struck out again — without a name and with only a staff and begging-bowl — he was
swallowed in the immensity of India and the dust of the vast subcontinent completely
engulfed him. When rediscovered by his brother monks he was no longer the unknown
Naren, but the Swami Vivekananda who had made history in Chicago in 1893.
In order to satisfy his wanderlust, Narendra went to Varanasi, considered the holiest
place in India — a city sanctified from time out of mind by the association of monks
and devotees. Here have come prophets like Buddha, Sankaracharya, and Chaitanya, to
receive, as it were, the commandment of God to preach their messages. The Ganga
charges the atmosphere with a rare holiness. Narendra felt uplifted by the spirit of
renunciation and devotion that pervades this sacred place. He visited the temples and
paid his respects to such holy men as Trailanga Swami, who lived on the bank of the
Ganga constantly absorbed in meditation, and Swami Bhaskarananda, who annoyed
Naren by expressing doubt as to the possibility of a man's total conquest of the
temptation of 'woman' and 'gold.' With his own eyes Naren had seen the life of Sri
Ramakrishna, who had completely subdued his lower nature.
In Varanasi, one day, hotly pursued by a troop of monkeys, he was running away when
a monk called to him: 'Face the brutes.' He stopped and looked defiantly at the ugly
beasts. They quickly disappeared. Later, as a preacher, he sometimes used this
experience to exhort people to face the dangers and vicissitudes of life and not run
away from them.
After a few days Naren returned to Baranagore and plunged into meditation, study, and
religious discourses. From this time he began to feel a vague premonition of his future
mission. He often asked himself if such truths of the Vedanta philosophy as the
divinity of the soul and the unity of existence should remain imprisoned in the worm-
eaten pages of the scriptures to furnish a pastime for erudite scholars or to be enjoyed
only by solitary monks in caves and the depths of the wilderness; did they not have any
significance for the average man struggling with life's problems? Must the common
man, because of his ignorance of the scriptures, be shut out from the light of Vedanta?
Narendra spoke to his brother disciples about the necessity of preaching the strength-
giving message of the Vedanta philosophy to one and all, and especially to the
downtrodden masses. But these monks were eager for their own salvation, and
protested. Naren said to them angrily: 'All are preaching. What they do unconsciously,
I will do consciously. Ay, even if you, my brother monks, stand in my way, I will go to
the pariahs and preach in the lowest slums.'
After remaining at Baranagore a short while, Naren set out again for Varanasi, where
he met the Sanskrit scholar Pramadadas Mitra. These two felt for each other a mutual
respect and affection, and they discussed, both orally and through letters, the social
customs of the Hindus and abstruse passages of the scriptures. Next he visited
Ayodhya, the ancient capital of Rama, the hero of the Ramayana. Lucknow, a city of
gardens and palaces created by the Moslem Nawabs, filled his mind with the glorious
memories of Islamic rule, and the sight of the Taj Mahal in Agra brought tears to his
eyes. In Vrindavan he recalled the many incidents of Krishna's life and was deeply