swami vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902)

This illustrious patriot-saint of modern India was born in Calcutta on 12 January, 1863. He was named Narendra. His father, Viswanath Datta, was a brilliant lawyer. He was highly respected for his intelligence and culture. His mother, Devi Bhuvaneshwari, was a devout woman with a great ability for training her children. As a boy, Narendra was very naughty and self-willed, and often had to be placed under a water tap to curb his mischief. Nevertheless, he was very generous, loving and devoted, with a strange attraction for wandering Sadhus. He enjoyed doing worship of Lord Rama and Lord Krishna with his mother.

After his matriculation, Narendra went to college. He was rarely absent from social parties. He was the "soul of social circles" and no gathering was deemed complete without his presence.

Some of his lectures are cut pasted here for your reference :

Religion Not the Crying Need of India

This is the doctrine of love declared in the Vedas, and let us see how it is fully developed and taught by Krishna whom the Hindus believe to have been God incarnate on earth.

Superstition is a great enemy of man, but bigotry is worse. Why does a Christian go to church? Why is the cross holy? Why is the face turned toward the sky in prayer? Why are there so many images in the Catholic Church? Why are there so many images in the minds of Protestants when they pray? My brethren, we can Do more think about anything without a mental image than we can live without breathing- By the law of association the material image calls up the mental idea and vice versa. This is why the Hindu uses an external symbol when he worships. He will tell you. it helps to keep his mind fixed on the Being to whom he prays. He knows as well as you do that the image is not God, is not omnipresent. finer all, how much does omnipresence mean to almost the whole world? It stands merely as a word, a symbol. Has God superficial area? If not, when we repeat that word "omnipresent", we think of the extended sky. or of space - that is all.

"As the different streams having their sources in different
places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the
different paths which men take through different tendencies,
various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee."

In Search of God

This poem of Swami Vivekananda (reprinted from his Complete Works 7: 450-2) forms a part of a letter he wrote From Salem, Massachusetts in USA, to Prof. John Henry Wright on September 4, 1893. In the letter, Vivekananda conveyed his heartfelt gratitude to the professor for giving him a letter of introduction to the president of the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago, and prefaced the poem with the remark: "Here are a few lines written as an attempt at poetry. Hoping your love will pardon this infliction."

		Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) This illustrious patriot-saint of modern India was born in Calcutta on 12 January, 1863. He was named Narendra. His father, Viswanath Datta, was a brilliant lawyer. He was highly respected for his intelligence and culture. His mother, Devi Bhuvaneshwari, was a devout woman with a great ability for training her children. As a boy, Narendra was very naughty and self-willed, and often had to be placed under a water tap to curb his mischief. Nevertheless, he was very generous, loving and devoted, with a strange attraction for wandering Sadhus. He enjoyed doing worship of Lord Rama and Lord Krishna with his mother. After his matriculation, Narendra went to college. He was rarely absent from social parties. He was the "soul of social circles" and no gathering was deemed complete without his presence. Some of his lectures are cut pasted here for your reference :
A Call to the Youth of India Let us all work hard, my brethren; this is no time for sleep. On our work depends the coming of the India of the future. She is there ready waiting. She is only sleeping. Arise and awake, and see her seated here, on her eternal throne, rejuvenated, more glorious than she ever was -- this motherland of ours. First of all, try to understand this: Does man make laws, or do laws make man? Does man make money, or does money make man? Does man make name and fame, or name and fame make man? Be a man first, my friend, and you will see how all those things and the rest will follow of themselves after you. Give up that hateful malice, that dog-like bickering and barking at one another, and take your stand on good purpose, right means, righteous courage, and be brave. When you are born a man, leave some indelible mark behind you. But mark you, if you give up the spirituality, leaving it aside to go after the materializing civilization of the West, the result will be that in three generations you will be an extinct race; because the backbone of the nation will be broken, the foundation upon which the national edifice has been built will be undermined, and the result will be annihilation all around. None will be able to resist truth and love and sincerity. Are you sincere? Unselfish even unto death? Then fear not, not even death. Onward, my lads! The whole world requires Light. It is expectant! India alone has that Light, not in magic mummeries, and charlatanism,. but in the teaching of the glories of the spirit of real religion -- of the highest spiritual truth. That is why the Lord has preserved the race through all its vicissitudes unto the present day. Now the time has come. Have faith that you are all, my brave lads, born to do great things! Let not the barks of puppies frighten you -- no, not even the thunderbolts of heaven -- but stand up and work!
His Story of Victory : One day, his neighbour received a surprise visit from the saint of Dakshineshwar, Sri Ramakrishna. Narendra was also invited to sing devotional songs. As he sang, he sent thrill after thrill through Sri Ramakrishna until the saint fell into a state of ecstasy. When he became normal again, he made Narendra sit beside him and enquired lovingly of the boy. With time their friendship grew. The death of his father forced Narendra to find work and support the family. During these years of great struggle, his sheet anchor was his Guru, Sri Ramakrishna. Narendra yearned intensely for God and began to plague the Master for realisation. Narendra, now known as Swami Vivekananda, founded an Ashram near Calcutta, in order to organise better the Master's mission. This was the beginning of the Ramakrishna Mission. From 1888 to 1890 Swami Vivekananda travelled widely. He went on a pilgrimage all over the country, studying the conditions of the people. Wherever he went, his magnetic personality created a great impression. In 1893, Swami Vivekananda went to America to attend the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. His powerful speech at the opening session of the Parliament brought him instant fame and acclaimed him as a great orator and the most ideal interpreter of India's wisdom. He instantly became very popular in America. Swami Vivekananda's powerful personality and his passionate call of service of the poor, is still influencing people all over India and the world. Swami Vivekananda arrived in America penniless and depending only on God's Grace. After the Parliament he began to receive the homage and hospitality of all America. He lectured at all the important centres. As a true Sannyasin he refused to sell religion for the sake of amassing money. He preached the gospel of unity of faiths and scattered the seeds of purity, knowledge and faith. After his stay of two years in America he toured England and Europe for three months. The tremendous ovation he received on his return to India in no way took his mind away from his mission of bringing religion to the doors of the poorest. His aim was to awaken the masses by reviving Vedic religion, and to clean it of the dross and impurity that had clung to it for so many centuries. In 1902 Swami Vivekananda entered Mahasamadhi. Six years of discipleship under Sri Ramakrishna had taken him to the realms of God-vision. Seven years of travelling in India had broadened his outlook on life. Nine years of a national and international career were all that were left for him; yet, how filled with glorious work those nine years were! Swami Vivekananda's gospel was one of hope, faith and strength. He never succumbed to despair, for he knew that India was capable of expansion and growth. His clarion call to the nation was: "Awake, arise, and stop not till the goal is reached."
As said by Swami Vivekananda : "Brothers and sisters, the long night is at last drawing to a close. Miseries and sorrows are disappearing. Ours is a sacred country. She is gradually waking up, thanks to the fresh breeze all around. Her might no one can overcome." "Are you prepared for all sacrifices for the sake of our motherland? If you are, then you can rid the land of poverty and ignorance. Do you know that millions of our countrymen are starving and miserable? Do you feel for them? Do you so much as shed a tear for them?" "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." "I loved my motherland dearly before I went to America and England. After my return, every particle of the dust of this land seems sacred to me."
Much has been said of the common ground of religious unity. I am not going just now to venture my own theory. But if anyone here hopes that this unity will come by the triumph of any one of the religions and the destruction of the others, to him I say, "Brother, yours is an impossible hope." Do I wish that the Christian would become Hindu? God forbid. Do I wish that the Hindu or Buddhist would become Christian? God forbid. The seed is put in the ground, and earth and air and water are placed around it. Does the seed become the earth, or the air, or the water? No. It becomes a plant, it develops after the law of its own growth, assimilates the air, the earth, and the water, converts them into plant substance, and grows into a plant. Similar is the case with religion. The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet preserve his individuality and grow according to his own law of growth. If the Parliament of Religions has shown anything to the world it is this: It has proved to the world that holiness, purity, and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most extended character. In the face of this evidence, if anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion and the destruction of others, I pity him from the bottom of my heart, and point out to him that upon the banner of every religion will soon be written, in spite of resistance: "Help and not fight", "Assimilation and not Destruction", "Harmony and peace and not Dissension".
