayals of

Ramakrishna’s life, showing how little of a role Śaṅkara’s Advaita Vedānta played in

Ramakrishna’s spiritual formation. In this paper I will argue that Neevel’s essay has

wider implications than this. Specifically, I will claim that the influence of Śaṅkara’s

Advaita philosophy has not only been exaggerated with regard to Ramakrishna, but

also with regard to Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda’s own teachings, particularly on

karma yoga and bhakti yoga, differ drastically from those of Ādi Śaṅkarācārya, the

putative founder of the Advaita Vedānta philosophical tradition. This is not an

accident, or a failure on Swami Vivekananda’s part to understand the philosophical

tradition he claimed to uphold. Rather, careful reading of Vivekananda’s corpus reveals

Vivekananda’s principled disagreements with Ādi Śaṅkarācārya concerning the ethical

implications of absolute non-dualism. Vivekananda’s teachings, as well as those of his

guru Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, reflect the influence of the “world-affirming” Advaita

traditions of medieval India that understood the complete elimination of caste

distinctions to be one important ethical implication of non-dualism.

A famous episode in the life story of Śaṅkara encapsulates what came to be

understood among many in the late medieval period as the social implications of the

true awareness of non-duality. Hagiographies describe how Śaṅkara, in his extensive

A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 2

travels, stopped in Varanasi, the holiest city for worshippers of Śiva. One day on his

way to the Ganges River to bathe, Śaṅkara came across a Caṇḍāla with four dogs.

Because Caṇḍālas are among the most impure of outcastes, out of concern for being

polluted the brahmin Śaṅkara motioned to the Caṇḍāla to move out of the way. The

Caṇḍāla, however, made a philosophical observation that Śaṅkara found impossible to

refute. I quote from the version of the story told in the Śaṅkara-Dig-Vijaya, Mādhava’s

celebrated 14th century hagiography of Śaṅkara:

You are always going about preaching that the Vedas teach the non-dual
brahman to be the only reality and that it is immutable and unpollutable. If this
is so, how has this sense of difference overtaken you? . . . You asked me to move
aside and make way for you. To whom were your words addressed, O learned
Sir? To the body that comes from the same source and performs the same
functions in the case of both a Brāhmaṇa and an outcaste? Or to the ātman, the
witnessing consciousness, which too is the same in all, unaffected by anything
that is of the body? . . . Wonderful, indeed, is the magic of the great magician
which infatuates the ignorant and the learned alike!1

Śaṅkara, astonished by his own mistake, acknowledged that these words were

true, and called the Caṇḍāla his teacher. The Caṇḍāla thereupon threw off his disguise.

He revealed himself to be Lord Śiva, and his four dogs actually the four Vedas.

Like other hagiographical tales told of saints East and West, this story should

not be taken as textbook-style history. It is, however, quite important in revealing

historical attitudes, namely, that by the 14th century, a common interpretation of

Advaita Vedānta was that it leveled all caste distinctions, precluding normal

brahmanical concerns about ritual purity and pollution. It is uncertain whether or not

the historical Śaṅkara ever made his way from his birthplace in Kalady to Varanasi.2

However, I think we can be fairly certain that the Śaṅkara who wrote the Brahma Sūtra

Bhāṣya and Upadeśasāhasrī did not see one of the implications of his philosophy of
A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 3

non-dualism to be the abolition of caste restrictions. In the Upadeśasāhasrī (The

Thousand Teachings), for instance, Śaṅkara very clearly asserts at the outset the

necessity of having the proper caste qualifications for the study of Vedānta:

The means to final release is the knowledge of brahman. It should be repeatedly

related to the pupil until it is firmly grasped. . . if he has abandoned the desire
for sons, wealth, and worlds and reached the state of a paramahaṃsa wandering
ascetic. . . if he is a Brahmin who is internally and externally pure. . . [and] if his
caste (jāti), profession, behavior, knowledge of the Veda, and family have been
examined.3

There is no sign in the Upadeśasāhasrī or the Brahma Sūtra Bhāṣya of the

Śaṅkara who acknowledges the Caṇḍāla’s teaching on the ghats of Varanasi. Instead, we

are confronted in these texts by a Brahmin renouncer who upholds conventional

distinctions of caste, admitting onto the path of liberation only those who have the

proper qualification (adhikāra) for Upaniṣadic instruction. Throughout his works

Śaṅkara frequently invokes the principle of adhikāri-bheda, that different individuals

have different qualifications. He insists, for example, that the path of action (karma-

yoga) described in the Bhagavad Gītā is a lesser one, appropriate primarily for those

whose birth and mental qualities are not appropriate for the path of contemplation and

Upaniṣadic study (jñāna-yoga) that leads to final release.

