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Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar
Gadadhar Chattopadhyay
18 February 1836
Kamarpukur, Bengal Presidency, British India
(now in West Bengal, India)
16 August 1886 (aged 50)
Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India
(now Kolkata, West Bengal, India)
|Sarada Devi
|Founder of
|Ramakrishna Order
|Advaita Vedanta, Bhakti, Tantra
|Notable disciple(s)
|Swami Vivekananda and others
|He is born in vain, who having attained the human birth, so difficult to get, does not attempt to realise God in this very life.
|** Ramakrishna's birthday is observed on Phalgun Shukla Dwitiya as per Hindu lunar calendar.
|Part of a series on
Classical Advaita vedanta
Kashmir Shaivism
Classical Advaita Vedanta
Advaita Vedanta
Kashmir Shaivism
Inchegeri Sampradaya
Ramana Maharshi
Tradional Advaita Vedanta
Modern Advaita Vedanta
Monasteries and Orders
Classical Advaita Vedanta
Modern Advaita Vedanta
Ramakrishna (About this sound Ramkṛiṣṇo Pôromôhongśo (help·info)) (18 February 1836 – 16 August 1886), born Gadadhar Chatterji or Gadadhar Chattopadhyay[1] (Gôdadhor Chôṭṭopaddhae), was an Indian mystic and yogi during the 19th-century.[2] His religious school of thought led to the formation of the Ramakrishna Mission by his chief disciple Swami Vivekananda.[3][4][5] Tota Puri gave him the name Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.[6]
Ramakrishna was born in a poor Brahmin Vaishnava family in rural Bengal. He became a priest of the Dakshineswar Kali Temple, dedicated to the goddess Kali, which had the influence of the main strands of Bengali bhakti tradition.[1] The most widely known amongst his first spiritual teachers was an ascetic woman, called Bhairavi Brahmani, who was skilled in Tantra and Vaishnava bhakti.[7] Later an Advaita Vedantin ascetic, Tota Puri, taught him non-dual meditation, and he experienced nirvikalpa samadhi under his guidance.
- 1 Biography
- 1.1 Birth and childhood
- 1.2 Priest at Dakshineswar Kali Temple
- 1.3 Marriage
- 1.4 Religious practices and teachers
- 1.5 Arrival of followers
- 1.6 Last days
- 1.7 Biographical sources
- 2 Teachings
- 3 Reception and legacy
- 4 Views and studies
- 5 References
- 6 Further reading
- 7 External links
Birth and childhood
Ramakrishna was born on 18 February 1836, in the village of Kamarpukur, in the Hooghly district of West Bengal, into a very poor, pious, and orthodox brahmin family.[8] Kamarpukur was untouched by the glamour of the city and contained rice fields, tall palms, royal banyans, a few lakes, and two cremation grounds. His parents were Khudiram Chattopadhyay and Chandramani Devi. According to his followers, Ramakrishna's parents experienced supernatural incidents and visions before his birth. In Gaya his father Khudiram had a dream in which Lord Gadadhara (a form of Vishnu), said that he would be born as his son. Chandramani Devi is said to have had a vision of light entering her womb from Shiva's temple.[9][10]
Although Ramakrishna attended a village school with some regularity for 12 years,[11] he later rejected the traditional schooling saying that he was not interested in a "bread-winning education". [12] Kamarpukur, being a transit-point in well-established pilgrimage routes to Puri, brought him into contact with renunciates and holy men.[13] He became well-versed in the Puranas, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Bhagavata Purana, hearing them from wandering monks and the Kathaks—a class of men in ancient India who preached and sang the Purāṇas. He could read and write in Bengali.[14] While the official biographies write that the name Ramakrishna was given by Mathura Biswas—chief patron at Dakshineswar Kali Temple, it has also been suggested that this name was given by his own parents.
Ramakrishna describes his first spiritual ecstasy at the age of six: while walking along the paddy fields, a flock of white cranes flying against a backdrop of dark thunder clouds caught his vision. He reportedly became so absorbed by this scene that he lost outward consciousness and experienced indescribable joy in that state.[15][16] Ramakrishna reportedly had experiences of similar nature a few other times in his childhood—while worshipping the goddess Vishalakshi, and portraying god Shiva in a drama during Shivaratri festival. From his 10th or 11th year on, the trances became common, and by the final years of his life, Ramakrishna's samādhi periods occurred almost daily.[16]
Ramakrishna's father died in 1843, after which family responsibilities fell on his elder brother Ramkumar. This loss drew him closer to his mother, and he spent his time in household activities and daily worship of the household deities and became more involved in contemplative activities such as reading the sacred epics. When Ramakrishna was in his teens, the family's financial position worsened. Ramkumar started a Sanskrit school in Calcutta and also served as a priest. Ramakrishna moved to Calcutta in 1852 with Ramkumar to assist in the priestly work.[17]
Priest at Dakshineswar Kali Temple
In 1855 Ramkumar was appointed as the priest of Dakshineswar Kali Temple, built by Rani Rashmoni—a rich woman of Calcutta who belonged to the kaivarta community.[18] Ramakrishna, along with his nephew Hriday, became assistants to Ramkumar, with Ramakrishna given the task of decorating the deity. When Ramkumar died in 1856, Ramakrishna took his place as the priest of the Kali temple.[19]
After Ramkumar's death Ramakrishna became more contemplative. He began to look upon the image of the goddess Kali as his mother and the mother of the universe. Ramakrishna reportedly had a vision of the goddess Kali as the universal Mother, which he described as "... houses, doors, temples and everything else vanished altogether; as if there was nothing anywhere! And what I saw was an infinite shoreless sea of light; a sea that was consciousness. However far and in whatever direction I looked, I saw shining waves, one after another, coming towards me."[20]
Rumors spread to Kamarpukur that Ramakrishna had become unstable as a result of his spiritual practices at Dakshineswar. Ramakrishna's mother and his elder brother Rameswar decided to get Ramakrishna married, thinking that marriage would be a good steadying influence upon him—by forcing him to accept responsibility and to keep his attention on normal affairs rather than his spiritual practices and visions. Ramakrishna himself mentioned that they could find the bride at the house of Ramchandra Mukherjee in Jayrambati, three miles to the north-west of Kamarpukur. The five-year-old bride, Saradamani Mukhopadhyaya (later known as Sarada Devi) was found and the marriage was duly solemnised in 1859. Ramakrishna was 23 at this point, but the age difference was typical for 19th century rural Bengal.[21]They later spent three months together in Kamarpukur. Sarada Devi was fourteen while Ramakrishna was thirty-two. Ramakrishna became a very influential figure in Sarada's life, and she became a strong follower of his teachings. After the marriage, Sarada stayed at Jayrambati and joined Ramakrishna in Dakshineswar at the age of 18.[22]
By the time his bride joined him, Ramakrishna had already embraced the monastic life of a sannyasi; as a result, the marriage was never consummated. As a priest Ramakrishna performed the ritual ceremony—the Shodashi Puja–where Sarada Devi was made to sit in the seat of goddess Kali, and worshiped as the Divine mother.[23] Ramakrishna regarded Sarada as the Divine Mother in person, addressing her as the Holy Mother, and it was by this name that she was known to Ramakrishna's disciples. Sarada Devi outlived Ramakrishna by 34 years and played an important role in the nascent religious movement.[24][25]
Religious practices and teachers
After his marriage Ramakrishna returned to Calcutta and resumed the charges of the temple again, and continued his sadhana. According to his official biographers, he continued his sadhana under teachers of Tantra, Vedanta and Vaishnava.
