The photographic portraits of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836-1886) are striking. Those unfamiliar with the great Bengali mystic might mistake him for a mere beggar. However, this would overlook the fact that in Hinduism, holiness is directly linked to the shedding of worldly and inner possessions. Since his first ecstasy at the age of seven, when he was struck by the stark contrast of white cranes flying against a dark monsoon cloud, the remarkable priest from the Dakshineswar temple near Kolkata followed an incredible path of self-loss as he devoted himself to the absolute, worshiping Kali, the universal mother. His annihilation was complete at the end of his life when he succumbed to throat cancer.

The friend of the poor

Ramakrishna's painful visage was forever imprinted in the heart of his famous disciple Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), who invested his boundless energy to spread the teachings of his master, whom he referred to with one of the most beautiful names of God: dinabhandu, "the friend of the poor."

In 1897, upon returning from his triumphant tour of the United States, Vivekananda delivered a powerful speech at the Rameshwaram Temple in southern India, filled with memories of Ramakrishna: "He who sees Shiva in the poor, in the weak, and in the diseased, really worships Shiva; and if he sees Shiva only in the image, his worship is but preliminary. He who has served and helped one poor man seeing Shiva in him, without thinking of his caste, or creed, or race, or anything, with him Shiva is more pleased than with the man who sees Him only in temples."

No doubt, Vivekananda had not forgotten the ancient legends of the Skanda Purana, the largest of 18 primary religious texts within Hinduism, which tell how the god Shiva likes to test the faith and devotion of his followers by appearing to them in the guise of a destitute beggar of low caste.

Special object of worship

Also in 1897, Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission, a monastic order that has distinguished itself as much for spreading Vedanta – the metaphysical teachings of Shankara (788-820) on non-duality (advaita) – as for its remarkable social commitment to the poorest. For Vivekananda, these two priorities, while seemingly contradictory, were in fact one. This is what Shankara himself had learned the hard way on the ghats of Varanasi, India, the holiest of the seven sacred cities, when an untouchable, whose sight had made the orthodox Brahmin philosopher shudder, revealed that both were woven from the same divine reality.

In this very concrete application of the non-duality of beings lies the justification for the selfless service that the Hindu monks of the Ramakrishna Mission continue to perform in their hospitals and schools for the underprivileged, following in the footsteps of Vivekananda who wrote in a letter from 1897: May I be born again and again and suffer a thousand miseries, if only I may worship the only God in whom I believe, the sum total of all souls, and above all, my God the wicked, my God the afflicted, my God the poor of all races.”