| The question,
then, is whether there is any ground for hoping that we can devise and make people accept
a culture or an ethic that can effectively operate in this manner. Can we devise and
promote a religious faith that will assist large scale regulation of the life of the
individual for the benefit of the community? It may be admitted at once that it is not an
easy task, even if it were assumed as possible of achievement, now to found a new religion
to serve a particular secular purpose. But Vedanta,
for which I claim the virtue of appropriateness to the new economy, is not a new religion.
It figures in the most ancient calendar of faiths, and it is the living faith which
ostensibly guides the lives of three hundred millions of men and women.
The common folk living in the greater part of Asia profess
religions and moral ideas very closely related in origin to the religion and the moral
ideas of India. Although the West has for long accepted Christianity, the faiths that
inspired the literature and philosophies of Greece and Rome were faiths that in a large
measure absorbed and assimilated Vedantic currents from India. |