Bhairavi Brahmani and Tantra
In 1861, Ramakrishna accepted Bhairavi Brahmani, an orange-robed, middle-aged female ascetic, as a teacher. She carried with her the Raghuvir Shila, a stone icon representing Ram and all Vaishnava deities.[7] She was thoroughly conversant with the texts of Gaudiya Vaishnavism and practised Tantra.[7] According to the Bhairavi, Ramakrishna was experiencing phenomena that accompany mahabhava—the supreme attitude of loving devotion towards the divine[26]–and quoting from the bhakti shastras, she said that other religious figures like Radha and Chaitanya had similar experiences.[27]
The Bhairavi initiated Ramakrishna into Tantra. Tantrism focuses on the worship of shakti and the object of Tantric training is to transcend the barriers between the holy and unholy as a means of achieving liberation and to see all aspects of the natural world as manifestations of the divine shakti.[28][29] Under her guidance, Ramakrishna went through sixty four major tantric sadhanas which were completed in 1863.[30] He began with mantra rituals such as japa and purascarana and many other rituals designed to purify the mind and establish self-control. He later proceeded towards tantric sadhanas, which generally include a set of heterodox practices called vamachara (left-hand path), which utilise as a means of liberation, activities like eating of parched grain, fish and meat along with drinking of wine and sexual intercourse.[26] According to Ramakrishna and his biographers, Ramakrishna did not directly participate in the last two of those activities, all that he needed was a suggestion of them to produce the desired result.[26] Ramakrishna acknowledged the left-hand tantric path, though it had "undesirable features", as one of the "valid roads to God-realization", he consistently cautioned his devotees and disciples against associating with it.[31][32] The Bhairavi also taught Ramakrishna the kumari-puja, a form of ritual in which the Virgin Goddess is worshiped symbolically in the form of a young girl. Under the tutelage of the Bhairavi, Ramakrishna also learnt Kundalini Yoga.[26] The Bhairavi, with the yogic techniques and the tantra played an important part in the initial spiritual development of Ramakrishna.[1][33]
The Vaishnava Bhakti traditions speak of five different moods,[34] referred to as bhāvas—different attitudes that a devotee can take up to express his love for God. They are: śānta, the "peaceful attitude"; dāsya, the attitude of a servant; sakhya, the attitude of a friend; vātsalya, the attitude of a mother toward her child; and madhura, the attitude of a woman towards her lover.[35][36]
At some point in the period between his vision of Kali and his marriage, Ramakrishna practised dāsya bhāva, during which he worshiped Rama with the attitude of Hanuman, the monkey-god, who is considered to be the ideal devotee and servant of Rama. According to Ramakrishna, towards the end of this sadhana, he had a vision of Sita, the consort of Rama, merging into his body.[35][37]
In 1864, Ramakrishna practised vātsalya bhāva under a Vaishnava guru Jatadhari.[38] During this period, he worshipped a metal image of Ramlālā (Rama as a child) in the attitude of a mother. According to Ramakrishna, he could feel the presence of child Rama as a living God in the metal image.[39][40]
Ramakrishna later engaged in the practice of madhura bhāva— the attitude of the Gopis and Radha towards Krishna.[35] During the practise of this bhava, Ramakrishna dressed himself in women's attire for several days and regarded himself as one of the Gopis of Vrindavan. According to Sri Ramakrishna, madhura bhava is practised to root out the idea of sex, which is seen as an impediment in spiritual life.[41] According to Ramakrishna, towards the end of this sadhana, he attained savikalpa samadhi—vision and union with Krishna.[42]
Ramakrishna visited Nadia, the home of Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Sri Nityananda Prabhu, the 15th-century founders of Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnava bhakti. According to Ramakrishna, he had an intense vision of two young boys merging into his body.[42] Earlier, after his vision of Kali, he is said to have cultivated the Santa bhava—the child attitude – towards Kali.[35]
Totapuri and Vedanta
In 1865, Ramakrishna was initiated into sannyasa by Totapuri, an itinerant monk who trained Ramakrishna in Advaita Vedanta, the Hindu philosophy which emphasises non-dualism.[43][44]
Totapuri first guided Ramakrishna through the rites of sannyasa—renunciation of all ties to the world. Then he instructed him in the teaching of advaita—that "Brahman alone is real, and the world is illusory; I have no separate existence; I am that Brahman alone."[45] Under the guidance of Totapuri, Ramakrishna reportedly experienced nirvikalpa samadhi, which is considered to be the highest state in spiritual realisation.[46]
Totapuri stayed with Ramakrishna for nearly eleven months and instructed him further in the teachings of advaita. Ramakrishna said that this period of nirvikalpa samadhi came to an end when he received a command from the Mother Kali to "remain in Bhavamukha; for the enlightenment of the people". Bhavamukha being a state of existence intermediate between samādhi and normal consciousness.[47]
Islam and Christianity
In 1866, Govinda Roy, a Hindu guru who practised Sufism, initiated Ramakrishna into Islam. Ramakrishna said that he "devoutly repeated the name of Allah, wore a cloth like the Arab Muslims, said their prayer five times daily, and felt disinclined even to see images of the Hindu gods and goddesses, much less worship them—for the Hindu way of thinking had disappeared altogether from my mind."[48] According to Ramakrishna, after three days of practice he had a vision of a "radiant personage with grave countenance and white beard resembling the Prophet and merging with his body".[49]
At the end of 1873 he started the practice of Christianity, when his devotee Shambu Charan Mallik read the Bible to him. Ramakrishna said that for several days he was filled with Christian thoughts and no longer thought of going to the Kali temple. Ramakrishna describes of a vision in which the picture of the Madonna and Child became alive and had a vision in which Jesus merged with his body. In his own room amongst other divine pictures was one of Christ, and he burnt incense before it morning and evening. There was also a picture showing Jesus Christ saving St Peter from drowning in the water.[42][50]
Arrival of followers
In 1875, Ramakrishna met the influential Brahmo Samaj leader Keshab Chandra Sen.[51][52] Keshab had accepted Christianity, and had separated from the Adi Brahmo Samaj. Formerly, Keshab had rejected idolatry, but under the influence of Ramakrishna he accepted Hindu polytheism and established the "New Dispensation" (Nava Vidhan) religious movement, based on Ramakrishna's principles—"Worship of God as Mother", "All religions as true" and "Assimilation of Hindu polytheism into Brahmoism".[53] Keshab also publicised Ramakrishna's teachings in the journals of New Dispensation over a period of several years,[54] which was instrumental in bringing Ramakrishna to the attention of a wider audience, especially the Bhadralok (English-educated classes of Bengal) and the Europeans residing in India.[55][56]
Following Keshab, other Brahmos such as Vijaykrishna Goswami started to admire Ramakrishna, propagate his ideals and reorient their socio-religious outlook. Many prominent people of Calcutta—Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, Shivanath Shastri and Trailokyanath Sanyal—began visiting him during this time (1871–1885). Mazumdar wrote the first English biography of Ramakrishna, entitled The Hindu Saint in the Theistic Quarterly Review (1879), which played a vital role in introducing Ramakrishna to Westerners like the German indologist Max Müller.[54] Newspapers reported that Ramakrishna was spreading "Love" and "Devotion" among the educated classes of Calcutta and that he had succeeded in reforming the character of some youths whose morals had been corrupt.[54]
Ramakrishna also had interactions with Debendranath Tagore, the father of Rabindranath Tagore, and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, a renowned social worker. He had also met Swami Dayananda.[51] Ramakrishna is considered as one of the main contributors to the Bengali Renaissance.
Among the Europeans who were influenced by Ramakrishna was Principal Dr. W.W. Hastie of the Scottish Church College, Calcutta. In the course of explaining the word trance in the poem The Excursion by William Wordsworth, Hastie told his students that if they wanted to know its "real meaning", they should go to "Ramakrishna of Dakshineswar." This prompted some of his students, including Narendranath Dutta (later Swami Vivekananda), to visit Ramakrishna.
Devotees and disciples
Most of Ramakrishna's prominent disciples came between 1879–1885, and were influenced by his style of preaching and instruction.[25]
His chief disciples consisted of:[40]
- Grihastas or The householders—Mahendranath Gupta, Girish Chandra Ghosh, Mahendra Lal Sarkar, Akshay Kumar Sen and others.
- Monastic disciples who renounced their family and became the earliest monks of the Ramakrishna order—Narendranath Dutta (Swami Vivekananda), Rakhal Chandra Ghosh (Swami Brahmananda), Kaliprasad Chandra (Swami Abhedananda), Taraknath Ghoshal (Swami Shivananda), Sashibhushan Chakravarty (Swami Ramakrishnananda), Saratchandra Chakravarty (Swami Saradananda), Tulasi Charan Dutta (Swami Nirmalananda), Gangadhar Ghatak (Swami Akhandananda), Hari Prasana (Swami Vijnanananda) and others.
- A small group of women disciples including Gauri Ma and Yogin Ma. A few of them were initiated into sanyasa through mantra deeksha. Among the women, Ramakrishna emphasised service to other women rather than tapasya (practice of austerities).[57] Gauri Ma founded the Saradesvari Ashrama at Barrackpur, which was dedicated to the education and uplift of women.[58]
As his name spread, an ever-shifting crowd of all classes and castes visited Ramakrishna. According to Kathamrita it included, childless widows, young school-boys, aged pensioners, Hindu scholars and religious figures, men betrayed by lovers, people with suicidal tendencies, small-time businessmen, and people "dreading the grind of samsaric life".[59] Ramakrishna's primary biographers, describe him as talkative. According to the biographers, for hours Ramakrishna would reminisce about his own eventful spiritual life, tell tales, explain Vedantic doctrines with extremely mundane illustrations, raise questions and answer them himself, crack jokes, sing songs, and mimic the ways of all types of worldly people, keeping the visitors enthralled.[60][61] In preparation for monastic life, Ramakrishna ordered his monastic disciples to beg their food from door to door without distinction of caste. He gave them the saffron robe, the sign of the Sanyasi, and initiated them with Mantra Deeksha.[61]
Last days
In the beginning of 1885 Ramakrishna suffered from clergyman's throat, which gradually developed into throat cancer. He was moved to Shyampukur near Calcutta, where some of the best physicians of the time, including Dr. Mahendralal Sarkar, were engaged. When his condition aggravated he was relocated to a large garden house at Cossipore on 11 December 1885.[62]
During his last days, he was looked after by his monastic disciples and Sarada Devi. Ramakrishna was advised by the doctors to keep the strictest silence, but ignoring their advice, he incessantly conversed with visitors.[55] According to traditional accounts, before his death, Ramakrishna transferred his spiritual powers to Vivekananda[62] and reassured Vivekananda of his avataric status.[62][63] Ramakrishna asked Vivekananda to look after the welfare of the disciples, saying, "keep my boys together"[64] and asked him to "teach them".[64] Ramakrishna also asked other monastic disciples to look upon Vivekananda as their leader.[62] Ramakrishna's condition gradually worsened and he passed away in the early morning hours of 16 August 1886 at the Cossipore garden house. According to his disciples, this was mahasamadhi.[62] After the death of their master, the monastic disciples led by Vivekananda formed a fellowship at a half-ruined house at Baranagar near the river Ganges, with the financial assistance of the householder disciples. This became the first Math or monastery of the disciples who constituted the first Ramakrishna Order.[25]
Biographical sources
The principal source for Ramakrishna's teaching is Mahendranath Gupta's Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita and is regarded as a Bengali classic.[65][66] Kripal calls it "the central text of the tradition". The text was published in five volumes from 1902 to 1932. Based on Gupta's diary notes, each of the five volumes purports to document Ramakrishna's life from 1882–1886.Kripal 1998, p. 3
The most popular translation of the Kathamrita is The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Nikhilananda. Nikhilananda's translation rearranged the scenes in the five volumes of the Kathamrita into a linear sequence.[67] Malcolm Mclean[68] and Jeffrey Kripal argue that the translation is unreliable.[67] Philosopher Lex Hixon writes that the Gospel is "spiritually authentic" and "powerful rendering of the Kathamrita".[69]
