Rank Worthy of Historical Past

Religion is Here and Now

Pillars of Character

Center and Radii

Work On ...

Take care! Beware of everything that is untrue; stick to truth and we shall succeed, maybe slowly, but surely. 
Work on as if I never existed. Work as if on each of you depended the whole work. 
Fifty centuries are looking on you, the future of India depends on you. Work on. …  

They can at best praise in India, but they will not give a cent for anything; and where shall they get it, beggars  themselves? Then, they have lost the faculty of doing public good for the last two thousand years or more. 
They are just learning the ideas of nation, public, etc. 
So I need not blame them.

Blessings to you all! 

                - Swami Vivekananda, 
                    Written to Alasinga Perumal 
                    from New York  

Deathless India

Drama and Music

As Hair on Human Brow

All things that are, down to the ocean's depths,
         Up to sun, moon, and stars in spanless space --

The Mind, the Buddhi, Chitta, Ahamkar,
          The Deva, Yaksha, man and demon, all,

The quadruped, the bird, the worm, all insect life,
             The atom and its compound, all that is,

Animate and inanimate, all, all --
           The Internal and the External -- dwell

In that one common plane of existence!
          This outward presentation is of order gross,

As hair on human brow, Ay! very gross.

           - Swami Vivekananda, 
              from ‘A Song I Sing to Thee’ - poem in Bengali

My Shadow Cannot Frighten Me

The beauteous earth, the glorious sun,
      The calm sweet moon, the spangled sky,
      Causation's laws do make them run;
      They live in bonds, in bonds they die.

And mind its mantle dreamy net
       Cast o'er them all and holds them fast.
       In warp and woof of thought are set,
       Earth, hells, and heavens, or worst or best.
       Know these are but the outer crust --

All space and time, all effect, cause.
       I am beyond all sense, all thoughts,
       The witness of the universe.
       Not two or many, 'tis but one,
       And thus in me all me's I have;

I cannot hate, I cannot shun
       Myself from me, I can but love.
       From dreams awake, from bonds be free,
       Be not afraid. This mystery,
       My shadow, cannot frighten me,
       Know once for all that I am He.  

                      - Swami Vivekananda, 
                        poem in a letter written to Mary Hale   

Everyday Nice People!

Great Teacher of Religious Synthesis

If the Brahman is manifested in one man, thousands of men advance, finding their way out in that light. 
Only the knowers of Brahman are the spiritual teachers of mankind. This is corroborated by all scriptures and by reason too. 

It is only the selfish Brahmins who have introduced into this country the system of hereditary Gurus, which is against the Vedas and against the Shastras. Hence it is that even through their spiritual practice men do not now succeed in perfecting themselves or in realising Brahman. 

To remove all this corruption in religion, the Lord has incarnated Himself on earth in the present age in the person of Shri Ramakrishna. The universal teachings that he offered, if spread all over the world, will do good to humanity and the world. 
Not for many a century past has India produced so great, so wonderful, a teacher of religious synthesis. 

                   - Swami Vivekananda, 
                      Conversations and Dialogues, 
                       recorded by Sharat Chandra Chakravarty  

Herding Together Humans

Sri Ramakrishna - Harmonizing Conflicting Ideas

We must interpret the Vedas in the light of the experience of Sri Ramakrishna. 

Shankaracharya and all other commentators made the tremendous mistake to think that the whole of the Vedas spoke the same truth. Therefore they were guilty of torturing those of the apparently conflicting Vedic texts which go against their own doctrines, into the meaning of their particular schools. 
As, in the olden times, it was the Lord alone, the deliverer of the Gita , who partially harmonised these apparently conflicting statements, so with a view to completely settling this dispute, immensely magnified in the process of time, He Himself has come as Sri Ramakrishna. 

Therefore no one can truly understand the Vedas and Vedanta, unless one studies them in the light of the utterance of Sri Ramakrishna who first exemplified in his life and taught that these scriptural statements which appear to the cursory view as contradictory, are meant for different grades of aspirants and are arranged in the order of evolution. 
The whole world will undoubtedly forget its fights and disputes and be united in a fraternal tie in religious and other matters as a consequence of these teachings. 

