Sādhanā: The Realisation of Life is a 1913 essay collection by Rabindranath Tagore, drawn from lectures he delivered at Harvard the same year. The eight essays — on the relations between the individual and the universe, the soul, evil, beauty, action, realisation, infinity, and love — present the Upanishadic tradition as Tagore read it for an early-20th-century Western audience. It appeared the year he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
When a man does not realise his kinship with the world, he lives in a prison-house whose walls are alien to him.
p. 26 · Chapter I, "The Relation of the Individual to the Universe"
First lines
The civilisation of ancient Greece was nurtured within city walls. In fact, all the modern civilisations have their cradles of brick and mortar.
Contents
The Relation of the Individual to the Universe
Soul Consciousness
The Problem of Evil
The Problem of Self
Realisation in Love
Realisation in Action
The Realisation of Beauty
The Realisation of the Infinite
Reception
The book was Tagore's first sustained English-language non-fiction and shaped his Western reception alongside Gitanjali. Read alongside Vivekananda's earlier Karma Yoga and Raja Yoga lectures, it is one of the principal documents of the Bengal Renaissance's English-language transmission of Vedānta to the West. Modern Indian commentators — beginning with K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar and continued by Amartya Sen — distinguish Tagore's lyrical-philosophical mode from both Vivekananda's missionary register and Aurobindo's systematic metaphysics. The original 1913 Macmillan plates remain in print through Dover and Sterling editions; no canonical scholarly edition has supplanted them.
Frequently asked
What is Sādhanā about?
Sādhanā is a collection of eight essays in which Rabindranath Tagore presents the Upanishadic tradition for a Western audience. The essays address the individual's relation to the universe, the nature of the soul, the problem of evil, love, action, beauty, and the infinite — drawing on the forest schools of ancient India and the texts Tagore grew up with.
When was Sādhanā first published?
The book was first published by Macmillan in 1913, the year Tagore received the Nobel Prize in Literature. It was drawn from lectures he gave at Harvard that year and appeared alongside Gitanjali as one of his principal English-language introductions to Indian thought.
How does Sādhanā relate to Tagore's other works?
Sādhanā was Tagore's first sustained non-fiction work in English. It complements Gitanjali (1912) by explaining, in prose, the philosophical ground his poetry inhabits. Later scholars place it alongside the lectures of Swami Vivekananda as a key document of the Bengal Renaissance's transmission of Vedānta to the West.