Ramakrishna's teachings were imparted in rustic Bengali, using stories and parables.[1] These teachings made a powerful impact on Calcutta's intellectuals, despite the fact that his preachings were far removed from issues of modernism or national independence.[70] His spiritual movement indirectly aided nationalism, as it rejected caste distinctions and religious prejudices.[70]
In the Calcutta scene of the mid to late nineteenth century, Ramakrishna was opinionated on the subject of Chakri. Chakri can be described as a type of low-paying servitude done by educated men—typically government or commerce-related clerical positions. On a basic level, Ramakrishna saw this system as a corrupt form of European social organisation that forced educated men to be servants not only to their bosses at the office but also to their wives at home. What Ramakrishna saw as the primary detriment of Chakri, however, was that it forced workers into a rigid, impersonal clock-based time structure. He saw the imposition of strict adherence to each second on the watch as a roadblock to spirituality. Despite this, however, Ramakrishna demonstrated that Bhakti could be practised as an inner retreat to experience solace in the face of Western-style discipline and often discrimination in the workplace.[71]
Ramakrishna emphasised God-realisation as the supreme goal of all living beings. Ramakrishna taught that kamini-kanchana is an obstacle to God-realization. Kamini-kanchan literally translates to "woman and gold." Partha Chatterjee wrote that the figure of a woman stands for concepts or entities that have "little to do with women in actuality" and "the figure of woman-and-gold signified the enemy within: that part of one's own self which was susceptible to the temptations of ever-unreliable worldly success."[72] Carl T. Jackson interprets kamini-kanchana to refer to the idea of sex and the idea of money as delusions which prevent people from realising God.[73] Jeffrey Kripal translates the phrase as "lover-and-gold" and associates it with Ramakrishna's alleged disgust for women as lovers.[74] Swami Tyagananda, considered this to be a "linguistic misconstruction."[75] Ramakrishna also cautioned his women disciples against purusa-kanchana ("man and gold") and Tyagananda writes that Ramakrishna used Kamini-Kanchana as "cautionary words" instructing his disciples to conquer the "lust inside the mind."[76]
Ramakrishna looked upon the world as Maya and he explained that avidya maya represents dark forces of creation (e.g. sensual desire, selfish actions, evil passions, greed, lust and cruelty), which keep people on lower planes of consciousness. These forces are responsible for human entrapment in the cycle of birth and death, and they must be fought and vanquished. Vidya maya, on the other hand, represents higher forces of creation (e.g. spiritual virtues, selfless action, enlightening qualities, kindness, purity, love, and devotion), which elevate human beings to the higher planes of consciousness.[77]
Ramakrishna practised several religions, including Islam and Christianity, and taught that in spite of the differences, all religions are valid and true and they lead to the same ultimate goal—God.[78] Ramakrishna taught that jatra jiv tatra Shiv (wherever there is a living being, there is Shiva). His teaching, "Jive daya noy, Shiv gyane jiv seba" (not kindness to living beings, but serving the living being as Shiva Himself) is considered as the inspiration for the philanthropic work carried out by his chief disciple Vivekananda.[79]
Ramakrishna used rustic colloquial Bengali in his conversations. According to contemporary reports, Ramakrishna's linguistic style was unique, even to those who spoke Bengali. It contained obscure local words and idioms from village Bengali, interspersed with philosophical Sanskrit terms and references to the Vedas, Puranas, and Tantras. For that reason, according to philosopher Lex Hixon, his speeches cannot be literally translated into English or any other language.[80] Scholar Amiya P. Sen argued that certain terms that Ramakrishna may have used only in a metaphysical sense are being improperly invested with new, contemporaneous meanings.[81]
Ramakrishna was skilled with words and had an extraordinary style of preaching and instructing, which may have helped convey his ideas to even the most skeptical temple visitors.[25] His speeches reportedly revealed a sense of joy and fun, but he was not at a loss when debating with intellectual philosophers.[82] Philosopher Arindam Chakrabarti contrasted Ramakrishna's talkativeness with Buddha's legendary reticence, and compared his teaching style to that of Socrates.[83]
Reception and legacy
Several organisations have been established in the name of Ramakrishna.[84] The Ramakrishna Math and Mission is one of the main organisations founded by Swami Vivekananda in 1897. The Mission conducts extensive work in health care, disaster relief, rural management, tribal welfare, elementary and higher education. The movement is considered as one of the revitalisation movements of India. Other organisations include the Ramakrishna Vedanta Society founded by Swami Abhedananda in 1923, the Ramakrishna Sarada Math founded by a rebel group in 1929,the Ramakrishna Vivekananda Mission formed by Swami Nityananda in 1976, and the Sri Sarada Math and Ramakrishna Sarada Mission founded in 1959 as a sister organisation by the Ramakrishna Math and Mission.[84] Ramakrishna is considered as an important figure in Bengali Renaissance of 19th–20th Century. Max Müller, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sri Aurobindo, and Leo Tolstoy have acknowledged Ramakrishna's contribution to humanity. Ramakrishna's influence is also seen in the works of artists such as Franz Dvorak (1862–1927) and Philip Glass.
On Swami Vivekananda's guru, Ramakrishna, Rabindranath Tagore wrote a poem: "To the Ramakrishna Paramahamsa Ramakrishna Deva".[85]
| Diverse courses of worship from varied springs of fulfillment have mingled in your meditation.
The manifold revelation of the joy of the Infinite has given form to a shrine of unity in your life where from far and near arrive salutations to which I join my own.
Tagore was the chief guest on the occasion of birth centenary celebration of Ramakrishna by the Ramakrishna Mission and paid rich tribute to Ramakrishna. During the 1937 Parliament of Religions, which was held at the Ramakrishna Mission in Calcutta, Tagore acknowledged Ramakrishna, whose birth centenary was being celebrated, as a great saint because "the largeness of his spirit could comprehend seemingly antagonistic modes of sadhana, and because the simplicity of his soul shames for all time the pomp and pedantry of pontiffs and pundits."[86]
Views and studies
Religious school of thought
Several scholars have tried to associate Ramakrishna with a particular religious school of thought—Bhakti, Tantra and Vedanta.
In his influential[87] 1896 essay "A real mahatma: Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa Dev" and his 1899 book Râmakrishna: His Life and Sayings, the German philologist and Orientalist Max Müller portrayed Ramakrishna as "a wonderful mixture of God and man" and as "...a Bhakta, a worshipper or lover of the deity, much more than a Gñânin or a knower."[88][89]
In London and New York in 1896, Swami Vivekananda delivered his famous address on Ramakrishna entitled "My Master." He said of his master: "this great intellect never learnt even to write his own name, but the most brilliant graduates of our university found in him an intellectual giant."[90] Vivekananda criticised his followers for "brazenly" projecting Ramakrishna as an avatara and miracle-worker.[91][92] Narasingha Sil has argued that Vivekananda revised and mythologised Ramakrishna's image after Ramakrishna's death.[93] In a 1997 book review of a book by Jeffrey Kripal, Malcolm McLean of Otago University supported Kripal's view and argued that the Movement presents "a particular kind of explanation of Ramakrishna, that he was some kind of neo-Vedantist who taught that all religions are the same".[94] Carl Olson argued that in his presentation of his master, Vivekananda had hid much of Ramakrishna's embarrassing sexual oddities from the public, because he feared that Ramakrishna would be misunderstood.[95] Tyagananda and Vrajaprana argue that Oslon makes his "astonishing claim" based on Kripal's speculations in Kali's Child, which are unsupported by any of the source texts.[96] Amiya Sen writes that that Vivekananda's "social service gospel" stemmed from direct inspiration from Ramakrishna and rests substantially on the "liminal quality" of the Master's message.[97]
Indologist Heinrich Zimmer was the first Western scholar to interpret Ramakrishna's worship of the Divine Mother as containing specifically Tantric elements.[98][99] Neeval also argued that tantra played a main role in Ramakrishna's spiritual development.[98]
Philosopher Lex Hixon writes Ramakrishna was an Advaita Vedantin.[100] Postcolonial literary theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak wrote that Ramakrishna was a "Bengali bhakta visionary" and that as a bhakta, "he turned chiefly towards Kali."[101] Amiya Prosad Sen writes that "it is really difficult to separate the Tantrik Ramakrishna from the Vedantic", since Vedanta and Tantra "may appear to be different in some respects", but they also "share some important postulates between them".[102]
Psychoanalysis and sexuality
The dialogue on psychoanalysis and Ramakrishna began in 1927 when Sigmund Freud's friend Romain Rolland wrote to him that he should consider spiritual experiences, or "the oceanic feeling," in his psychological works.[103][104] Romain Rolland described the mystical states achieved by Ramakrishna and other mystics as an "'oceanic' sentiment", one which Rolland had also experienced.[105] Rolland believed that the universal human religious emotion resembled this "oceanic sense."[106] In his 1929 book La vie de Ramakrishna, Rolland distinguished between the feelings of unity and eternity which Ramakrishna experienced in his mystical states and Ramakrishna's interpretation of those feelings as the goddess Kali.[107]
In 1995, Jeffrey J. Kripal argued in Kali's Child that the Ramakrishna Movement had manipulated Ramakrishna's biographical documents, that the Movement had published them in incomplete and bowdlerised editions (claiming among other things, hiding Ramakrishna's homoerotic tendencies), and that the Movement had suppressed Ram Chandra Datta's Srisriramakrsna Paramahamsadever Jivanavrttanta.[108] These views were disputed by Swami Atmajnanananda, who wrote that Jivanavrttanta had been reprinted nine times in Bengali as of 1995.[109]
Christopher Isherwood who wrote the book Ramakrishna and his Disciples (1965) said in a late interview, "Ramakrishna was completely simple and guileless. He told people whatever came into his mind, like a child. If he had ever been troubled by homosexual desires, if that had ever been a problem he'd have told everybody about them.(...) His thoughts transcended physical love-making. He saw even the mating of two dogs on the street as an expression of the eternal male-female principle in the universe. I think that is always a sign of great spiritual enlightenment."[110][111] In addition, Isherwood wrote in his autobiographical book, My Guru and his Disciple, "I couldn't honestly claim him as a homosexual, even a sublimated one, much as I would have liked to be able to do so"[112]
Narasingha Sil,[113] Jeffrey Kripal,[114] and Sudhir Kakar,[115] analyse Ramakrishna's mysticism and religious practices using psychoanalysis,[116] arguing that his mystical visions, refusal to comply with ritual copulation in Tantra, Madhura Bhava, and criticism of Kamini-Kanchana (women and gold) reflect homosexuality. Jeffrey Kripal's controversial[117] Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (1995) argued that Ramakrishna rejected Advaita Vedanta in favour of Shakti Tantra.[118] In this psychoanalytic study of Ramakrishna's life, Kripal argued that Ramakrishna's mystical experiences were symptoms of repressed homoeroticism.[119] Other scholars and psychoanalysts including Romain Rolland,[61] Alan Roland,[103][120] Kelly Aan Raab,[121] Somnath Bhattacharyya,[122] J.S. Hawley[123] and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak[124] argue that psychoanalysis is unreliable and Ramakrishna's religious practices were in line with Bengali tradition.[121] The application of psychoanalysis has further been disputed by Tyagananda and Vrajaprana as being unreliable in understanding Tantra and interpreting cross-cultural contexts in Interpreting Ramakrishna: Kali's Child Revisited (2010).[125]
In his 1991 book The Analyst and the Mystic, Indian psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar saw in Ramakrishna's visions a spontaneous capacity for creative experiencing.[126] Kakar also argued that culturally relative concepts of eroticism and gender have contributed to the Western difficulty in comprehending Ramakrishna.[127] Kakar saw Ramakrishna's seemingly bizarre acts as part of a bhakti path to God.[126]
Postcolonial studies
|This section requires expansion. (March 2009)
Postcolonial studies try to locate Ramakrishna in the historical background of Calcutta during the mid-19th Century.