                 - Swami Vivekananda, 
                    Notes on Class Talks 

Loving all Through God

Gopi's Love

So long as there is selfishness in the heart, so long is love of God impossible; it is nothing but shopkeeping: 
"I give you something; O Lord, you give me something in return"; and says the Lord, "If you do not do this, I will take good care of you when you die. I will roast you all the rest of your lives, perhaps", and so on. 

So long as such ideas are in the brain, how can one understand the mad throes of the Gopis' love? … … 

Ay, forget first the love for gold, and name and fame, for this little trumpery world of ours. Then, only then, you will understand the love of the Gopis, too holy to be attempted without giving up everything, too sacred to be understood until the soul has become perfectly pure. 
People with ideas of sex, and of money, and of fame, bubbling up every minute in the heart, daring to criticise and understand the love of the Gopis! 

                      - Swami Vivekananda, 
                        Address at Madras, 

         Lectures From Colombo to Almora

Traitor

Radha-Prema - Rare and High Ideal

Q. : Why not that [ideal of divine love between Radha and Krishna] be made the common property of all?

Swamiji: Look at this nation and see what has been the outcome of such an attempt. Through the preaching of that love broadcast, the whole nation has become effeminate -- a race of women! The whole of Orissa has been turned into a land of cowards; and Bengal, running after the Radha-prema, these past four hundred years, has almost lost all sense of manliness!
The people are very good only at crying and weeping; that has become their national trait. Look at their literature, the sure index of a nation's thoughts and ideas. Why, the refrain of the Bengali literature for these four hundred years is strung to that same tune of moaning and crying. It has failed to give birth to any poetry which breathes a true heroic spirit!
             
                                      - Swami Vivekananda,
                                          Conversations and Dialogues,
                                           at Calcutta, Surendra Nath Sen Diary

Variety is Source of Life

Struggle Godward! Light must come.
 If a man feeds me every day of my life, in the long run I shall lose the use of my hands. Spiritual death is the result of following each other like a flock of sheep.

 Death is the result of inaction. Be active; and wherever there is activity, there must be difference. 
Difference is the sauce of life; it is the beauty, it is the art of everything. Difference makes all beautiful here. It is variety that is the source of life, the sign of life. 
Why should we be afraid of it?
                     
               - Swami Vivekananda,
                    Talk at Pasadena, California 

Come, Be Men!

Come, be men! Kick out the priests who are always against progress, because they would never mend, their hearts would never become big. 
They are the offspring of centuries of superstition and tyranny. Root out priestcraft first. 

Come, be men! Come out of your narrow holes and have a look abroad. See how nations are on the march! 
Do you love man? Do you love your country? Then come, let us struggle for higher and better things; look not back, no, not even if you see the dearest and nearest cry. 
Look not back, but forward! 

                   - Swami Vivekananda, 
                      in a Letter to Alasinga Perumal 
                      from Yokohama, Japan

Liberty and Cessation of Misery

Hinduism Lacuna

Scriptures as Guide-Posts Only

Pray for the Poor and Down-trodden

Proclaim With Trumpet Voice

Acharyas from South

Intellectual Nonsense

Superior Type of Men

I have been travelling all over this country all this time and seeing everything. I have come to this conclusion that there is only one country in the world which understands religion -- it is India; 
that with all their faults the Hindus are head and shoulders above all other nations in morality and spirituality; 

and that with proper care and attempt and struggle of all her disinterested sons, by combining some of the active and heroic elements of the West with the calm virtues of the Hindus, there will come a type of men far superior to any that have ever been in this world. 

