Buddha Purnima

Buddha is the only prophet who said, "I do not care to know your various theories about God. What is the use of discussing all the subtle doctrines about the soul? Do good and be good. And this will take you to freedom and to whatever truth there is." 

He was, in the conduct of his life, absolutely without personal motives; and what man worked more than he? … 

He is the ideal Karma-Yogi, acting entirely without motive, and the history of humanity shows him to have been the greatest man ever born; beyond compare the greatest combination of heart and brain that ever existed, the greatest soul-power that has ever been manifested. 

He is the first great reformer the world has seen.

- Swami Vivekananda,

 Karma-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Renunciation and Spirituality

One moment in infinite time is quite as good as any other moment. 
If you believe in a God, you can see Him even now. 

We think religion begins when you have realised something. It is not believing in doctrines, nor giving intellectual assent, nor making declarations. If there is a God, have you seen Him? If you say "no", then what right have you to believe in Him? 
If you are in doubt whether there is a God, why do you not struggle to see Him? Why do you not renounce the world and spend the whole of your life for this one object? 

Renunciation and spirituality are the two great ideas of India, and it is because India clings to these ideas that all her mistakes count for so little. 

     - Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Pasadena, California

No Sin but Error

Do You Want Religion?

… man of realisation says, "All this talk in the world about its little religions is but prattle; realisation is the soul, the very essence of religion." 

Religion can be realised. Are you ready? Do you want it? 

You will get the realisation if you do, and then you will be truly religious. Until you have attained realisation there is no difference between you and atheists. 
The atheists are sincere, but the man who says that he believes in religion and never attempts to realise it is not sincere. 

          - Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, New York

Search After Unity

Harmony of Religions

We have all been hearing from childhood of such things as love, peace, charity, equality, and universal brotherhood; 
but they have become to us mere words without meaning, words which we repeat like parrots, and it has become quite 
natural for us to do so. 

We cannot help it. 

Great souls, who first felt these great ideas in their hearts, manufactured these words; and at that time many understood their meaning. 
Later on, ignorant people have taken up those words to play with them and made religion a mere play upon words, and not a thing to be carried into practice. 
It becomes "my father's religion", "our nation's religion", "our country's religion", and so forth. It becomes only a phase of 
patriotism to profess any religion, and patriotism is always partial. 

To bring harmony into religion must always be difficult. 
Yet we will consider this problem of the harmony of religions. 
                                     - Swami Vivekananda, 
                          'The Ideal of a Universal Religion' - talk
                                        in Pasadena, California (CW Vol II)

Atheism as per Vedanta

Let Men Think

… it is better that mankind should become atheist by following reason than blindly believe in two hundred millions of gods on the authority of anybody. 

What we want is progress, development, realisation. 
No theories ever made men higher. 
No amount of books can help us to become purer. 

The only power is in realisation, and that lies in ourselves and comes from thinking. Let men think. 
A clod of earth never thinks; but it remains only a lump of earth. 

The glory of man is that he is a thinking being. It is the nature of man to think and therein he differs from animals. 

             - Swami Vivekananda, 
                 Practical Vedanta III, London