Orientalism and Vedantic Ethics

Where did Vivekananda derive the idea that the ethical ramifications of non-

dualism are the complete elimination of caste distinctions, if not from the writings of

Śaṅkara? Paul Hacker, a 20th century scholar of Vedānta who was one of the most

outspoken critics of what he called “Neo-Hinduism,” argued that Vivekananda and

A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 4

other modern claimants to the tradition of Advaita Vedānta were in fact unwittingly

parroting a “pseudo-Vedānta” that had its origins in Europe.4 Hacker’s claim was that

for “traditional” Advaita Vedānta, the Advaita statement tat tvam asi, understood as the

absolute unity of the individual self and brahman, was only interpreted as a

metaphysical principle. According to Hacker, “it was not put to ethical use in historical

Hinduism.”5 The basis of Hacker’s understanding of “historical Hinduism” is the

writings of Śaṅkara. Hacker is correct that the historical Śaṅkara nowhere suggested

that his philosophy of non-dualism entailed a radical revision of the ethical and social

norms of his time. The standard interpretation of Śaṅkara, upheld in the commentarial

traditions of Vācaspati Miśra and Prakāśātman, is of a strong dividing line between

“conventional” (vyāvahārika) and “ultimate” (pāramārthika) levels of truth. From the

ultimate perspective, the perspective that can be realized through study of the

Upaniṣads, all distinctions are false and only the undifferentiated brahman exists.

Nonetheless, on the level of conventional truth the fiction of difference (bheda)

between subject and object, and indeed between Brahmin and non-Brahmin, must be

maintained. In fact, seen from the perspective of conventional truth, such differences

are real. Therefore, it is possible, or even necessary, to act as if differences between

beings are real, and to demand that students of Vedānta come to their study with the

proper qualifications: they should be learned brahmin males with the proper

temperament for prolonged Vedic study.

Clearly, Vivekananda did not establish his idea of the social and ethical

consequences of non-dualism from the writings of Śaṅkara himself. Must he therefore

have adopted this teaching from the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer and Paul
A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 5

Deussen, as Paul Hacker alleges? There is another obvious possibility, namely that these

ideas came to Vivekananda from his beloved teacher Ramakrishna. Indeed it seems that

Vivekananda, before he had donned orange robes and when he was still known by the

name Naren Datta, had a strong inclination toward the pursuit of personal spiritual

advancement, at the expense of service to society. When Naren told his teacher of his

desire to stay in the highest state of meditative absorption, nirvikalpaka samādhi, for

several days, Ramakrishna is recorded as scolding him and warning him not to ignore

his social responsibilities:

Shame on you! I thought that you were to be the great banyan tree giving
shelter to thousands of tired souls. Instead you are selfishly seeking your own
well-being. Let these little things alone, my child. How can you be satisfied with
so one-sided an ideal? You might be all-sided. Enjoy the Lord in all ways!6

This exchange illustrates two different approaches toward the phenomenal

world, both Advaitic. Walter Neevel has described these two as “world-rejecting” and

“world-affirming,” respectively. It is a mistake to posit world-affirming non-dualism as

having its origins in Europe. Rather, there were two competing strains in medieval

India. The world-rejecting strain, expressed in the historical Śaṅkara’s writings and in

many brahmanical interpretations of them, suggests that the paths of bhakti and karma

are inferior to the path of knowledge, and that jñāna is the sole path of liberation. This

is the tradition that Paul Hacker alternatively labels as “historical,” “traditional,” or

“authentic” Advaita Vedānta. Yet there was another way of understanding Advaita

Vedānta in medieval India, a “world-affirming” non-dualism. According to this

interpretation, bhakti and karma are also true paths to the realization of the union of

the individual self with brahman. Some late Advaita texts even portray one of these two

as higher than jñāna. A saint who has truly realized oneness spontaneously and
A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 6

compassionately shares what he or she has learned with others, disregarding worldly

constraints of caste purity and pollution. Ramakrishna, whose access to non-dualist

traditions was largely oral and vernacular, not mediated by the learned 19th century

Indologists writing in German and English, was clearly a proponent of world-affirming

Advaita. His Śaṅkara was not the historical Śaṅkara, author of the Brahma Sūtra Bhāṣya

and Upadeśasāhasrī; it was the Śaṅkara who had traveled to Varanasi and

acknowledged an outcaste as his teacher, and who had written countless hymns of

praise to Kṛṣṇa, Śiva, and Devī.

Walter Neevel’s essay that I mentioned earlier was one of the first to emphasize

the world-affirming aspect of Ramakrishna’s teachings. According to Neevel, the

missing piece to understanding Ramakrishna is tantra: “Lacking the tantric element in

his world-view, this traditional analysis cannot place Ramakrishna precisely in the total

Hindu heritage nor indicate accurately how the various levels of Ramakrishna’s ideas

are integrated into the whole.”7 Neevel is certainly right that Ramakrishna’s

biographers were uncomfortable with his tantrism. They sought to underemphasize

the influence that Śākta tantrism had had on him, and to overemphasize the influence

of Śaṅkara’s Advaita Vedānta. But designating Ramakishna’s world-affirming ethics as

simply “tantric” is an oversimplification. First, there are significant differences in the

philosophies and practices of the different Tantric traditions. Dualist schools of tantra,

most notably the Śaiva Siddhānta, insist upon upholding distinctions of caste, and more

generally distinctions of purity (śuddhi) and impurity (aśuddhi).8 This contrasts with

non-dualist schools of tantra. Alexis Sanderson writes of one such non-dualist school,

the famous Trika school of Kashmir Śaivism:

A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 7

For the Trika this distinction between dualism and nondualism was also
reflected in ritual and observance. The religious practice of the Siddhānta was
dualistic (dvaitācāraḥ) in the sense that it accepted the orthodox (Vedic)
distinctions between the pure and impure and remained strictly within the
boundaries of the former. The Trika, by contrast, advocated the practice of
nonduality (advaitācāraḥ), in as much as its rituals involved contact with impure
persons and/or substances. It justified this apparently impious transcendence of
the norms of conduct by arguing that this practice of nonduality had been
revealed by Śiva himself in his highest and most esoteric scriptures as the
ultimate means of liberating consciousness from the contraction (saṃkocaḥ) or
inhibition (śaṅkā) which holds it in bondage.9

