Today we are celebrating the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda born on January 12,1863.Let’s ponder over his teachings and try to bring them in application in order to change the face of globe in a big way.
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This is the gist of all worship – to be pure and to do good to others. He who sees Siva in the poor, in the weak, and in the diseased, really worships Siva, and if he sees Siva only in the image, his worship is but preliminary. He who has served and helped one poor man seeing Siva in him, without thinking of his cast, creed, or race, or anything, with him Siva is more pleased than with the man who sees Him only in temples.
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Strength, strength it is that we want so much in this life, for what we call sin and sorrow have all one cause, and that is our weakness. With weakness comes ignorance, and with ignorance comes misery.
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Purity, patience, and perseverance are the three essentials to success, and above all, love.
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Teach yourselves, teach everyone his real nature, call uon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come, and everything that is excellent will come when this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity.
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First get rid of the delusion “I am the body,” then only will we want real knowledge.
Religion is the manifestation of the Divinity already in man.
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First get rid of the delusion “I am the body,” then only will we want real knowledge.
The authority of the Vedas extends to all ages, climes and persons; that is to say, their application is not confined to any particular place, time, and persons. The Vedas are the only exponent of the universal religion.
Although the supersensuous vision of truths is to be met with in some measure in our Puranas and Itihasas and in the religious scriptures of other races, still the fourfold scripture known among the Aryan race as the Vedas being the first, the most complete, and the most undistorted collection of spiritual truths, deserve to occupy the highest place among all scriptures, command the respect of all nations of the earth, and furnish the rationale of all their respective scriptures.
(In “Hinduism and Sri Ramakrishna” from Swami Vivekananda’s Complete Works, 6: 181-86.)
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But they have not learnt the modern method of self-advertisement.
The Hindu drank in with his mother’s milk that this life is as nothing–a dream. In this he is at one with the Westerners; but the Westerner sees no further and his conclusion is that of the Charvaka–to “make hay while the sun shines.” “This world being a miserable hole, let us enjoy to the utmost what morsels of pleasure are left to us.” To the Hindu, on the other hand, God and soul are the only realities, infinitely more real than this world, and he is therefore ever ready to let this go for the other.
(Reproduced from the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 4: 303-307)
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Have you the courage to face any hurdles, however formidable? Have you the determination to pursue your goal, even if those near and dear to you oppose you? You can be free men only if you have confidence in yourselves. You should develop a strong physique. You should shape your mind through study and mediation. Only then will victory be yours.
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Don’t try to. Keep the shell of pretense that everybody goes encased in off yourself; don’t let it form. You will suffer, but you will feel more and do better work. Nearly all the world goes in a thick casing of convention and hypocrisy — like the two men in the fable, greeting each other with cheek pressed to cheek, each looking over the other’s shoulder, meanwhile winking at the rest of the world.
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The Hindus have received their religion through revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons in different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical, and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits, were there before their discovery, and would remain even if we forgot them.
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Given a vast country thinly inhabited, there will, perhaps, be more of psychical power there. These facts the Hindus, being analytically minded, took up and investigated. And they came to certain remarkable conclusions; that is, they made a science of it. They found out that all these, though extraordinary, are also natural; there is nothing supernatural. They are under laws just the same as any other physical phenomenon. It is not a freak of nature that a man is born with such powers. They can be systematically studied, practiced and acquired. This science they call the science of Raja-Yoga.
There are thousands of people who cultivate the study of this science, and for the whole nation it has become a part of daily worship. The conclusion they have reached is that all these extraordinary powers are in the mind of man. This mind is a part of the universal mind. Each mind is connected with every other mind. And each mind, wherever it is located, is in actual communication with the whole world.
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If a number of men, without any culture, be left to live upon an island, and are given barely enough food, clothing, and shelter, they will gradually go on and on, evolving higher and higher stages of civilization. We know also that this growth can be hastened by additional means. We help the growth of trees, do we not? Left to nature they would have grown, only they would have taken a longer time; we help them to grow in a shorter time than they would otherwise have taken. We are doing all the time the same thing, hastening the growth of things by artificial means. Why cannot we hasten the growth of man?
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Source:http://www.belurmath.org/swamivivekananda.htm
http://www.ramakrishna.org/sv.htm
http://vivekananda.org/readings.asp
http://www.vivekananda.org/readings.asp
http://www.freeindia.org/biographies/vivekanand/
http://www.freeindia.org/biographies/vivekanand/page8.htm
http://www.vivekananda.net/KnownLetters/1902.html#18feb
