- Lived:
- 12 January 1863, Calcutta (Kolkata) → the whole map: five years walking India from the Himalayas to Kanyakumari, then Chicago, New York and London — died 4 July 1902 at Belur Math on the Ganges, aged thirty-nine
- Field:
- monk · orator · organiser — Vedānta carried to the West; founder of the Ramakrishna Mission
- The Big Idea:
- The oneness the Upaniṣads teach is not a doctrine to be believed but a strength to be manifested — in yourself, through fearless "man-making" education, and in the poor, who are God and must be served, not pitied.
- In their words:
- "It is a man-making religion that we want. It is man-making theories that we want. It is man-making education all round that we want." (lecture at Kumbakonam, February 1897)
- If you remember one thing:
- The student who demanded proof of God became the beggar who walked the length of India, stood up in Chicago in 1893 and made the West listen to Vedānta for the first time — then came home and told his monks that their religion was service, founding an order whose worship, to this day, is run through hospitals, schools and famine camps.