GuruLib: Book Makes Us Look Like Sycophants
File under: Reference Library
A reader brought this book to our attention: Stripping the Gurus: Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment. While we haven't read it and can't vouch for the research, it apparently reveals that one of our guru heroes, Swami Vivekananda, used to frequent brothels.
That just makes Swamiji so much cooler! Author Geoffrey D. Falk must either have access to information heretofore unknown, or he is one hell of a hatchet-job artist. Needless to say, we'll have to get our hands on a copy to catch up on the supposed sexual adventures of our favorite and oft times bombastic Hindoo Monk.
posted by guruphiliac @ 8:35 PM
4 Comments:
Did whatshisname expouse celibacy, and claim to be celibate?
I'm not sure paying women for sex in-and-of-itself means anything.
Vivekananda was probably celibate all his life. If he wasn't, it was because he consummated his relationship to the Irish schoolteacher his was in love with, Margaret Nobel.
I agree that having sex has absolutely nothing to do with one's spiritual understanding. That's why this blog exists, in part.
Vivekananda was the founding monk of one of India's most successful ashrams, the Ramakrishna Mission. If he had abdicated his sannyas to pursue Ms. Nobel, the whole thing would have never existed. Hence, he kept it in his pants, made Ms. Nobel become a nun, and died lonely and depressed before his 40th birthday.
Could you elaborate on the "lonely and depressed" part? How well documented is this?
I guess he got caught up in the whole anti-body school of enlightenment.
He would have been wiser to screw the hell out of M. Nobel. Of course, she would then have gotten pregnant, and that would become a whole new story. It's hard to seek enlightenment with children and other parents to cope with...
Swami Vivekananda: A Reassessment, by Narasingha P. Sil.
I imagine Vivekananda really wanted to live a normal existence at times with Nobel. But to abdicate his sannyas would have meant the end of the Ramakrishna Mission before it had really gotten started.
Vivekananda was a huge, huge star in his day. He was definitely caught up in his image. To marry would absolutely defy it. He sacrificed his happiness for the future of the Math, which was built out of the Vivekananda media myth.
Or at least that's how it goes in my screenplay.
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