Author: Lakshmi Niwas Jhunjhunwala
Publisher: Advaita Ashram
Year: 2010
Language: English
Pages: 209
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788175053380
Description
Haribhai, I am going to America. Whatever you hear of as happening there [meaning preparations for the parliament of religions], is all for this [striking his own chest]. For this [me] alone everything is being arranged.
--- Swami Vivekananda
If the Parliament of Religions has shown anything to the world it is this: it has proved to the world that holiness, purity and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character.
In the face of this evidence, if anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion and the destruction of the others, I pity him from the bottom of my heart, and point out to him that upon the banner of every religion will soon be written, in spite of resistance: “Help and not Fight,” “Assimilation and not Destruction,” “Harmony and Peace and not Dissension.”
--- Swami Vivekananda
COMMENTS:
“This Parliament of Religions has been held in the new world. I confess I wish it had been held in the old world, in my own country, and that it had had its origin in my own church. It is the greatest event so far in the history of the world, and it has been held on American Soil. I congratulate the people of America. Their example will be followed in time to come in other countries and by other peoples, but there is one honour which will always be American’s – the honour of having led the way. And certainly I should like to offer my congratulations to you, the citizens of Chicago.”
--- Dr. Alfred Williams Momerie
“I have seen all the great exhibitions of Europe during the last fifteen years, and I can safely say that the world’s Columbian Exposition is greater than all of them put together, and the Parliament of Religions is, in my opinion, greater than the exposition…. Such a scene was never witnessed before in the world’s history as that presented on the platform of Columbus Hall on the morning of September 11th, when the parliament convened.”
--- Dr. Alfred Williams Momerie
“At the Parliament of Religions they used to keep Vivekananda until the end of the programme to make people stay until the end of the session. On a warm day, when a prosy speaker talked too long and people began going home by hundreds, the Chairman would get up and announce that Swami Vivekananda would give a short address just before the benediction. Then he would have the peaceable hundreds perfectly in tether. The four-thousand fanning people in the Hall of Columbus would sit smiling and expectant, waiting for an hour or two of other men’s speeches, to listen to Vivekananda for fifteen minutes. The Chairman knew the old rule of keeping the best unitl last.
--- Boston Evening Transcript, April 5, 1894
Experts:
On this site between September 11 and 27 1893 Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), The first Hindu Monk from India to Teach Vedanta in America, Addressed the World’s Parliament of Religions, Held in Conjunction with the World’s Columbian Exposition. His unprecedented Success oened the way for the dialogue between Eastern and western Religion.
--- The Art Institute of Chicago
Contents
1. The Background to the Parliament of Religions – 1893
2. Vivekananda on his Way to the Parliament of Religions
3. Swami Vivekananda in America before the Parliament
4. Epilogue