Medieval non-dualist traditions of Śaiva and Śākta tantra typically rejected

orthoprax Vedic distinctions between the pure and the impure, while dualist tantric

traditions generally left such distinctions in place. Tantric textual sources sometimes

refer to these two approaches to ethics as “left-handed” (vāmācāra) and “right-handed”

(dakṣiṇācāra), respectively.10 Is it therefore fair to conclude that both Ramakrishna and

Vivekananda are, in essence, vāmācāra tantrics? The answer, I think, is clearly no. To

insist on looking at these two thinkers reductively through the lens of tantra ignores

another important strand running throughout both thinkers’ teachings, namely the

path of bhakti. Freda Matchett noted the importance of one bhakti-oriented text in

particular in Ramakrishna’s thought, the Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa.11 This text, loosely

translated as the “Spiritual Rāmāyaṇa,” was composed between the 13th and 15th

centuries as a part of the Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa.12 The Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa tells the

famous story of Rāma from an unmistakably non-dualistic perspective. Rāma is

revealed at the text’s beginning to be the highest brahman, and Sītā his power of

creation.13 However, unlike Śaṅkara’s emphasis on knowledge, this text portrays

devotion to Rāma as the means to release.

A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 8

The Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa is hardly alone in its fusion of Advaita and Vaiṣṇava

bhakti themes. In fact, it is one of a large group of texts from the mid-second

millennium that combine these two elements. In spite of the importance of Advaita

bhakti themes throughout modern Hinduism, these works have been generally

neglected by western Indologists. Among these Advaita bhakti texts are the hymns of

praise that were said to have been written by the philosopher Śaṅkara himself.

According to tradition, the hymn “Bhaja Govindam” (“Praise to Kṛṣṇa”) was composed by

Śaṅkara one day as he was walking along the alleyways of Varanasi. He heard an old

pandit reciting Pāṇinian grammatical rules, and took pity on him. Walking up to the

scholar, he sang: “Praise Govinda, Praise Govinda, Praise Govinda, O fool! When your

appointed time has come, a grammatical rule will certainly not save you!”14

It is unlikely that the historical Śaṅkara never uttered these words to a

grammarian sitting in an alley in Varanasi, as it would have been completely out of

character for him to do so. For Śaṅkara, knowledge alone liberates, and specifically the

knowledge contained in the Upaniṣads, the “End of the Vedas.” Knowledge of grammar

is, of course, necessary to understand the Vedas, hence grammar (vyākaraṇa) is at least

an indirect means to liberation. But the sentiment expressed in this hymn is very much

in keeping with the Advaita bhakti of the mid-second millennium, reflected in Śaṅkara’s

stotras, in the Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa, and in the hagiographies of Śaṅkara. It was this

second millenium understanding of Advaita, combined with non-dual tantric

traditions, that together shaped both Ramakrishna and Vivekananda’s thought.

A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 9

With regard to Vivekananda in particular, there is another reason why it is not

appropriate to simply reduce his ethics to that of the vāmācāra. Throughout his lectures

he repeatedly and unambiguously rejects vāmācāra:

Give up this filthy Vâmâchâra that is killing your country . . . Those who come
out in the daytime and preach most loudly about Âchâra, it is they who carry on
the horrible debauchery at night and are backed by the most dreadful books. . .
You who are of Bengal know it. The Bengali Shastras are the Vamachara
Tantras. They are published by the cart-load, and you poison the minds of your
children with them instead of teaching them your Shrutis.15

Based on this and on other passages, it is clear that what Vivekananda found

most objectionable were the sexually transgressive rituals associated with vāmācāra in

the minds of progressive, English-educated Indians in the 19th century. He did not

seem to make any particular connection between vāmācāra and his own repudiation of

caste discrimination. Nor has there been any suggestion that Vivekananda failed to

observe the vow of celibacy he undertook when he became a renouncer (saṃnyāsin),

even by his most severe critics.16 While there were unacknowledged vāmācāra tantric

influences in Vivekananda’s teachings, and perhaps in his dietary habits, he always

drew the line at sexual transgression.

Vivekananda’s Portrayal of Ādi Śaṅkarācārya

Many of the tensions and ambiguities in the teachings of Vivekananda may be

traced to the tensions between the two Śaṅkaras I have described, the “authentic”

historical Śaṅkara presented by 19th and 20th century Indologists, and Ramakrishna’s

Śaṅkara of hagiography and popular tradition.17 Vivekananda’s self-consciously novel

teaching of “practical Vedanta” is in part an attempt bridge this gulf. He found himself
A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 10

in the hermeneutic situation of having to make sense of discrepancies between the two,

a situation that has become quite familiar to contemporary Hindus who are raised in

popular devotional traditions and then later exposed to western Indological

scholarship. Later portrayals of Vivekananda often give the impression that his

embrace of the historical Śaṅkara’s teachings was complete, but close attention to his

writings and lectures reveals that this is not accurate. Vivekananda did frequently

express his admiration and intellectual kinship with Śaṅkara, whose Advaita

philosophy he consistently portrayed as surpassing the dualism of Madhva and the

qualified non-dualism of Rāmānuja.18 This also led him to defend Śaṅkara’s insistence

that knowledge alone liberates, a position that put Śaṅkara other Vedānta schools that

subscribed to the doctrine that liberation occurs through the combination of

knowledge and action (jñāna-karma-samuccaya-vāda). Questioned directly on this

principle by one of his disciples, Vivekananda attempts to clarify his own Advaitic

position in the following exchange from 1901:

Disciple: But, sir, according to Shankara, Karma is antagonistic to Jnana. He has

variously refuted the intermingling of Jnana and Karma. So how can Karma be
helpful to the manifestation of Jnana?