                   - Swami Vivekananda, 
                      in a Letter to Sri Haridas Desai 
                      from Chicago (September 1894)

Give and Take is the Law

To my mind, the one great cause of the downfall and the degeneration of India was the building of a wall of custom --
 whose foundation was hatred of others -- round the nation …

… … the inevitable result -- the vindication of the moral law, that none can hate others without degenerating himself -- is that the race that was foremost amongst the ancient races is now a byword, and a scorn among nations. 
We are object-lessons of the violation of that law which our ancestors were the first to discover and disseminate.

Give and take is the law …  

                    - Swami Vivekananda, 
                      Written from Chicago (Sept 1894)

Concertized Spirits

Much Higher than Life

Realisation - Practical Religion

Educating Masses

The real nation who live in cottage have forgotten their manhood, their individuality. 
Trodden under the foot of the Hindu, Mussulman, or Christian, they have come to think that they are born to be trodden under the foot of everybody who has money enough in his pocket. 
They are to be given back their lost individuality. They are to be educated. … 

Our duty is to put the chemicals together, the crystallisation will come through God's laws. Let us put ideas into their heads, and they will do the rest. 
Now this means educating the masses. 

                    - Swami Vivekananda, 
                        in a Letter to Sri Haridas V Desai 
                         from Chicago (June 1894)

Our Business is to be Good

Blind Led by Blind

Lost in the mazes and divisions of the "Religion Eternal", 
by prepossession and prejudice unable to grasp the meaning of the only religion whose universal adaptation is the exact shadow of the अणोरणीयान् महतो महीयान् (Smaller than the smallest, greater than the greatest [Katha, II. 20]) God it preaches, 
groping in the dark with a standard of spiritual truth borrowed second-hand from nations who never knew anything but rank materialism, 
the modern young Hindu struggles in vain to understand the religion of his forefathers, and gives up the quest altogether, and becomes a hopeless wreck of an agnostic, or else, 
unable to vegetate on account of the promptings of his innate religious nature, drinks carelessly of some of those different decoctions of Western materialism with an Eastern flavour, and thus fulfils the prophecy of the Shruti:

परियन्ति मूढा अन्धेनैव नीयमाना यथान्धा: |
--"Fools go staggering to and fro, like blind men led by the blind." 

They alone escape whose spiritual nature has been touched and vivified by the life-giving touch of the "Sad-guru". 

                    - Swami Vivekananda, 
                     ‘Reply to the Madras Address’   

  

Bhakti is Regulated by Love

India and Japan

Difficult Path of Spirituality

To want religion is a very difficult thing, not so easy as we generally think. 
Then we always forget that religion does not consist in hearing talks, or in reading books, but it is a continuous struggle, a grappling with our own nature, a continuous fight till the victory is achieved. 

It is not a question of one or two days, of years, or of lives, but it may be hundreds of lifetimes, and we must be ready for that. It may come immediately, or it may not come in hundreds of lifetimes; and we must be ready for that. 
The student who sets out with such a spirit finds success. 

                - Swami Vivekananda, 
                  Addresses on Bhakti-Yoga, New York

Land of Ethics, Philosophy, and Spirituality

And what a land! Whosoever stands on this sacred land, whether alien or a child of the soil, feels himself surrounded -- unless his soul is degraded to the level of brute animals -- by the living thoughts of the earth's best and purest sons, who have been working to raise the animal to the divine through centuries, whose beginning history fails to trace. 

The very air is full of the pulsations of spirituality. This land is sacred to philosophy, to ethics and spirituality, to all that tends to give a respite to man in his incessant struggle for the preservation of the animal, to all training that makes man throw off the garment of brutality and stand revealed as the spirit immortal, the birthless, the deathless, the ever-blessed -- the land where the cup of pleasure was full, and fuller has been the cup of misery, until here, first of all, man found out that it was all vanity; here, first of all in the prime of youth, in the lap of luxury, in the height of glory and plenitude of power, he broke through the fetters of delusion. 