In 1999, postcolonial historian Sumit Sarkar argued that he found in the Kathamrita traces of a binary opposition between unlearned oral wisdom and learned literate knowledge. He argues that all of our information about Ramakrishna, a rustic near-illiterate Brahmin, comes from urban bhadralok devotees, "...whose texts simultaneously illuminate and transform."[128]
- ^ a b c d Smart 1998, p. 409.
- ^ Georg 2002, p. 600.
- ^ Clarke 2006, p. 209.
- ^ Brodd 2009, p. 275.
- ^ Smith 1976, p. 93.
- ^ Jones, Kenneth W. (2004). Ramakrishna Paramhansa (1836-1886) (Oxford dictionary of National Biography ed.). Oxford University Press. Retrieved 10 March 2015.
- ^ a b c Sen 2001, p.101
- ^ Heehs 2002, p. 430
- ^ Chatterjee 1993, pp. 46–47
- ^ Harding 1998, pp. 243–244
- ^ Jackson 1994, p.17
- ^ Harding 1998, p. 248.
- ^ Sen 2001, p. 92.
- ^ Jackson 1994, p. 17.
- ^ Zaleski 2006, pp. 162–163.
- ^ a b Bhawuk 2003.
- ^ Harding 1998, p. 250.
- ^ Sen 2006, p. 176
- ^ Harding 1998, p. 251
- ^ Isherwood 1980, p. 65.
- ^ Jackson 1994, p. 18.
- ^ Spivak 2007, pp. 207–208.
- ^ Rolland 1929, p. 59.
- ^ Spivak 2007, p. 207
- ^ a b c d Schneiderman 1969.
- ^ a b c d Neevel 1976, p. 74.
- ^ Jestice 2004, p. 723.
- ^ Jackson 1994, p.18
- ^
Jean Varenne; Derek Coltman (1977). Yoga and the Hindu Tradition. University of Chicago Press. p. 151.
we know that certain Tantric practices, condemned as shockingly immoral, are aimed solely at enabling the adept to make use of the energy required for their realisation to destroy desire within himself root and branch
- ^ Neevel 1976, pp. 74–77.
- ^ Sen 2001, p. 99
- ^ Hixon 2002, p. xliii
- ^
Richards, Glyn (1985). A Source-book of modern Hinduism. Routledge. p. 63.
[Ramakrishna] received instructions in yogic techniques which enabled him to control his spiritual energy.
- ^ Spivak 2007, p.197
- ^ a b c d Neevel, Walter G; Bardwell L. Smith (1976). "The Transformation of Ramakrishna". Hinduism: New Essays in the History of Religions. pp. 72–83.
- ^ Allport, Gordon W. (1999). "Its meaning for the West". Hindu Psychology. Routledge. p. 180.
- ^ Isherwood, pp. 70–73
- ^ Sen 2001, p. 138
- ^ Isherwood, p. 197–198.
- ^ a b Nikhilananda, Swami. "Introduction". The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.
- ^ Sharma, Arvind (1977). "Ramakrishna Paramahamsa: A Study in a Mystic's Attitudes towards Women". In Rita M. Gross. Beyond Androcentrism. Scholars Press ( American Academy of Religion ). pp. 118–119, p.122, p.124.
- ^ a b c Parama Roy, Indian Traffic: Identities in Question in Colonial and Post-Colonial India Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998[page needed]
- ^ Jackson 1994, p.19
- ^ Harding 1998, p. 263
- ^ The Great Master, p. 255.
- ^ Roland, Romain The Life of Ramakrishna (1984), Advaita Ashram
- ^ Isherwood 1980, p. 123.
- ^ Isherwood 1980, p. 124.
- ^ Rolland, Romain (1929). "The Return to Man". The Life of Ramakrishna. pp. 49–62.
- ^ Ramakrishna Mission Singapore (April 2007). "Lay Disciples of Ramakrishna". Nirvana (Ramakrishna Mission, Singapore).
- ^ a b Rolland, Romain (1929). "Ramakrishna and the Great Shepherds of India". The Life of Ramakrishna. pp. 110–130.
- ^
Farquhar, John Nicol (1915). Modern Religious Movements in India. Macmillan Co. p. 194.
About 1875, Keshab Chandra Sen made his acquaintance and became very interested in him (Ramakrishna).
- ^ Y. Masih (2000). A Comparative Study of Religions. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 198–199.
- ^ a b c Mukherjee, Dr. Jayasree (May 2004). "Sri Ramakrishna's Impact on Contemporary Indian Society". Prabuddha Bharatha. Retrieved 4 September 2008.
- ^ a b Müller, Max (1898). "Râmakrishna's Life". Râmakrishna his Life and Sayings. pp. 56–57.
- ^ Debarry, William Theodore; Ainslie Thomas Embree (1988). Sources of Indian Tradition: From the Beginning to 1800. Stephen N. Hay. Columbia University Press. p. 63. ISBN 978-0-231-06415-6.
- ^ Chetanananda, Swami (1989). They Lived with God. St. Louis: Vedanta Society of St. Louis. p. 163.
- ^ Beckerlegge (2006), Swami Vivekananda's Legacy of Service, p.27
- ^ Sen 2006, p. 172
- ^ Chakrabarti, Arindam (November 1994). "The dark mother flying kites : Sri ramakrishna's metaphysic of morals". Sophia (Springer Netherlands) 33 (3): 14–29. doi:10.1007/BF02800488.
- ^ a b c Rolland, Romain (1929). "The Master and his Children". The Life of Ramakrishna. pp. 143–168. ISBN 978-8185301440.
- ^ a b c d e Rolland 1929, pp. 201–214.
- ^ Sen 2006, p. 168
- ^ a b Williams, George M. (1989). ""Swami Vivekananda: Archetypal Hero or Doubting Saint?"". In Robert D. Baird. Religion in Modern India. p. 325.
- ^ Malcolm Maclean, A Translation of the sri-sri-ramakrisna-kathamrita with explanatory notes and critical introduction. University of Otago. Dunedin, New Zealand. September 1983. p vi
- ^ Sen 2001, p. 32.
- ^ a b Kripal 1998, p. 4
- ^ Malcolm Maclean, A Translation of the sri-sri-ramakrisna-kathamrita with explanatory notes and critical introduction. University of Otago. Dunedin, New Zealand. September 1983. p i–iv
- ^ Hixon 2002, p. xiv.
- ^ a b Menon, Parvathi (1 November 1996). "A History of Modern India: Revivalist Movements and Early Nationalism". India Abroad.[dead link]
- ^ Sumit Sarkar, " 'Kaliyuga', 'Chakri' and 'Bhakti': Ramakrishna and His Times," Economic and Political Weekly 27, 29 (18 July 1992): 1548–1550.
- ^ Chaterjee 1993, pp. 68–69
- ^ Carl T. Jackson (1994), pp. 20–21.
- ^ Kali's Child p 281; 277–287 passim
- ^ Tyagananda & Vrajaprana 2010, p. 243
- ^ Tyagananda & Vrajaprana 2010, pp. 256–257
- ^ Neevel 1976, p. 82.
- ^ Cohen, Martin (2008). "Spiritual Improvisations: Ramakrishna, Aurobindo, and the Freedom of Tradition". Religion and the Arts (BRILL) 12 (1–3): 277–293. doi:10.1163/156852908X271079.
- ^ Y. Masih (2000). A Comparative Study of Religions. Motilal Banarsidass. p. 207.
- ^ Hixon, Lex (1997). "Introduction". Great Swan. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. xi. ISBN 978-0-943914-80-0.
- ^ Sen, Amiya P. (June 2006). "Sri Ramakrishna, the Kathamrita and the Calcutta middle classes: an old problematic revisited". Postcolonial Studies 9 (2): 165–177. doi:10.1080/13688790600657835.