Swamiji: Shankara after saying so has again described Karma as indirect help to
the manifestation of Jnana and the means for the purification of the mind. But I
do not contradict his conclusion that in transcendent knowledge there is no
touch of any work whatsoever. . . That all work is the effect of ignorance may be
true from the absolute standpoint, but within the sphere of relative
consciousness it has a great utility. When you will realise the Atman, the doing
or non-doing of work will be within your control, and whatever you will do in
that state will be good work, conducive to the well-being of Jivas and the world.
With the manifestation of Brahman, even the breath you draw will be to the
good of Jiva. Then you will no longer have to work by means of conscious
planning.19
A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 11

Though Vivekananda here strives to adhere to Śaṅkara’s principle that

knowledge alone liberates, he argues for the value of work by invoking a novel world-

affirming interpretation of the Advaitic distinction between conventional and ultimate

truths. While it is true that from the absolute standpoint work has no purpose,

nonetheless in the conventional world work is very important. However, this might

still seem merely to suggest that those who function under the illusion of duality

should fulfill their prescribed duties, while those with a non-dual consciousness will see

the futility of all action, given the illusory nature of the phenomenal world. Therefore

Vivekananda adds a teaching that seems to be inspired by the Bhagavad Gītā’s ideal of

the “person who is firm in wisdom” (sthitaprajña).20 According to Vivekananda here,

someone fully established in the wisdom of non-dualism does not renounce work.

Instead, he acts spontaneously and without any calculation for the good of others who

are under the spell of māyā. In making this point, Vivekananda attempts to diminish

any apparent differences between his socially-minded philosophy and that of

Śaṅkarācārya, and portrays himself as a loyal follower of Advaita.

In other forums, Vivekananda was quite ready to draw distinctions between his

teachings and those of Śaṅkara. In an 1897 letter to Pramadadas Mitra, a learned

Brahmin pundit in Varanasi with whom Vivekananda had corresponded for nine years,

Vivekananda sounds quite different:

The Upanishads and the Gita are the true scriptures; Rama, Krishna, Buddha,
Chaitanya, Nanak, Kabir, and so on are the true Avatâras, for they had their
hearts broad as the sky — and above all, Ramakrishna. Ramanuja, Shankara etc.,
seem to have been mere Pundits with much narrowness of heart. Where is that
love, that weeping heart at the sorrow of others? — Dry pedantry of the Pundit
— and the feeling of only oneself getting to salvation hurry-scurry! . . . The
conviction is daily gaining on my mind that the idea of caste is the greatest
dividing factor and the root of Maya; all caste either on the principle of birth or
A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 12

of merit is bondage . . . To me what would Mlechchha's [foreigner’s] food matter

or Pariah's? It is in the books written by priests that madnesses like that of caste
are to be found, and not in books revealed from God.21

At moments such as this Vivekananda shows his allegiance to the world-

affirming Advaita of his teacher Ramakrishna. Here, the Śaṅkara he refers to is the

Indologist’s Śaṅkara, not the hagiographer’s. He suggests that this Śaṅkara’s lack of

compassion and concern with helping others is an indication of his inability to take his

own non-dual teachings to heart. In particular, Vivekananda seems have in mind the

“narrowness” of Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja’s teachings with regard to caste, in comparison

to those who saw beyond caste such as Nanak and Kabir, whose hearts were “as broad

as the sky.”

In an 1898 lecture in West Bengal, Vivekananda spoke of Śaṅkarācārya in even

more condemnatory language. In response to one of his disciples who had a strong

affinity for Śaṅkarācārya’s teachings, Vivekananda pointed to Śaṅkara’s Brahmin pride:

Shankara's intellect was sharp like the razor. He was a good arguer and a
scholar, no doubt of that, but he had no great liberality; his heart too seems to
have been like that. Besides, he used to take great pride in his Brahmanism —
much like a southern Brahmin of the priest class, you may say. How he has
defended in his commentary on the Vedanta-Sutras that the non-Brahmin
castes will not attain to a supreme knowledge of Brahman! And what specious
arguments! 22

Returning to the story of Śaṅkara and the Caṇḍāla with which I began this essay,

it may seem surprising how often this episode is repeated at all by those who revere the

philosopher. At first glance it seems to reflect quite badly on him. On one reading, the

episode with the Caṇḍāla is an illustration of Śaṅkara’s failure to discern the true

meaning of his own non-dualist teachings. Unlike most other episodes of his life story,

such as his precocious adoption of the saṃnyāsin’s robes at age eight or his superhuman
A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 13

tranquility as he was about to literally lose his head to a Kāpālika, in the Caṇḍāla story

he displays his (apparently) human limitations. This is despite the fact that Śaṅkara

himself is portrayed in many hagiographies as an incarnation of Lord Śiva. Yet there is

another, more positive way of reading this story. Instead of understanding it as an

example of Śaṅkara’s ignorance and Brahmin pride, the story presents an opportunity

to reconcile the casteism of the historical Śaṅkara, exemplified by works such as the

Brahma Sūtra Bhāṣya and the Upadeśasāhasrī, with the later world-affirming

interpretation of Advaita Vedānta. By portraying such works as the products of a time

in his life before he had been awakened to the radically egalitarian implications of his

own philosophy, it is possible to explain away the apparent inconsistency that results

from reading Śaṅkara’s own words insisting on correct caste as a relevant prerequisite

(adhikāra) for studying Vedānta. On this second reading, Śaṅkara was not truly

liberated until he had renounced caste distinctions completely. His travels throughout

India were a journey of discovery through which he came to understand the true

meaning of non-dualism and achieved his final liberation in the Himalayas.