Here, in this ocean of humanity, amidst the sharp interaction of strong currents of pleasure and pain, of strength and weakness, of wealth and poverty, of joy and sorrow, of smile and tear, of life and death, in the melting rhythm of eternal peace and calmness, arose the throne of renunciation! 
Here in this land, the great problems of life and death, of the thirst for life, and the vain mad struggles to preserve it only resulting in the accumulation of woes, were first grappled with and solved -- solved as they never were before and never will be hereafter; for here and here alone was discovered that even life itself is an evil, the shadow only of something which alone is real. 

This is the land where alone religion was practical and real, and here alone men and women plunged boldly in to realise the goal, just as in other lands they madly plunge in to realise the pleasures of life by robbing their weaker brethren. Here and here alone the human heart expanded till it included not only the human, but birds, beasts, and plants; from the highest gods to grains of sand, the highest and the lowest, all find a place in the heart of man, grown great, infinite. 

And here alone, the human soul studied the universe as one unbroken unity whose every pulse was his own pulse. 

                 - Swami Vivekananda, 
                   ‘India’s Message to the World’     

Full Write-up at:

  India's Message to the World

Intensity of Love

Motherland is Awakening

The longest night seems to be passing away, the sorest trouble seems to be coming to an end at last, the seeming corpse appears to be awaking and a voice is coming to us --
 away back where history and even tradition fails to peep into the gloom of the past, coming down from there, reflected as it were from peak to peak of the infinite Himalaya 
of knowledge, and of love, and of work, India, this motherland of ours -- a voice is coming unto us, gentle, firm, and yet unmistakable in its utterances, and is gaining volume as days pass by, and behold, the sleeper is awakening! 

Like a breeze from the Himalayas, it is bringing life into the almost dead bones and muscles, the lethargy is passing away, and only the blind cannot see, or the perverted will not see, that she is awakening, this motherland of ours, from her deep long sleep. 
None can resist her any more; never is she going to sleep any more; no outward powers can hold her back any more; for the infinite giant is rising to her feet. 

                    - Swami Vivekananda, 
                      Address at Ramnad, 
                       Lectures From Colombo to Almora

Utterly False World

Spiritual South India

Better to be an Atheist!

Real Jati

… take the case of caste -- in Sanskrit, Jati, i.e. species. 
Now, this is the first idea of creation. Variation (Vichitrata), that is to say Jati, means creation. 
"I am One, I become many" (various Vedas). Unity is before creation, diversity is creation. Now if this diversity stops, creation will be destroyed. So long as any species is vigorous and active, it must throw out varieties. When it ceases or is stopped from breeding varieties, it dies. 

Now the original idea of Jati was this freedom of the individual to express his nature, his Prakriti, his Jati, his caste; and so it remained for thousands of years. … …

The present caste is not the real Jati, but a hindrance to its progress. It really has prevented the free action of Jati, i.e. caste or variation. 
Any crystallised custom or privilege or hereditary class in any shape really prevents caste (Jati) from having its full sway; and whenever any nation ceases to produce this immense variety, it must die. 

Therefore what I have to tell you, my countrymen, is this, that India fell because you prevented and abolished caste. Every frozen aristocracy or privileged class is a blow to caste and is not-caste. Let Jati have its sway; break down every barrier in the way of caste, and we shall rise. … … 

This variety does not mean inequality, nor any special privilege. 

               - Swami Vivekananda, 
                  Written from Chicago (Jan 1895) 

One Word of Love

Sacrifice of Life

Go now this minute to the temple of Parthasarathi, and before Him who was friend to the poor and lowly cowherds of Gokula, who never shrank to embrace the Pariah Guhaka,
who accepted the invitation of a prostitute in preference to that of nobles and saved her in His incarnation as Buddha -- yea, down on your faces before Him, and make a great sacrifice, the sacrifice of a whole life for them, for whom He comes from time to time, whom He loves above all, the poor, the lowly, the oppressed. 

Vow, then, to devote your whole lives to the cause of the redemption of these three hundred millions, going down and down every day. 

             - Swami Vivekananda, 
                in a Letter to Alasinga Perumal 
                  from Massachusetts (August 1893)