Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda was born Narendranath Datta in Calcutta in 1863, into a prosperous family, and was educated in Western philosophy at the city’s colleges. In 1881 he met Ramakrishna, at first sceptically, and became his leading disciple. After Ramakrishna’s death in 1886 he and other disciples took monastic vows, and he spent several years as a wandering monk across India.

In September 1893 he spoke at the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago, and his address made him famous. He spent most of the next four years lecturing in the United States and Britain, founded the Vedanta Society of New York in 1894, and published lectures that became the books Raja Yoga (1896), Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga and Jnana Yoga. Raja Yoga included his translation of and commentary on the Yoga Sūtras.

Returning to India in 1897, he founded the Ramakrishna Mission, which joined monastic life to education, famine relief and medical work, and established a monastery at Belur on the Ganges. He died there in 1902, at the age of thirty-nine. His presentation of Vedānta, often called Neo-Vedānta by scholars, shaped both Western understanding of Hinduism and modern Hindu self-understanding.