It is clear, however, that Vivekananda did not extend this hermeneutic charity

to the historical Śaṅkara. Instead, in the five years before Vivekananda’s death at age

thirty-nine, he chose to emphasize the weaknesses of the Advaita Vedānta founder’s

own thought and character. This leads me to wonder whether, if Vivekananda had lived

longer, he would have nuanced his critique of Śaṅkarācārya, developing a systematic

interpretation that would reconcile the contradiction between the world-negating and

world-affirming aspects of his character. Of all of the many discussions of Śaṅkara in

Vivekananda’s Complete Works of Vivekananda, he does not discuss the episode with the
A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 14

Caṇḍāla. However, Ramakrishna does. Śaṅkara is mentioned only six times in The Gospel

of Sri Ramakrishna, a work of over 1,000 pages. But five of those six references of Śaṅkara

are in the context of the story of Śaṅkara and the Caṇḍāla.23 It seems that Ramakrishna

had little interest in Śaṅkara apart from this didactic story, whose moral was that one

should treat all people equally without regard for caste.

Though Vivekananda is not recorded as having mentioned Śaṅkara’s embrace of

the Caṇḍāla, there is another relevant story about Vivekananda himself. It is related by

his disciple Sister Christine:

[Vivekananda] told of his struggle against caste prejudices in the early

years of his wandering life. One day just after he had been thinking that he
would like to smoke he passed a group of mehtars who were smoking.
Instinctively, he passed on. Then, as he remembered that he and the lowest
chandâla were one Self, he turned back and took the hookâh from the hands of
the untouchable. But he was no condemner of caste. He saw the part it had
played in the evolution of the nation, the purpose it had served in its day. But
when it hardens the heart of the observer towards his fellowman, when it
makes him forget that the chandâla as well as he is the one Self, it is time to
break it — but never as a matter of mere indulgence.24

Whether this episode in Vivekananda’s early travels as a saṃnyāsin is factually

true or not is largely beside the point. Even if the story was constructed by

Vivekananda or his disciple, it is clear that it expresses a central truth of Advaita as

understood by Vivekananda and his followers. Vivekananda, like Śaṅkarācārya, was a

member of a twice-born caste who had internalized casteist attitudes. The story

portrays his realization and his overcoming such ingrained attitudes. But it is

Vivekananda, not Śaṅkara, who is credited with this non-dual insight.

In Jyotirmaya Sharma’s 2013 book on Vivekananda, titled Cosmic Love and Human

Apathy, Sharma throws cold water on those who wish to paint a picture of Vivekananda

as a liberal who preached inter-faith tolerance and the end of caste. Instead, in this
A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 15

book as well as in an interview for Outlook magazine timed to coincide with

Vivekananda’s 150th birth anniversary celebration, Sharma argues that Vivekananda

was a Hindu triumphalist who distorted his teacher Ramakrishna’s teachings by placing

the Hindu religion above all others.25 In Sharma’s words, “the idea of his inclusiveness

and liberality is a powerful shared myth in our country but entirely based on a limited,

partial reading of his works.”26

Sharma’s critical evaluation of Vivekananda’s thought is a welcome corrective

to the often insipid celebrations of Vivekananda that fail to grapple with his mixed

legacy and his complexities as a thinker. However, Sharma’s corrective relies on a

limited, partial reading of Vivekananda’s works similar to the ones he criticizes. In the

case of Sharma, an outspoken secular critic of Hindutva, these de-contextualizations

seem to be part of an agenda to expose links between Vivekananda and Hindu

nationalism. Yet understanding Vivekananda’s attitude toward religious pluralism

requires an acknowledgement that he was both a Hindu supremacist and an inclusivist.

Here there is no inherent contradiction. Vivekananda’s assertion that Vedānta as not

simply another religion, but in fact the fulfillment of all other religious paths, is fully in

keeping with what contemporary scholars of religious pluralism term “inclusivism.”27

Much as the 20th century Catholic theologian Karl Rahner argued that faithful

members of other religions were “anonymous Christians” whose faith traditions had

their ultimate source in the Christian God, so too Vivekananda depicted the many

“sects” of Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and even dualist Hinduism as imperfect paths

that could only be fulfilled through non-dual Vedānta. This Advaita Vedānta, only
A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 16

partially glimpsed by its founder Śaṅkara himself, obliterates worldly distinctions such

as religion and caste.

