With the promotion of Brahma Samaj and Arya Samaj, Hindu religion and culture got glory, but now people are curious to know what is the religion truly. Ramkrishna Paramahansa (1836-1886) displayed the true nature of religion in front of Indians.
Child Ramakrishna was named Gadadhar Chattopadhyay and he was born in 1836 in a poor Brahmin family in Hooghly district of Bengal. From childhood, he was not interested in education, but he used to be immersed in religious thought. When his father died at the age of 17, he came to Calcutta with his elder brother. At the age of 21 after the death of his brother, he became a priest in the temple of Kalidevi in Dakshineswar near Calcutta.
While acting as a priest, in his mind, there was a deep devotion and reverence towards the Kalidevi. He used to call Goddesses as mothers and often used to behave like a child in front of her. At the age of 24, he was married to a
After marriage, he came back to the temple of Dakshineswar. After that, for 12 years, he took various types of meditation. First of all, he learned Tantrik Sadhna from Bhairavi, a Brahmin female hermit, for two years. After that, he realized Shri Krishna while practicing Vaishnava religion. Then a great Vedantic sage named Totapuri taught him Vedanta-Sadhana. After that, Ramakrishna got involved in Sufism and practiced Islam religion. For some time he practiced Christianity also. This way, his life became entangled with a variety of spiritual practices. He proved through his sadhana that religion and knowledge are not the
At this time Shardamani started living with him as a wife. Shardamani lived with her husband in Dakshineswar for life, but Ramakrishna never saw him as a wife, he worshiped her as a mother. He was not a scholar like Raja Rammohan Rai and Swami Dayanand Saraswati, but he was a saint of high rank. As a saint, this time he was very well known. Many educated young people are also attracted to him. He used to preach to people coming from morning to night. Seeing their spiritual life, Indians came to know how religion really works.
Acharya P.C. Majumdar, who was a Brahmin, wrote that, before meeting Ramakrishna, nobody knew about religion truly. It was all pomp. What religious life is, knew only after meeting with Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna Paramahansa died on August 16, 1886, by Cancer.
Ramakrishna did not establish any sect nor established any ashram. He used to explain deep and intense elements of religion, by giving examples in very straightforward sentences. He was the true form of religion. Some scholars have described Ramakrishna as the living proof of religion. Swami Dayanand had proven the superiority of intellectual religion, only one part of Hindu religion, but Ramakrishna was the true representative of Hindu religion. Who believed both Formless and true god. He was not against idol worship and did not believe in monotheism – polytheism. From their view, the Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Ramayana and Mahabharata were all sacred texts.
Ramkrishna’s Lessons (Teachings)
Although Ramakrishna was not a high-grade scholar, he had explained Vedas very beautifully. The essence of his teachings is summarized as follows-
The highest goal of human life is to be interviewed with God. We can see God by developing our high spiritual life.- He did not consider householder life as an obstacle to achieving God. he had to say that for God realization, we have to renounce the desires of the mind, stay away from Kanchan and Kamini and move towards God. Spirituality can be grown this way while living in the house.
- The body and soul are two different things, explaining this principle, he said that if the attachment of Kamini-Kanchan is destroyed completely, then it starts to appear
clearly that the body and the soul are different. - Supporting idol worship, he said that
like court comes in the mind when seeing the lawyer, in the same way, meditating on the statue remembers the God. - Ramakrishna used to cognize cognition more than logic, debate, discourse, and speech.
- According to him, all human beings are equal. No one is less than anyone.
- He used to say, should be honest and polite along with scholar..
- They considered all religions to be the same. According to him, all the religions have different ways of reaching the same God.
By Ramakrishna Paramhansa
- Ramakrishna’s greatest gift to the world is spiritualism. By his simple precepts and examples of his lives, he made the complex knowledge of the Vedas and Upanishads close to ordinary persons. Through his teachings, Ramakrishna not only simplified the texts of Hindu religion but also generated reverence and faith in Hinduism for its ancient wisdom. In a way, Ramakrishna was a living form of Hinduism’s spiritualism.
- Ramakrishna’s second important contribution was to believe in the unity of all religions. He did not only preach his teachings but by practicing various religions in his life, made it clear that all religions have different paths of God-realization.
- His third important contribution is that he called the service and goodness of mankind as a religion. He says that every creature
is the form of God, so to serve him is to serve God. His disciple Vivekananda assumed this feeling and spent his life serving the poor.
Reference :https://www.indiaolddays.com/
