Gita Jayanti

Give Willingly

Learn that the whole of life is giving, that nature will force you to give. So, give willingly. 

Sooner or later you will have to give up. You come into life to accumulate. With clenched hands, you want to take. But nature puts a hand on your throat and makes your hands open. 

Whether you will it or not, you have to give. The moment you say, "I will not", the blow comes; you are hurt. None is there but will be compelled, in the long run, to give up everything. And the more one struggles against this law, the more miserable one feels. 
It is because we dare not give, because we are not resigned enough to accede to this grand demand of nature, that we are miserable. 

                 - Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Los Angeles

Strength is Life

Power of Attachment and Detachment

We Get What We Deserve

We are always standing up to set right other people, and not ourselves. If we are miserable, we say, "Oh, the world is a devil's world." We curse others and say, "What infatuated fools!" 

But why should we be in such a world, if we really are so good? If this is a devil's world, we must be devils also; why else should we be here? "Oh, the people of the world are so selfish!" True enough; but why should we be found in that company, if we be better? Just think of that.

We only get what we deserve. It is a lie when we say, the world is bad and we are good. It can never be so. It is a terrible lie we tell ourselves.

- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Los Angeles

Pay Attention to Means

No Fear in Love of God

… children of God never see in Him a punisher or a rewarder. It is only people who have never tasted of love that fear and quake. 

Cast off all fear -- though these horrible ideas of God as a punisher or rewarder may have their use in savage minds. 

Some men, even the most intellectual, are spiritual savages, and these ideas may help them. But to men who are spiritual, men who are approaching religion, in whom spiritual insight is awakened, such ideas are simply childish, simply foolish. Such men reject all ideas of fear.

- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

Bound by Senses

We are bound by the senses; they play upon us, make fools of us all the time.

Here is a bad odour. It will bring me unhappiness as soon as it touches my nose. I am the slave of my nose. If I am not its slave, I do not care. 

A man curses me. His curses enter my ears and are retained in my mind and body. If I am the master, I shall say: "Let these things go; they are nothing to me. I am not miserable. I do not bother." 

This is the outright, pure, simple, clear-cut truth.

- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

The Dream Vanishes

Slaves of Body

The Yogi says you are to go to the root of all this. 
Why is there misery in the world? 
He answers: "It is all our own foolishness, not having proper mastery of our own bodies. That is all." … 

If you can thus get mastery of your body, all the misery of the world will vanish. 
Every hospital is praying that more and more sick people will come there. Every time you think of doing some charity, you think there is some beggar to take your charity. If you say, "O Lord, let the world be full of charitable people!"-- you mean, let the world be full of beggars also. Let the world be full of good works -- let the world be full of misery. 
This is out-and-out slavishness! 

                  - Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

One Thing Taken for Another

One thing is taken for another, not as something that does not exist. 

What we see here is body, and we take the Infinite as matter. ...

We are but seeking that Reality. We are never deluded. 

We always know truth, only our reading of truth is mistaken at times. You can perceive only one thing at a time. 

When I see the snake, the rope has vanished entirely. And when I see the rope, the snake has vanished. It must be one thing. ...

- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

Die Game!

All weakness, all bondage is imagination. Speak one word to it, it must vanish. 
Do not weaken! There is no other way out. ... 
Stand up and be strong! No fear. No superstition. 

Face the truth as it is! If death comes -- that is the worst of our miseries -- let it come! We are determined to die game. 

That is all the religion I know. I have not attained to it, but I am struggling to do it. I may not, but you may. Go on! 

                 - Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

Mass of Energy

Body-gods!

I Am The Infinite

"I am He. Whatever [my] mind does, I am not touched. 

The sun is not touched by shining on filthy places, I am Existence."

This is the religion of [non-dual] philosophy. [It is] difficult. 

Struggle on! Down with all superstitions! 

Neither teachers nor scriptures nor gods [exist]. 

Down with temples, with priests, with gods, with incarnations, with God himself! 

I am all the God that ever existed! 
There, stand up philosophers! No fear! 
Speak no more of God and [the] superstition of the world. Truth alone triumphs, and this is true. 

I am the Infinite.

- Swami Vivekananda, 
  Talk in San Francisco

Personal God - Sum-Total

Value of Blows in Life

No Question of Birth and Death

The Real Man, therefore, is one and infinite, the omnipresent Spirit. And the apparent man is only a limitation of that Real Man. … 
The Real Man, the Spirit, being beyond cause and effect, not bound by time and space, must, therefore, be free. He was never bound, and could not be bound. 

The apparent man, the reflection, is limited by time, space, and causation, and is, therefore, bound. Or in the language of some of our philosophers, he appears to be bound, but really is not. 
This is the reality in our souls, this omnipresence, this spiritual nature, this infinity. Every soul is infinite, therefore there is no question of birth and death. 

                    - Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Do Not Disturb Faith of Ignorant

You Get Government, Religon, and Priesthood you Deserve

Matter and Force from Mind

Matter cannot be said to cause force nor [can] force [be] the cause of matter. Both are so [related] that one may disappear in the other. 

There must be a third [factor], and that third something is the mind. You cannot produce the universe from matter, neither from force. Mind is something [which is] neither force nor matter, yet begetting force and matter all the time. 

In the long run, mind is begetting all force, and that is what is meant by the universal mind, the sum total of all minds. Everyone is creating, and [in] the sum total of all these creations you have the universe -- unity in diversity. It is one and it is many at the same time.

- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

Unattached Love of God

Suppose a man writes a cheque for a thousand dollars for the poor of New York, and at the same time, in the same room, another man forges the name of a friend. 

The light by which both of them write is the same, but each one will be responsible for the use he makes of it. It is not the light that is to be praised or blamed. 

Unattached, yet shining in everything, is love, the motive power of the universe, without which the universe would fall to pieces in a moment, and this love is God.

- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

Fight On!

Don't Blame People

World is Neither Good Nor Bad

The Yogi says, religion is practical if you know first why misery exists. All the misery in the world is in the senses. 

Is there any ailment in the sun, moon, and stars? 

The same fire that cooks your meal burns the child. Is it the fault of the fire? Blessed be the fire! Blessed be this electricity! It gives light. ...

Where can you lay the blame? Not on the elements. 

The world is neither good nor bad; the world is the world. The fire is the fire. If you burn your finger in it, you are a fool. If you [cook your meal and with it satisfy your hunger,] you are a wise man. That is all the difference. 

Circumstances can never be good or bad. Only the individual man can be good or bad. What is meant by the world being good or bad? 

Misery and happiness can only belong to the sensuous individual man.

- Swami Vivekananda, 
   Talk in San Francisco

Lunatics!

We have identified ourselves with our bodies. We are only body, or rather, possessed of a body. If I am pinched, I cry. All this is nonsense, since I am the soul. 

All this chain of misery, imagination, animals, gods, and demons, everything, the whole world -- all this comes from the identification of ourselves with the body. I am spirit. Why do I jump if you pinch me? ...

Look at the slavery of it. Are you not ashamed? We are religious! We are philosophers! We are sages! Lord bless us! What are we? Living hells, that is what we are. Lunatics, that is what we are!

- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

Aim of Morality

You Are All The World

Greek and Indian Side