Sharma also cites Vivekananda’s teaching that caste is “the natural order” and

that “the cause of India’s downfall. . . [was] this giving up of the idea of caste.”28 Sister

Christine too, in her re-telling of the story of Vivekananda’s sharing a hookah with the

mehtars, is careful to note that Vivekananda “was no condemner of caste” and “saw the

part it had played in the evolution of the nation.”29 How can we reconcile these two

pictures of Vivekananda, one the non-dualist philosopher who opposed all caste

distinctions, and the other the defender of the “natural order” of caste? We should first

remind our selves that other reformers, including Gandhi, shared this ambivalence on

the question of caste inequality. Gandhi in particular provided a solution similar to

Vivekananda’s. Both saw caste as something that had become corrupt in later times,

and that had outlived its usefulness. Yet both men, as Hindus, also defended what they

understood as the true, original idea behind what is now known as caste. In their eyes

this authentic, ancient conception is a just, non-coercive system for structuring society.

Gandhi interpreted the ancient social order in this way largely because he took

the Bhagavad Gītā to be the central text for the understanding of Hindu dharma. The

Gītā explicitly supports the division of society into the four varṇas, and twice asserts

that “one’s own dharma done poorly is better than the dharma of another done well.”30

Some contemporary Gandhians elide Gandhi’s own idiosyncratic defense of varṇa.

Gandhi did not call for the annihilation of varṇa, in contrast to his rival B.R. Ambedkar.

For Gandhi, there are no constraints on inter-marriage and inter-dining between

A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 17

varṇas. However, a man should voluntarily refrain from taking up any profession other

than one appropriate for his father’s varṇa. As Gandhi teaches,

[A man] belongs to the varṇa in which he was born, but by not living up to it he
will be doing violence to himself and becomes a degraded being—a patita. . . A
śūdra has as much right to knowledge as a brahmin, but he falls from his estate if
he tries to gain livelihood through teaching.31

Vivekananda, like Gandhi, defended what he considered the true spirit behind

caste, which was non-coercive and had nothing to do with ritual purity and impurity.

Note the similarities in Vivekananda’s defense of caste:

Now, take the case of caste — in Sanskrit, Jâti, i.e. species. . . Unity is before
creation, diversity is creation. Now if this diversity stops, creation will be
destroyed. . . Not even in the latest books is inter-dining prohibited; nor in any
of the older books is inter-marriage forbidden. Then what was the cause of
India's downfall? — the giving up of this idea of caste. As Gitâ says, with the
extinction of caste the world will be destroyed.32

There is little historical evidence for this revisionist understanding of the

ancient Indian social order shared by Gandhi and Vivekananda. However, that has not

limited the popularity among contemporary Hindus of the idea that the original caste

system was pure, though in later times it became corrupted.

It is not only historically inaccurate to tie Vivekananda’s universalist

inclusivism to the communalism of the contemporary Hindutva movement. From a

practical point of view, it is also a mistake for India’s secular left to cede Vivekananda

as a political symbol to its Hindutva opponents. For this is exactly what the VHP, RSS,

and BJP have sought to do themselves, by repeatedly using Vivekananda’s saffron-clad

image and selectively quoting his statements of national pride to give the impression of

Vivekananda’s support for the later Hindutva cultural-political program. Evidence of

this can be seen in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s heavy involvement in events
A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 18

commemorating Vivekananda’s 150th birth anniversary, including the controversy

that arose in 2013 surrounding the VHP’s involvement in a celebration of Swami

Vivekananda’s birth anniversary in Chicago. The Council of the Parliament of World

Religion (CPWR) was the inter-faith ground that sponsored the original conference in

1893 in which Vivekananda first appeared on the world stage. It pulled out of the 2013

celebration in Chicago, reportedly because it did not want share sponsorship with the

VHP and to appear to endorse the VHP’s divisive positions on politics and religion.

Caste, Curry, and Cow Slaughter

I conclude with a topic that has caused no little discomfort among Hindu

nationalist admirers of Vivekananda, namely his flouting of dietary restrictions.

Vivekananda exhorted his followers to eat meat, and noted that the ancient Hindu

sages slaughtered cows and ate beef on special occasions.33 On the issue of cow

slaughter Vivekananda was of a different mind than other 19th century Hindu

reformers such as Dayananda Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj, who in an 1881

pamphlet entitled Go-karuṇā-nidhi (Ocean of Compassion for the Cow) argued forcefully

to end the practice of cow slaughter.34 Vivekananda, on the other hand, was reported

by multiple eyewitnesses as eating beef, not to mention the fish that would have been

familiar to him growing up among the bhadralok of Calcutta. Dr. John Henry Barrows

reported that on the same day as Vivekananda’s famous speech at the World’s

Parliament of Religions, September 11, 1893, he went to the restaurant in the basement

of the Art Institute of Chicago with Swami Vivekananda. When Barrows asked
A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 19

Vivekananda what he wished to order, Vivekananda is said to have shouted, “Give me

beef!”35

Though some of Vivekananda’s detractors have taken this to be a further

example of his flawed character, my foregoing discussion of the social and ethical

implications of non-dualism provides important context to make sense of such

behavior.36 In the same 1897 letter to Pramadadas Mitra in which Vivekananda

criticized Śaṅkara’s narrow-mindedness concerning caste, Vivekananda also wrote of

his own personal habits that “I eat anything and everything, and with anybody and

everybody.”37 For many high-caste Hindus of Vivekananda’s time, the second half of

this statement would have been just as scandalous as the first half. According to the

usual interpretation of dharmaśāstric rules on commensality, a twice-born should only

break bread with other twice-borns, not with śūdras, dalits, or with the foreigners

(mlecchas) that Vivekananda had encountered in his wide travels.38 Vivekananda,

however, saw no connection between the pure, original Indian understanding of caste

and conventional restrictions on inter-dining. Furthermore, as I have shown,

Vivekananda and Ramakrishna shared an interpretation of non-dualism that obviated

concern for caste purity.