- ^ Isherwood, Christopher (1945). Vedanta for the Western World: A Symposium on Vedanta. Vedanta Press. p. 267. ISBN 978-0-87481-000-4.
- ^ Arindam Chakrabarti, "The Dark Mother Flying Kites: Sri Ramakrishna's Metaphysic of Morals" Sophia, 33 (3), 1994
- ^ a b Beckerlegge,Swami Vivekananda's Legacy of Service pp.1–3
- ^ Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York. (1996). Sri Ramakrishna Tributes.
- ^ Katheleen M O'Connell. Utsav-Celebration: Tagore's Approach to Cultivating the Human Spirit and the Study of Religion.
- ^ John Rosselli, "Sri Ramakrishna and the educated elite of late nineteenth century" Contributions to Indian Sociology 1978; 12; 195 [1]
- ^ Friedrich Max Müller, Râmakrishna: His Life and Sayings, pp.93–94, Longmans, Green, 1898
- ^ Neevel 1976, p. 85.
- ^ Sil 1993, p. 56
- ^ Sen 2006, p. 173
- ^ John Wolffe (2004). "The Hindu Renaissance and notions of Universal Religion". Religion in History. Manchester University Press. p. 153.
- ^ Narasingha P. Sil "Vivekānanda's Rāmakṛṣṇa: An Untold Story of Mythmaking and Propaganda" Numen, Vol. 40, No. 1, (Jan. 1993), pp. 38–62 BRILL http://www.jstor.org/stable/3270397
- ^ McLean, Malcolm, "Kali's Child: The Mystical and Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna."[dead link] The Journal of the American Oriental Society Tuesday, 1 July 1997
- ^ "Vivekananda and Ramakrisha Face to Face: An Essay on the Alterity of a Saint" Carl Olson International Journal of Hindu Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Apr. 1998), pp. 43–66 Springer
- ^ Tyagananda & Vrajaprana 2010, p. 172
- ^ Sen 2006, p. 165
- ^ a b Carl T. Jackson (1994), p.154
- ^ Neeval and Hatcher, "Ramakrishna" in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2005 p 7613
- ^ Hixon 2002, p. xv. "My study of Sanskrit and my doctoral dissertation at Columbia University on the Advaita Vedanta of Gaudapada, has enabled me to appreciate more deeply the Master's universal Vedantic approach."
- ^ Spivak 2007, p. 197
- ^ Sen 2001, p. 22
- ^ a b Roland, Alan (October 2004). "Ramakrishna: Mystical, Erotic, or Both?". Journal of Religion and Health 37: 31–36. doi:10.1023/A:1022956932676.
- ^ "Oceanic Feeling" by Henri Vermorel and Madeleline Vermoral in International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis [2]
- ^ The Enigma of the Oceanic Feeling: Revisioning the Psychoanalytic Theory of Mysticism By William Barclay Parsons, Oxford University Press US, 1999 ISBN 0-19-511508-2, p 37
- ^ page 12 Primitive Passions: Men, Women, and the Quest for Ecstasy By Marianna Torgovnick University of Chicago Press, 1998
- ^ Parsons 1999, 14
- ^ Kripal(1995) Kali's Child 1 edition[page needed]
- ^ name="atma" Atmajnanananda, Swami (August 1997). "Scandals, cover-ups, and other imagined occurrences in the life of Ramakrishna: An examination of Jeffrey Kripal's Kali's child". International Journal of Hindu Studies (Netherlands: Springer) 1 (2): pp.401–420. doi:10.1007/s11407-997-0007-8.
- ^ "Christopher Isherwood: An Interview" Carolyn G. Heilbrun and Christopher Isherwood Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 22, No. 3, Christopher Isherwood Issue (Oct. 1976), pp. 253–263 Published by: Hofstra University
- ^ Christopher Isherwood, James J. Berg, Chris Freeman (2001). Conversations with Christopher Isherwood. Univ. Press of Mississippi. p. 142. ISBN 978-1-57806-408-3.
- ^ My Guru and His Disciple, page 249
- ^ Ramakrishna Revisited (1998)[page needed]
- ^ Kali's Child (1998)[page needed]
- ^ The Analyst and the Mystic (1991)[page needed]
- ^ Jonte-Pace, Diane Elizabeth (2003). "Freud as interpreter of religious texts and practices". Teaching Freud. Oxford University Press US. p. 94.
- ^ Balagangadhara, S. N.; Sarah Claerhout (2008). "Are Dialogues Antidotes to Violence? Two Recent Examples from Hinduism Studies" (PDF). Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 7 (19): 118–143.
- ^ Parsons 1999, 135–136
- ^ Parsons, William B., "Psychology" in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2005 p. 7479
- ^ Roland, Alan. (2007) The Uses (and Misuses) Of Psychoanalysis in South Asian Studies: Mysticism and Child Development. Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America. Delhi, India: Rupa & Co. ISBN 978-81-291-1182-1
- ^ a b Raab 1995, pp. 321–341.
- ^ Invading the Sacred, p.152-168
- ^ Hawley, John Stratton (June 2004). "The Damage of Separation: Krishna's Loves and Kali's Child". Journal of the American Academy of Religion 72 (2): 369–393. PMID 20681099. doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfh034.
- ^ Spivak (2007), "Moving Devi", Other Asias, pp.195–197
- ^ See:p.127 and "Interpretation in Cross-Cultural Contexts". In Tyagananda & Vrajaprana 2010
- ^ a b Parsons, 1999 p 133
- ^ Kakar, Sudhir, The Analyst and the Mystic, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p.34
- ^ Sumit Sarkar, "Post-modernism and the Writing of History" Studies in History 1999; 15; 293
Works cited
- Books
- Bhattacharyya, Somnath. "Kali's Child: Psychological And Hermeneutical Problems". Infinity Foundation. Archived from the original on 4 October 2007. Retrieved 15 March 2008.
- Brodd, Jeffrey; Gregory Sobolewski (2003). World Religions: A Voyage of Discovery. Saint Mary's Press.
- Chatterjee, Partha (1993). The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton University Press. p. 296. ISBN 978-0-691-01943-7.
- Clarke, Peter Bernard (2006). New Religions in Global Perspective. Routledge.
- Georg, Feuerstein (2002). The Yoga Tradition. Motilal Banarsidass.
- Gupta, Mahendranath ("M."); Swami Nikhilananda (1942). The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center. ISBN 0-911206-01-9.
- Gupta, Mahendranath ("M."); Dharm Pal Gupta (2001). Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita. Sri Ma Trust. ISBN 978-81-88343-00-3.
- Harding, Elizabeth U. (1998). Kali, the Dark Goddess of Dakshineswar. Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 81-208-1450-9.
- Heehs, Peter (2002). "Ramakrishna Paramahamsa". Indian Religions. Orient Blackswan.
- Hixon, Lex (2002). Great Swan: Meetings With Ramakrishna. Burdett, N.Y.: Larson Publications. ISBN 0-943914-80-9.
- Isherwood, Christopher (1980). Ramakrishna and His Disciples. Hollywood, Calif: Vedanta Press. ISBN 0-87481-037-X. (reprint, orig. 1965)
- Jackson, Carl T. (1994). Vedanta for the West. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-33098-X.
- Jestice, Phyllis G. (2004). Holy People of the World: A Cross-cultural Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-57607-355-1.CITEREFJestice2004
- Müller, Max (1898). Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings. Great Britain: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. ISBN 81-7505-060-8.
- Neevel, Walter G.; Bardwell L. Smith (1976). "The Transformation of Ramakrishna". Hinduism: New Essays in the History of Religions. Brill Archive.
- Ramaswamy, Krishnan; Antonio de Nicolas (2007). Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America. Delhi, India: Rupa & Co. ISBN 978-81-291-1182-1.
- Rolland, Romain (1929). The Life of Ramakrishna. Vedanta Press. ISBN 978-81-85301-44-0.
- Saradananda, Swami; Swami Chetanananda (2003). Sri Ramakrishna and His Divine Play. St. Louis: Vedanta Society. ISBN 978-0-916356-81-1.
- Sen, Amiya P. (9 April 2010). Ramakrishna Paramahamsa: Sadhaka of Dakshineswar. Penguin Books Limited. ISBN 978-81-8475-250-2.
- Smith, Bardwell L. (1976). Hinduism: New Essays in the History of Religions. Brill Archive.
- Tyagananda; Vrajaprana (2010). Interpreting Ramakrishna: Kali's Child Revisited. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. p. 410. ISBN 978-81-208-3499-6.
- Journals
- Bhawuk, Dharm P.S. (February 2003). "Culture's influence on creativity: the case of Indian spirituality". International Journal of Intercultural Relations (Elsevier) 27 (1): 8. doi:10.1016/S0147-1767(02)00059-7.
- Kripal, Jeffery J. (1995). "Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna". University of Chicago Press.
- Raab, Kelley Ann (1995). "Is There Anything Transcendent about Transcendence? A Philosophical and Psychological Study of Sri Ramakrishna". Journal of the American Academy of Religion (London: Oxford University Press) 63 (2). JSTOR 1465404.
- Rajagopalachari, Chakravarti (1973). "Sri Ramakrishna Upanishad". Vedanta Press. ASIN B0007J1DQ4.
- Saradananda, Swami; Swami Jagadananda (1952). "Sri Ramakrishna The Great Master". Sri Ramakrishna Math. ASIN B000LPWMJQ.
- Smart, Ninian (28 June 1998). The World's Religions. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-63748-0.
- Schneiderman, Leo (1969). "Ramakrishna: Personality and Social Factors in the Growth of a Religious Movement". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (London: Blackwell Publishing) 8 (1): 60–71. JSTOR 1385254. doi:10.2307/1385254.
- Sen, Amiya P. (June 2006). "Sri Ramakrishna, the Kathamrita and the Calcutta middle classes: an old problematic revisited". Postcolonial Studies 9 (2): 165–177. doi:10.1080/13688790600657835.
