Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c7.s9.t8.7

v1.c7.s9.t8.7

Vivekananda’s philosophy contains many elements of dialectics. He often talked about the unity of opposites and contradictions of matter, while he analysed the various natural and social phenomena. He believed that all things felt by man’s sense organ or imagined by man’s mind included the two forces of action and reaction, one force working on another force, resulting in a complex and mixed phenomenon. These opposing forces took the forms in the external world of attractive and repulsive force or centripetal and centrifugal force; take the forms in the inner world of love and hatred, good and bad, and so on. The opposite phenomena were only the different manifestations of the same thing seen from different standpoints; they were two forms of a whole. Regarding the topic of dialectics, Vivekananda offered a lot of vivid exposition: good and bad were not two separate and discrete existences, a phenomenon manifested as good now, tomorrow it might be bad; same thing might produce pain for a man, while for another man might be happiness; fire could burn the child, but could also cook a good meal for a hungry man. The same nerve might produce a painful feeling, but also might bring the feeling of happiness. Life or death and bitter or sweet could not exist alone, because some aspects inside them were just the different manifestations of the same thing. The concept of life had already contained the concept of death; the concept of happiness also contained the concept of suffering, and so on. Although Vivekananda discussed a lot about the phenomena of the unity of opposites and transformation of contradictions of relative things, he concluded that contradiction and transformation between the two contradicted sides were only relative, temporary, and their harmony and unity were absolute and eternal.