The tendency among contemporary scholars to concentrate on whether

Vivekananda is a true representative of Śaṅkara’s philosophy is understandable.

Vivekananda’s teachings encourage such behavior, as he often represented himself as

Śaṅkara’s admirer and heir. However, the tendency we find in Paul Hacker, for

instance, of catching Vivekananda out as presenting an inauthentic “pseudo-Vedānta”

is an example of sloppy intellectual history. Would we demand the same historical

A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 20

authenticity of other modern religious thinkers? Should we label Karl Rahner a

“pseudo-Catholic” for not agreeing in all specifics with the teachings of Aquinas, or

Martin Buber a “pseudo-Jew” for disagreeing with Maimonides? This tendency of

isolating Śaṅkara and Vivekananda, two thinkers who lived over 1,000 years apart, in a

historical vacuum, does a disservice to both. Happily, recent scholarship is beginning to

move past this tendency. Some scholars have recently begun to examine the ways that

vernacular authors adapted Vedānta and Yoga philosophies in the 16th through 19th

centuries. In these works, we begin to get a fuller picture of the types of mediating

influences that Vivekananda and other thinkers of the Hindu Renaissance would have

had in their interpretations of classical Indian philosophy.39 In other words, the

Indologists are finally beginning to catch up with Swami Vivekananda. Much more

remains to be done, however, in excavating the many strata of “world-affirming”

Advaita Vedānta (for instance, the Advaita bhakti traditions that inspired the 16th

century Advaita commentator Madhusūdana Sarasvatī to argue for the path of bhakti as

equal to the path of jñāna).40 Vivekananda’s genius was to show his countrymen and the

world that the non-dualist philosophies of India have universal, and not merely

sectarian, implications. Without the thinkers after Śaṅkara and before Vivekananda

who intervened to show how the philosophy of non-dualism had within it the seeds of

social egalitarianism, Vivekananda’s triumphant message would not have been

possible.
A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 21

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adcock, C.S. (2010). “Sacred Cows and Secular History: Cow Protection Debates in
Colonial North India,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 30, pp.
299-311.

Advaita Ashrama (1961). Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, by his Eastern and Western
Admirers. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama.

Allen, Michael S. (2013). The Ocean of Inquiry: A Neglected Classic of Late Advaita Vedānta.
Cambridge: Harvard University, Ph.D. diss.

Clark, Matthew (2006). The Dasanami-Samnyasis: The Integration of Ascetic Lineages into an
Order. Leiden: Brill.

Doniger, Wendy (2010). The Hindus: An Alternative History. New York: Oxford University
Press.

Flood, Gavin (2006). The Tantric Body: The Secret Tradition of Hindu Religion. New York: I.B.
Tauris.

Gandhi, M.K. (1965). Gita: My Mother, edited by Anand Hingorani. Bombay: Bharatiya
Vidya Bhavan.

Hacker, Paul (1995). “Schopenhauer and Hindu Ethics,” in Philology and Confrontation:
Paul Hacker on Traditional and Modern Vedānta, ed. Wilhelm Halbfass, pp. 273-318. Albany:
SUNY Press.

Inden, Ronald B. (1976). Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture: A History of Caste and Clan in
Middle-period Bengal. Berkeley: University of California Press.

India Today, “Modi effect in Chicago: CPWR withdraws support to Vivekanand birth
anniversary celebration.” < http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/modis-long-shadow-
creates-a-rift-in-chicago/1/311124.html>. Retrieved 2 March 2014.

Matchett, Freda (1981). “The Teaching of Rāmakrishna in Relation to the Hindu

Tradition and as Interpreted by Vivekānanda,” Religion 11, pp. 171-84.

Mayeda, Sengaku (ed. and trans.) (1992). A Thousand Teachings: The Upadesasahasri of
Sankara. Albany: SUNY Press.
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Neevel, Walter G. (1976). “The Transformation of Śrī Rāmakrishna,” in Hinduism: New

Essays in the History of Religions, ed. Bardwell L. Smith, pp. 53-97. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976.

Nicholson, Andrew J. (2010). Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian

Intellectual History. New York: Columbia University Press.

Nelson, Lance E. (2004). “The Ontology of Bhakti: Devotion as Paramapuruṣārtha in

Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism and Madhusūdana Sarasvatī,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 32, pp.
345-92.

Rambachan, Anantanand (1994). The Limits of Scripture: Vivekananda’s Reinterpretation of

the Vedas. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Rocher, Ludo (1986). The Purāṇas, in History of Indian Literature, vol. 2, fasc. 3. Wiesbaden:
Otto Harrassowitz.

Sanderson, Alexis (1995). “Meaning and Tantric Ritual” in Essais Sur Le Rituel III, ed.
Anne-Marie Blondeau and Kristofer Schipper, pp. 15-95. Louvain: Peeters, 1995.

Sharma, Jyotirmaya (2013a). Cosmic Love and Human Apathy: Swami Vivekananda’s
Restatement of Religion. Noida: HarperCollins.