- Sen, Amiya P. (2001). "Three essays on Sri Ramakrishna and his times". Indian Institute of Advanced Study.
- Beckerlegge, Gwilym (March 2006). "Swami Vivekananda's Legacy of Service". Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-567388-3.
- Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (28 December 2007). "Other Asias". Wiley-Blackwell.
Further reading
- Ananyananda, Swami (1981). Ramakrishna: a biography in pictures. Advaita Ashrama, Calcutta. ISBN 978-81-85843-97-1.
- Chetanananda, Swami (1990). Ramakrishna As We Saw Him. St. Louis: Vedanta Society of St Louis. ISBN 978-0-916356-64-4.
- Hourihan, Paul (2002). Ramakrishna & Christ, the Supermystics: New Interpretations. Vedantic Shores Press. ISBN 1-931816-00-X.
- Olson, Carl (1990). The Mysterious Play of Kālī: An Interpretive Study of Rāmakrishna. American Academy of Religion (Scholars Press). ISBN 1-55540-339-5.
- Prosser, Lee. (2001) Isherwood, Bowles, Vedanta, Wicca, and Me. Writers Club: Lincoln, Nebraska. ISBN 0-595-20284-5
- Satyananda, Saraswati. Ramakrishna: The Nectar of Eternal Bliss. Devi Mandir Publications. ISBN 1-877795-66-6.
- Torwesten, Hans (1999). Ramakrishna and Christ, or, The paradox of the incarnation. The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture. ISBN 978-81-85843-97-1.
- Zaleski, Philip (2006). "The Ecstatic". Prayer: A History. Mariner Books.
External links
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ramakrishna Vivekananda.
|Wikiquote has quotations related to: Ramakrishna
|Wikisource has original text related to this article:
- Ramakrishna at DMOZ
- Official website of the Headquarters of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission
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BBB Watch
The Better Business Bureau is warning cash-strapped families to beware of some online payday lenders that claim they are not beholden to state or federal laws regarding licensing requirements, debt collection practices or caps on interest rates.
"Desperate times are leading people to the Internet to apply for payday loans, and many are falling deeper into debt after getting tangled up with a lender who has zero regard for the law," said Stephen A. Cox, president and CEO of the Council of Better Business Bureaus. "Unlike a payday loan that you might get from a local business, online payday loans require your bank account number and, as a result, the borrower is at the mercy of the lender as more money than they counted on is withdrawn from his or her account."
Hundreds of people have complained to BBB after signing up for a payday loan on sites like OnceClickCash.com, 500Fastcash.com, rbtloans.com and Ameriloan.com. Complainants state that they agreed to what they believed was a one-time payday loan — typically a few hundred dollars to be paid off in two weeks. The arrangement quickly turns into a debt spiral. Complainants state all of their subsequent payments went toward paying off recurring finance charges and never toward the principal. One Massachusetts woman who received a loan from Ace Cash Services stated she made more than $1,700 in payments to pay off a $225 loan.
For more information, go to www.bbb.org.
The List
Here are college basketball's most valuable teams, according to www.forbes.com:
1. North Carolina
2. Kentucky
3. Louisville
4. Kansas
5. Illinois
6. Indiana
7. Ohio State
8. Syracuse
10. Arizona
Number to Know
408,000: Number of smart phones Palm sold in the quarter that ended Feb. 26, a disappointment for the company that's trying to compete with the iPhone and BlackBerry.
Tech Talk
Beware of e-mails that ask you to reset your Facebook password, because hackers recently have sent out messages that, when clicked, will infect your computer and steal passwords.
GateHouse News Service


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Business help in China
Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 8:45 am
I am new at this and I'd ask someone to help me with advice. I applied as recruiter manager at JobQueen, they promise to pay $87,000.00/year. I would like to know if they are for real and if they are how can I get quality sales reps in China. I didn't list the domain because promoting something is forbiden in most forums. So if you want to help me out please contact me direct at my email:
[email protected]
[email protected]


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Timing and track curbed Sandy's impact on Chesapeake Bay
A University of Maryland assessment shows the hurricane had "ephemeral" impacts on water quality.
by Catherine Krikstan
December 31, 2012
A recent assessment of Superstorm Sandy shows the hurricane did less damage to the Chesapeake Bay than some feared, thanks in large part to its timing and track.
According to a University of Maryland report, the late-October hurricane whose path traveled north of the Bay had "ephemeral" impacts on Bay water quality—especially when compared to past storms.
The summertime arrival of Tropical Storm Agnes in 1972, for instance, coincided with a critical growing period for oysters, crabs and underwater grasses, and had a damaging effect on all three. But because Sandy arrived in the fall, the nutrients and sediment that it sent into the Bay were unable to fuel harmful algae blooms or damage the underwater grasses that had already begun to die back for the season. And while Tropical Storm Lee in 2011 brought heavy rainfall and a large plume of sediment to the Susquehanna River, the bulk of Sandy's rainfall was concentrated elsewhere, meaning minimal scouring of sediment from behind the Conowingo Dam and "virtually no sediment plume" in the Upper Bay.
These findings echo those released in November by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
Read more about the ecological impacts of Sandy on the Chesapeake Bay.


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Save Carlsbad Skatepark Rally
October 15, 2004
Help! Help! The Dozers Are Coming!
Carlsbad Skatepark, Carlsbad, CA. (10/19/2004) On March 13, 1976 Carlsbad Skatepark opened, making it the world's first. Covered with dirt in the early 80's it has remained buried for about 20 years but could be easily excavated and restored.
Our vision for the park is to restore the original facility as a historical landmark, add new modern street and pool terrain and build the world's largest skateboarding museum with facilities for art, photo and film exhibits.
The skatepark sits on a 6-acre parcel in the corner of the Carlsbad Raceway property, which is scheduled for grading in November as a part of a 135-acre industrial park being developed by the H.G. Fenton Company of San Diego.
This is an irreplaceable part of Carlsbad's, California's and skateboarding's history! How can we save this?
- Buy the property: The market value for the parcel is between 2.5 and 3.5 million dollars. Due to the unlikelihood of finding private donations and grants of that amount in the next couple weeks we will ask the City of Carlsbad to assist with funding and gaining the cooperation of H.G. Fenton to cease grading plans for the property. We propose a City/corporate partnership to make this a public, free-to-ride facility; a model of success is the Etnies Shoes/ City of Lake Forest park.
- Show of support: We need to show the City of Carlsbad and H.G. Fenton the magnitude of support the residents of Carlsbad and the skateboard community have for this project. We have met with Mayor Lewis of Carlsbad and he was initially very supportive of the idea, we plan to address the city council on the 12th of October as well. We will stage a rally at the site on October 19th at 3:30 pm to prove the extent of support for the park followed by a more extensive presentation to the city council at 6 pm. Anyone who can't attend the rally or council meeting can voice their support by writing to the council
The proposed skateboarding and museum complex would be a great asset to the City of Carlsbad and surrounding communities.
- Recreational facilities for Carlsbad residents: There are 12 million skateboarders nationwide, but only 1,000 skateparks. Skateparks are the number-one most wanted recreational facility in a recent national poll of parks-and-recreation directors. Carlsbad currently only has one smaller facility.
- Attracting tourists: The "World's First Skatepark" and "Worlds Largest Skateboarding Museum" would attract visitors from all over the world. It would be a place the family could enjoy together along with Lego Land and other area attractions. Skateboard contests, demonstrations and other events would bring thousands of people to Carlsbad hotels and restaurants.
- Asset to the Carlsbad Raceway Business Park: Skateboarding is a one-billion-dollar annual international business. DC Shoes whose primary focus is skateboarding footwear exceeded 100 million in sales last year; DC is located within a half mile of the raceway property. There is tremendous potential to draw other skateboard related companies into the Raceway Business Park area. The open space and park-like setting of the skateboarding facility would also add value to all tenants and employees of the industrial complex.
If you have any questions or ideas, please call me. We only have a few weeks to make this happen so any time you can dedicate to the cause would be very helpful. Please forward this info to all of your local accounts, friends and media connections; print some flyers, signs and t-shirts. The skateboard industry and riders need to rally together like never before to save this piece of history and future location of many great skate sessions and events, let's do this!
David Bergthold
Smash Technologies Video/
Blockhead Skateboards
o. 760-721-5352
m. 760-717-4012


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The Texas Juvenile Justice Department follows numerous security compliance regulations when transporting data on the 1,200 youths it oversees.
For an agency that is required to keep 95 percent of its data confidential, following security compliance guidelines may be a challenge when that information must be transferred from one facility to another. The Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) was created in 2011 and shortly after inception, deployed file transfer technology to transport confidential files on each of the approximately 1,200 youths the department oversees all while meeting numerous security compliance regulations.
Stored data such as medical, education and personal records for the youths must meet state compliance regulations and other regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and Federal Information Processing Standards, said Mac McLeod, the TJJD's director of IT operations.
The TJJD's incarcerated individuals are held in one of the department's six detention facilities located across the state, and those released on parole reside in one of its nine halfway houses, according to the TJJD website.
"When we talk about our kids, we're talking about kids that are incarcerated in the state of Texas that have not committed adult crimes," McLeod said. "So when we move a kid from one facility to another, we have to move all of their records with them."
When youths are transferred to a different facility within the department, their data is transferred for access at the facility where they are to reside. Staff members like case managers do not have access to data on all 1,200 juveniles, however, each facility maintains a "master profile" of each individual that it houses.
McLeod said the department's file transfer platform, Accellion, does not actually store any of the data it transfers, but instead provides the user with a direct link to the information. Because the TJJD is exempt from storing information in Texas' state data center, all of its data is stored instead on the department's on-site private cloud.
