A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

VEDANTA. 361;sects of Vedantists had to take for granted, the psychologywhich has formed the common basis of all Indian schoolsof thought, had been worked out already and presentedbefore the world. A few words, therefore, about it arenecessary before we start into the spiritual portion of theYedanta alone, and I want to clear myself of one thingfirst, that is, my use of the word Yedanta. Unfortunatelythere is a aaistake committed many times in modern India,that the word Vedanta has reference only to the Advaitistisystem, but you must always remember that in modernIndia there are the three Prasthfinas for man to study.First of all there are the revelations, by which I mean theUpanishads. Secondly, among our philosophies, the Sutrasof Yyasa have got the greatest prominence, on account oftheir being the summation of Ml the preceding systems ofphilosophy not that these ; systems are contradictory toone another, but the one is based on the other, it is a.gradual unfolding of the theme which culminates in theSutras of Yyasa and between the ; Upanishads and theSutras, which are the systematising of the marvelloustruths of the Yedanta, come in the divine commentary ofthe Yedanta, S ri Gita. The Upanishads, the Gita, andthe Yyasa Sutras, therefore, have been taken up by everysect in India which wants to claim authority to be orthodox, whether Dualist, or Yaishnavist,or Advaitist itmatters little, but the authorities of each are these three.We find that a S ankaracharya, or a Ramanuja, or aMadhwacharya, or a Yallabhacharya, or a Chaitanya,any one who wanted to propound a new sect had totake up these three systems and write only a new commentary on them. Therefore, it would be wrong toconfine the word Yedanta only to one system which has.arisen out of the Upanishads. All these have been covered