_________________ (2013b). “’His Inclusiveness is a Powerful Myth’: Vivekananda

comes off as a Hindu supremacist, and not so much as a social reformist.” Interview in
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Sil, Narasangha (1997). Swami Vivekananda: A Reassessment. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna

University Press.

Tapasyananda, Swami (ed. and tr.) (1985). Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa: The Spiritual Version of the
Rāma Saga. Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math.

____________________ (ed. and tr.) (1986). Sankara-Dig-Vijaya: The Traditional Life of Sri
Sankaracharya by Madhava-Vidyaranya. Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math.

Valdina, Peter (2013). Reading the Yoga Sūtra in Colonial India. Atlanta: Emory University,
Ph.D. diss.

Vivekananda, Swami (1964-1970). The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. 1-8,
Mayavati Memorial Edition. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama.
                                                                                                               
1
Tapasyananda (1986:59-60).
2
Based on epigraphical research, Clark (2006) argues that it is unlikely that the five Advaita monasteries
that ascribe their founding to the historical Śaṅkara were founded by him. This may also cast doubt on
Śaṅkara’s extensive travels described in the medieval hagiographical literature.
3
Mayeda (1992:211).
A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 23

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
4
“From the spring of 1986 onwards, when he spoke about ethics in India, Europe, or America,
Vivekananda habitually presented the Schopenhauer-Deussen pseudo-Vedānta, though without
abandoning his earlier ethical ideas” (Hacker 1995:297).
5
Hacker (1995:305).
6
Quoted in Neevel (1976:93).  
7
Neevel (1976:86).
8
On Śaiva Siddhanta tantric ritual observances, see Flood (2006:120-45).  
9
Sanderson (1995:17).
10
Sanderson (1995:18).
11
Matchett (1981:176-7).
12
Rocher (1986:159).
13
Tapasyananda (1985:6).
14
Mahadevan (1980:37). My translation.
15
Vivekananda (1970:vol. 3, 340-1).
16
Such critics include Sil (1997) and Sharma (2013a).
17
It should be noted, however, that the distinction between “high” and “low” traditions, or “Sanskritic”
versus “vernacular,” is an artificial one. Popular depictions of Śaṅkara appear among brahmanical
authors such as Mādhava, reputed author of both the Śankaradigvijaya and the Pañcadaśi, a systematic
work on Advaita Vedānta.
18
“The Vedanta philosophy, as it is generally called at the present day, really comprises all the various
sects that now exist in India. Thus there have been various interpretations, and to my mind they have
been progressive, beginning with the dualistic or Dvaita and ending with the non-dualistic or Advaita”
(Vivekananda 1970:vol. 1, 357).
19
Vivekananda (1969:vol 7, 221-2).
20
See Bhagavad Gītā 2.54-72.
21
Vivekananda (1968:vol. 6, 394).
22
Vivekananda (1969:vol. 7, 117)
23
See note in Rambachan: “There are, however, only six references recorded by Gupta. Five of these
relate, with minor variations, an unflattering incident in Śaṅkara’s life. One day, after emerging from a
bath in the Ganges, Śaṅkara was accidentally brushed by an untouchable. Śaṅkara reproached the man,
who then surprisingly questioned him on the nature of his identification with the body. The pure self,
argued the untouchable, neither touches nor is touched” (1994:33).
24
Advaita Ashrama (1961:190).
25
Sharma (2013a:91).
26
Sharma (2013b).
27
See Nicholson (2010:185-9)
28
Quoted in Sharma (2013a: 182, 177). Originally from Vivekananda (1970:vol. 4, 372).
29
Advaita Ashrama (1961:190).
30
Bhagavad Gītā 3.35.
31
Gandhi (1965:105). A central difference between Gandhi and Vivekananda is that Gandhi makes a
strong distinction between caste (jāti) and class (varṇa). Jāti, according to Gandhi, should be abolished,
while the four varṇas should be observed. Vivekananda saw jāti in its true original form as a just way of
ordering society, no less than varṇa.
32
Vivekananda (1970:vol. 4, 372).
33
For instance, Vivekananda maintained that “[t]here was a time in this very India when, without eating
beef, no Brahmin could remain a Brahmin; you read in the Vedas how, when a Sannyasin, a king, or a
great man came into a house, the best bullock was killed; how in time it was found that as we were an
agricultural race, killing the best bulls meant annihilation of the race. Therefore the practice was
stopped, and a voice was raised against the killing of cows” (Vivekananda 1970:vol. 3, 174).
34
For historical background on cow protection debates and the Arya Samaj, see Adcock (2010).  
35
Quoted in Doniger (2010:839).
36
For an interpretation of Vivekananda’s meat-eating that portrays it as a philosophical inconsistency or
ethical lapse, see Sharma (2013:271-3).
37
Vivekananda (1968:vol. 6, 394).
A.J. Nicholson, Vivekananda’s Non-Dual Ethics in the History of Vedānta, p. 24

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
38
Vivekananda was born a kāyastha, a twice-born caste sometimes included in the kṣatriya varṇa (see
Inden 1976:1-10).  
39
On the “vernacular Vedānta” of the Hindi author Niścaldās (ca. 1791-1863), see Allen (2013). On
interpretations of the Yoga Sūtras among modern Bengali authors, see Valdina (2013).
40
On Madhusūdana’s arguments breaking with Śaṅkara by supporting the path of bhakti as equal to jñāna,
see Nelson (2004).