According to Accellion, deployment of the product in a private cloud environment requires a software download for functionality across the enterprise.
Although the TJJD has total control over its data, the department utilizes Accellion for sharing that information to permitted individuals outside the agency, McLeod said. For example, the youths' parents, medical personnel and legal counsel may have access to the sensitive records through the platform, but must have proper consent from the department before viewing the information.
McLeod said the original plan was to transfer the sensitive data via email, however, that would have required all TJJD staff members to have their email encrypted – a method that would have been costlier. But because Accellion doesn't require moving the data over email, the staff's email did not need to be encrypted, hence resulting in a cost avoidance for the department.
"We originally bought it to help us move data using email, but as we began to use it and determine what its capabilities were, we started looking at the different security requirements," he said. "This was the only platform that we felt comfortable with meeting all the security requirements that we had to fulfill."
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You must login before you can run this tool.
Mobility and Resistivity Tool
Understand how doping affects mobility and resistivity.
Version 2.0 - published on 19 Sep 2014
doi:10.4231/D3H98ZD97 cite this
This tool is closed source.
Published on
This tool calculates the electron and hole mobility in a semiconductor as well as its resistivity as a function of doping at room temperature (300K) using an empirical curve fit model for the electron and hole mobility.
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Sponsored by
This project is supported by NSF NCN Grant EEC-0634750.
[1] R. Pierret, Semiconductor Device Fundamentals. Addison Wesley Longman, 1996. [2] C. C. Hu, Modern Semiconductor Devices for Integrated Circuits. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2010.
Cite this work
Researchers should cite this work as follows:


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COVID-19: Activities for homeHandwashing
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text:
Decision : CONF 201 XIV.1-5
Implementation of the Convention in Light of Twenty-Five Years' Practice
XIV.1 The Secretariat presented Document WHC-96/CONF.201/15, "The implementation of the Convention in light of twenty-five years' practice" which was divided into three sections. Section I provided a review of the "Strategic Orientations for the Future" including a synopsis of achievements in meeting the five goals established by the sixteenth session of the Committee in 1992. Section II provided the highlights of the States Parties' replies to the 25th Anniversary Circular Letter as of 23 October 1996. Section III proposed a meeting of experts to thoroughly review the implementation of the Convention and to draft a strategic plan for future implementation.
XIV.2 The German Delegation drew the Committee's attention to an exhibition on World Cultural Heritage at the "World Fair Expo 2000" and to a seminar being planned with Centre involvement, which will be held in Hildesheim on the occasion of the 25th anniversary. The Committee expressed interest and support for this effort.
XIV.3 The Delegate of Italy noted that the proposed US$ 40,000 for the scientific and technical meeting of experts had not been accepted during the Committee's earlier budget considerations. In the further discussion on the proposed experts' meeting, the Committee reflected a general concern for experts' meetings being held without political decision-makers participating. Several delegates indicated that such meetings should not always be confined to the same experts from the Advisory Bodies as in the past, and, to the extent possible, should be broadened to include participants from the proposed states Parties' "lists of experts" which was proposed by the Delegate of Italy. This proposal was strongly supported by other delegations during preliminary budget considerations. Several delegations noted that they had unfortunate experiences with repeated use of the same experts. They also noted that there was the need for an open selection process for experts to avoid repeating past mistakes.
XIV.4 The Observer of Hungary indicated that, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary, they would propose to host a subregional World Heritage Workshop. The Delegate of the United States indicated that it could provide space at the Presidium of San Francisco if anyone wished to hold a workshop there. In addition, the United States is considering a World Heritage Workshop for World Heritage Site Managers. In such a case, they would invite World Heritage site managers from other countries.
XIV.5 The Committee concluded that it did not support neither a thorough review of the implementation of the Convention nor the drafting of a strategic plan for the" future as proposed, and did not allocate the funding required for this purpose.


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Radicchio and balsamic vinegar combine for a sweet and peppery bread-topper.
Radicchio sometimes gets dismissed for its bitter flavor, but the Italian chicory has a bright, peppery bite that can be coaxed out with some balsamic vinegar and a little brown sugar. A light spread of goat cheese on the grilled bread here mellows out any remaining bitter edge.... Read More
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Get reporting for CT or MRI done online!!
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Is your Radiologist on leave? Or you want a second opinion from an expert? Or is there a sudden spike on your workload? Now there is an easy and convenient way to get your reporting done for modalities like CT and MRI. Upload the images (in DICOM format) produced by your CT/MRI to our website and we will get the reporting done for you by qualified Radiologists on our panel. You will get the report online in a very short time and print it through your local printer.
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Inspired by the 1985 original, the Air Jordan 1 Mid Men's Shoe remembers the revolutionary shoe that took MJ through his rookie season and first All-Star game appearance. New materials and colors give it a fresh look you can wear anywhere.
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Hobart has run out to a 5-0 start. And it's too early to talk top seed, but we'll do it anyway.
Hobart file photo by Kevin Colton
The sight of two gunslingers in slings is not a good one for UW-Platteville
Photo by J. Jensen, D3sports.com
With Mount Union firing on all cylinders on offense, crushing it on defense and by the way, also doing so on special teams, it seems like a foregone conclusion that the Purple Raiders are going back to the Stagg Bowl. And we'd have agreement on the Around the Nation Podcast … except that the Around the Nation guy does his best Lee Corso impression.
Is it too fast, my friend? Perhaps. But there are other teams that look like they could have the stuff to reach Salem, even if UW-Whitewater isn't one of them at the moment.
Pat and Keith talk about that and more in this week's Around the Nation Podcast. Plus the revolving door playing the role of "No. 2 team in the OAC," the three key two-point conversion attempts that could have sunk Top 25 teams and the two that saved one of them. The thought of the top seed in the East makes its first appearances, as does that word "clarity." And Pat, who has now seen UW-Whitewater play three times, gives us his most important takeaways from the three-time defending champs.
Plus we talk about the late comeback by Hanover, the surprise win by Catholic, Mississippi College's choosing Division II and what that does to the American Southwest Conference and more.
You can also get this and any of our future Around the Nation podcasts automatically by subscribing to this RSS feed: http://www.d3blogs.com/d3football/?feed=podcast
Plus, here's this week's D3football.com reports and highlight packages.
And this week's photo galleries from our friends at d3photography.com:


text:
Welcome to Year 4. Please click on the link below to read Autumn 1's Newsletter.
Year 4's Newsletter Autumn 1
St Anne's Lydgate Primary School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people.
We expect all staff, visitors and volunteers to share this commitment.
For more information please see our Safeguarding Page.
This site also uses cookies, please see our Cookie Policy
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Situated on 900 wooded acres of rolling hills in Tampa Bay, Innisbrook Resort offers one of the most unique vacation experiences in the Sunshine State. And this summer, you can enjoy a weeklong family vacation or a quick weekend getaway with rates beginning at just $99 per night.
Set safely behind a security gate, the resort is conveniently located only 30 minutes from Tampa International Airport and downtown, and just 90 minutes west of Orlando. Also, the beautiful beaches of St. Petersburg and Clearwater are just a short drive away.
Recently and extensively refurbished, Innisbrook features nearly 600 spacious accommodations. Tucked away throughout the resort in lodges, they range in size from deluxe guest bedrooms to two-bedroom suites, which are equipped with full kitchens, living and dining areas, private patios or balconies and multiple bathrooms – making them the perfect choice for family retreats.
While Innisbrook is rightly famed for its four championship golf courses designed by Larry Packard—including the Copperhead Course, a PGA TOUR favorite—it also features a plethora of activities for the whole family, including:
- Kids Crew program
- Fox Squirrel Family Golf Course
- Indaba Spa and Fitness Center
- Loch Ness Waterpark, and multiple pools geared to all ages
- Dive-in Movies
- Complimentary shuttle to and from Honeymoon Island State Park, one of America's top beaches
- Putt-Putt golf and bicycle rentals
- Tennis Center
- Nature trail and miles of walking/biking paths
- Multiple restaurants and bars, with cuisines that appeals to all interests and ages
Special Rates at Innisbrook Resort start at the following pricing, based on room category:
- $99 – Deluxe guest room
- $109 – Executive Suite
- $129 – One Bedroom Suite
- $189 – Two Bedroom Suite
To book your next vacation at Innisbrook Resort, call (888) 965-0953 or visit
for more information.
Stay dates through Sept. 10, 2013. Offer is subject to availability. Not valid for existing reservations. Listed rates are exclusive of resort fee & taxes. Blackout dates may apply.
This article was paid for by an advertiser


text: In 2012, the best gaming experiences came from some quite unexpected places. This was partly because so many big-budget games failed to materialize, having been delayed into 2013 or, as sometimes happens, just sort of fallen off the face of the Earth entirely. And the triple-A titles that did show up were often underwhelming. But as the industry behemoths struggled, the fast-growing independent games scene was thriving. In this list of Wired's favorite games of the year, you'll see some long-in-the-works indie games that finally made it out this year, some small games that came out of nowhere with wild ideas that just clicked, an MMO that points to how the genre might thrive in a post-Warcraft world and other surprising successes. Above: Hotline Miami This game grabs you by the sides of the face and screams "PLAY ME!", and you have to. Hotline Miami looks like the early Sierra On-Line graphic designers took a cocktail of various recreational drugs and then invented Grand Theft Auto. You play a violent thug who breaks into buildings and kills everyone. The difference between it and every other videogame with a similar premise is that playing Hotline Miami actually feels like what it represents. Your aiming is really touchy and enemies will kill you if you don't move quickly. But you're not timed and there's nothing pushing you forward. So there's this anxiety-inducing tension between vast periods of action and brief bursts of action: You can hover outside a door and plan and think and plot for minutes if you want, but then you gotta bust in and kill everything in a split second, or you're dead. But you die and retry, and the moment where you actually pull it off is exhilarating. Especially when you do it by spraying and praying and manage to take out an impossible number of enemies, somehow, blood splattered all over you, all over the rooms, but you're still miraculously alive. And you run out, and suddenly the intensity of what you're seeing on screen -- the blaring, too-loud '80s music, the blurred-vision graphics which are slowly tilting and pulsating as if you are watching the world through cocaine goggles, which you barely noticed during the intense action -- becomes like a colossal hangover when you're just picking your way over piles of dead bodies to get out. Why am I doing this? I can't stop. -- Chris Kohler Guild Wars 2 It took one of the most intelligently designed games of the decade to get gamers to imagine how MMOs might go on post-Warcraft, but Guild Wars 2 (PC) was up to the task. Rather than ruthlessly copying WoW as so many of its predecessors did, Guild Wars 2 brilliantly fused many of the things that made Warcraft special while inventing new solutions for the things that sucked. Ultimately, Guild Wars 2 may herald a paradigm shift in the MMO genre. Where most MMOs hide their best gameplay behind 300 hours of lame quests and months of costly subscription time, Guild Wars 2 allowed us to fight football field-sized monsters alongside dozens of allies within hours of stepping into the game. For the first time in a decade, here was an MMO that respected our time. -- Andrew Groen Far Cry 3 "Don't look down," Jason says uneasily as I climb my first radio tower, but that's all I want to do. Far Cry 3's scenery spreads for miles in every direction, like Skyrim, but with lush tropics replacing the desolate snowy peaks. This 360, PS3 and PC open-world shooter has been described as "Skyrim with guns." It's not an inaccurate comparison, but one that should be taken as a descriptor, not a measure of the game's worth. Doing so would be a disservice: Far Cry 3 is lustrous and polished and more than stands on its own. -- Bo Moore Fez Fez, an indie game released in April for Xbox Live, hides its true self from you. The game's main thrust is that it allows you to rotate the game world 90 degrees at a time, rearranging the position of objects in 3-D space in order to negotiate obstacles. You can beat the game with just this trick and you'd have a good time doing it. But Fez holds a deeper secret. It hints as much: Throughout the course of a normal playthrough, you will often come across mysterious symbols. These clearly aren't decoration – they're too consistent for that. So like anyone, you imagine you're meant to return later. Fez gets into your head this way. Those unsolved mysteries eat at your brain until you're convinced there's something greater underneath the cutesey aesthetic and simple controls. Getting to the bottom of Fez's underlying mystery means you're going to need to have knowledge of binary. You will need to know Morse code and you will need to have an understanding of obscure religious apocrypha (or know exactly what to look for on Wikipedia). This feeling of an endlessly deep rabbit hole is what makes Fez so compelling. Not since the classic dungeon crawlers of the '90s have I had to use so many pencils and sheets of paper for a game. But instead of mapping out dungeons on graph paper, Fez had me stretching my brain and using areas of knowledge I had long filed under useless trivia. -- John Mix Meyer XCOM: Enemy Unknown Firaxis had a lot to live up to when it resurrected the cult classic X-COM strategy series, but the developer knocked it out of the park with an unforgettable experience for consoles and PC. You play as the manager of a government agency tasked with investigating an alien invasion. The decisions you make determine the direction of the project, its research, its missions, etc. You command soldiers on the battlefield as well, and your tactics are the difference between the mission's success or your soldiers' "early retirement." Oh, and if you make bad choices, don't worry, the Earth will only fall under darkness and be conquered by extraterrestrials. No pressure. -- Andrew Groen Borderlands 2 There are many parts of Borderlands 2 (Xbox/PS3/PC), the candy-colored shooter from Gearbox, that will get your juices flowing. Playing co-op with a friend and teaming up to take down gigantic monsters is thrilling, and listening to the ramblings of the game's cast of absurd characters is as much fun as going to a stand-up comedy show. But the best feeling in Borderlands 2 is that moment when you down an enemy and see a bright, colorful object pop out. New. Guns. A new gun can be anything. It might be a machine gun that shoots grenades, or a futuristic laser blaster or even a talking, robot sniper rifle. The real joy of Borderlands is that moment when you check the stats on your newest find, peer down its scope, pull the trigger and realize that it's your new love. --Ryan Rigney Spelunky Months after giving Xbox 360's Spelunky a perfect 10, I'm still playing it. Just a few nights ago I dipped in again for an hour-long battle for survival in its randomly generated caves and jungles. At this point, most games would have lost their appeal for me. I play through a game's six-to-10 hour campaign, trade the disc into GameStop and buy the next roller-coaster action-shooter when it comes out the next year. Spelunky is a different sort of game. It's a living, breathing ecosystem with dozens of moving parts that work together in endless fascinating, and sometimes terrifying, ways. It turns your Xbox into your own worst enemy. It will taunt you, egging you into coming back and back for more punishment until you either give up or finally master it -- which is one of the most satisfying gaming experiences you can possibly have. --Ryan Rigney Dishonored Stealth games are not very good, as a rule. And when a game tells me I can accomplish goals any way I want to, that tends to not really be true. Dishonored is certainly an exception to the first rule, and the second as far as I know. At one point, I had to sneak into a mansion and kill a guy. I realized at one point, after magically "blink"ing myself up to the rooftop and sneaking in the window, that I could kill him silently right then and there and nobody would ever know, and I could beat it out of there. But then I thought: Why not follow him into the mansion instead? And oh, was I rewarded for doing so, more than I expected. Dishonored is all about the Blink move, which lets you teleport instantly very short distances without people seeing you. I typically feel like a big lumbering oaf in stealth games, but blinking makes me feel like an expert cat burglar. And the fact that you can quicksave anywhere and try things over and over until you get it perfect is a real thrill. Climbing high on rooftops with judicious use of blinking to avoid everything below is a thrill, something I wish was still in Assassin's Creed games, but I guess we can't have everything. -- Chris Kohler Journey So many videogames give the player control of a hero who, through the course of his epic journey to save the world, becomes a powerful badass who slaughters an entire enemy race. The brilliance of thatgamecompany's Journey for PlayStation 3 is it takes away every single one of those tropes and delivers a more memorable experience in the process, one which barely lasts two hours. You're not a hero in Journey. You're certainly not a badass; your only power is brief spurts of flight. You never harm anyone. You might be a man, or a woman, or neither. And whether or not you save the world at the end of your voyage across deserts, through caverns and over mountains depends entirely on how you, the player, decide to interpret the imagery of the game's word-free storytelling. Adding to the mystery of Journey is the game's inventive online social integration: Players may encounter a fellow traveler controlled by a random soul on the internet who might help you or might ignore you. You can't talk to them, but through play you might become allies or even friends. Or maybe the stranger will leave and you'll meet someone else. Journey bucks all blockbuster videogame trends and opts for no violence, offers a shorter play experience, and leaves much of the story up to the player's imagination. It's a beautiful example of what videogames can accomplish when they embrace abstraction and emotion over hyper-realism and firepower. -- Daniel Feit The Walking Dead Game of the Year The Walking Dead isn't just the best game of 2012, it's the game that defined 2012. There was nothing else this year like it. I don't think there's ever been anything like it at all. This five-episode tale of two survivors, an escaped convict and an orphaned little girl, desperately trying to stay alive in a post-apocalyptic American South, is a must-play. If you haven't, you need to. If you don't like zombie games, this isn't a zombie game, it's about people -- people who feel more real than in almost any other game you've ever played. Not because of motion-captured facial expressions or any sort of technological gimmickry, but because of solid writing (and, it should be said, a comic-book visual style that runs in the other direction from the uncanny valley). This Xbox, PS3, iOS, and PC game is a triumph for Telltale Games in a variety of ways. I've been covering the company since its inception, and though I've always enjoyed its games, all revivals of the point-and-click adventure genre, the studio never seemed to be getting the traction it was hoping for. Each big new license it acquired never really stuck, from Wallace & Gromit to Back to the Future. It had its core group of fans and didn't seem like it was ever going to break away -- until Walking Dead. It's not just a triumph of the content, but of the delivery method. Telltale, for the last 8 years, has doggedly stuck with its core idea of delivering episodic content, a smallish chunk of gameplay every month or so. Before Walking Dead I was starting to think it wasn't really working, that gamers didn't really want to play that way. But Walking Dead proved why episodically delivered games can be a powerful thing, especially in the age of social media. My Twitter feed lit up every time an episode was released and people had to share their latest thoughts and feelings on what happened around the virtual water cooler. By releasing episodically throughout the year, Walking Dead dominated the discussion for six months as other games came and went. Also, as a fan of point-and-click games going back to the earliest games in the genre, it's great to see the formula get a revival that plays to more than just the fans nostalgic for King's Quest. To see an independent studio elbow the lavishly funded triple-A games out of the way. To pull off the emotional attachment to characters that Heavy Rain and L.A. Noire tried to do but fell short of. Walking Dead is not a difficult game to finish, but to be happy with the results you'll have to make tough choices, and that's where it hooks you. Some games test your twitch reflexes. Some test your wits. Walking Dead tries your heart. -- Chris Kohler


text:
What an honour! World famous French cuisine master Chef Jean Pierre Omletteaufromage has..
French Chef Real Cooking69% French Chef Real Cooking
Write your own restaurant story in Cafeland today! Master your cooking and design your 5..
Cafeland World Kitchen85% Cafeland World Kitchen
We are going to prepare a famous Holland recipe; pea soup
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An invisible enemy
Guided by fear and rage
Torn apart from within, the young goddess Divine journeys into her own subconscious to battle the invisible demons that haunt her. Explore her intimate and fractured mindscape through side-scrolling combat and platforming puzzles.
Wear the masks of Rage and Fear and utilize their unique powers to battle negative thoughts and an unseen wickedness. Uncover long-buried memories and unlock remarkable new abilities as you progress, delving deeper into the mind of a god.