Religion Not the Crying Need of India At The World's Parliament of Religions Chicago, 20th September 1893 Christians must always be ready for good criticism and I hardly think that you will mind if I make a little criticism. You Christians, who are so fond of sending out missionaries to save the soul of the heathen - why do you not try to save their bodies from starvation? In India, during the terrible famines, thousands died from hunger, yet you Christians did nothing. You erect churches all through India, but the crying evil in the East is not religion - they have religion enough -but it is bread that the suffering millions of burning India cry out for with parched throats. They ask us for bread, but we give them stones. It is an insult to the starving people to offer them religion; it is an insult to the starving man to teach him metaphysics. In India a priest that preached for money would lose caste and be spat upon by the people. I came here to seek aid for my impoverished people, and I fully realized how difficult it was to get help for heathens from Christians in a Christian land.
This is the doctrine of love declared in the Vedas, and let us see how it is fully developed and taught by Krishna whom the Hindus believe to have been God incarnate on earth. He taught that a man ought to live in this world like a lotus leaf, which grows in water but is never moistened by water; so a man ought to live in the world - his heart to God and his hands to work. It is good to love God for hope of reward in this or the next world, but it is better to love God for love's sake; and the prayer goes: "Lord, I do not want wealth nor children nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth; but grant me this, that I may love Thee without the hope of reward - love unselfishly for love's sake." One of the disciples of Krishna, the then Emperor of India, wag driven from his kingdom by his enemies and had to take shelter with his queen, in a forest in the Himalayas and there one day the queen asked how it was that he, the most virtuous of men, should suffer so much misery. Yudhishthira answered, "Be hold, my queen, the Himalayas, how grand and beautiful they are; I love them. They do not give me any- thing but my nature is to love the grand, the beautiful, therefore I love them. Similarly, I love the Lord. He is the source of all beauty, of all sublimity. He is the only object to beloved; my nature is to love Him, and therefore I love. I do not pray for any- thing; I do not ask for anything. Let Him place me wherever He likes. I must love Him for love's sake. I cannot trade in love." Science is nothing but the finding of unity. As soon as science would reach perfect unity, it would stop from further progress, because it would reach the goal. Thus chemistry could not progress farther when it would discover one element out of which all others could be made. Physics would stop when it would be able to fulfill its services in discovering one energy of which all the others are hut manifestations, and the science of religion become perfect when it would discover Him who is the one life in a universe of death, Him who is the constant basis of an ever-changing world, One who is the only Soul of which all souls are but delusive manifestations. Thus is it, through multiplicity and duality, that the ultimate unity is reached. Religion can go no farther. This is the goal of all science.
Superstition is a great enemy of man, but bigotry is worse. Why does a Christian go to church? Why is the cross holy? Why is the face turned toward the sky in prayer? Why are there so many images in the Catholic Church? Why are there so many images in the minds of Protestants when they pray? My brethren, we can Do more think about anything without a mental image than we can live without breathing- By the law of association the material image calls up the mental idea and vice versa. This is why the Hindu uses an external symbol when he worships. He will tell you. it helps to keep his mind fixed on the Being to whom he prays. He knows as well as you do that the image is not God, is not omnipresent. finer all, how much does omnipresence mean to almost the whole world? It stands merely as a word, a symbol. Has God superficial area? If not, when we repeat that word "omnipresent", we think of the extended sky. or of space - that is all.
Why We Disagree At The World's Parliament of Religions Chicago, 15th September 1893 I will tell you a little story. You have heard the eloquent speaker who has just finished say, "Let us cease from abusing each other," and he was very sorry that there should be always so much variance. But I think I should tell you a story which would illustrate the cause of this variance. A frog lived in a well. It had lived there for a long time. It was born there and brought up there, and yet was a little, small frog. Of course, the evolutionists were not there then to tell us whether the frog lost its eyes or not, but, for our story's sake, we must take it for granted that it had its eyes, and that it every day cleansed the water of all the worms and bacilli that lived in it with an energy that would do credit to our modern bacteriologists. In this way it went on and became a little sleek and fat. Well, one day another flog that lived in the sea came and fell into the well. "Where are you form?" "I am from the sea." "The sea! How big is that? Is it as big as my well?" and he took a leap from one side of the well to the other. "My friend," said the frog of the sea, "how do you compare the sea with your little well?" Then the frog took another leap and asked, "Is your sea so big?" "What nonsense you speak, to compare the sea with your well!" "Well, then," said the frog of the well, "nothing can be bigger than my well; there can be nothing bigger than this; this fellow is a liar, so turn him out." That has been the difficulty all the while. I am a Hindu. I am sitting in my own little well and thinking that the whole world is my little well. The Christian sits in his little well and thinks the whole world is his well. The Mohammedan sits in his little well and thinks that is the whole world. l have to thank you of America for the great attempt you are making to break down the barriers of this little world of ours, and hope that, in the future, the Lord will help you to accomplish your purpose.
"As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee." The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world, of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: "Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to Me."
Biography A spiritual genius of commanding intellect and power, Vivekananda crammed immense labor and achievement into his short life, 1863-1902. Born in the Datta family of Calcutta, the youthful Vivekananda embraced the agnostic philosophies of the Western mind along with the worship of science. At the same time, vehement in his desire to know the truth about God, he questioned people of holy reputation, asking them if they had seen God. He found such a person in Sri Ramakrishna, who became his master, allayed his doubts, gave him God vision, and transformed him into sage and prophet with authority to teach. After Sri Ramakrishna's death, Vivekananda renounced the world and criss-crossed India as a wandering monk. His mounting compassion for India's people drove him to seek their material help from the West. Accepting an opportunity to represent Hinduism at Chicago's Parliament of Religions in 1893, Vivekananda won instant celebrity in America and a ready forum for his spiritual teaching. For three years he spread the Vedanta philosophy and religion in America and England and then returned to India to found the Ramakrishna Math and Mission. Exhorting his nation to spiritual greatness, he wakened India to a new national consciousness. He died July 4, 1902, after a second, much shorter sojourn in the West. His lectures and writings have been gathered into nine volumes.
In Search of God This poem of Swami Vivekananda (reprinted from his Complete Works 7: 450-2) forms a part of a letter he wrote From Salem, Massachusetts in USA, to Prof. John Henry Wright on September 4, 1893. In the letter, Vivekananda conveyed his heartfelt gratitude to the professor for giving him a letter of introduction to the president of the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago, and prefaced the poem with the remark: "Here are a few lines written as an attempt at poetry. Hoping your love will pardon this infliction." O'er hill and dale and mountain range, In temple, church, and mosque, In Vedas, Bible, Al Koran I had searched for Thee in vain. Like a child in the wildest forest lost I have cried and cried alone, "Where art Thou gone, my God, my love?" The echo answered, "gone." And days and nights and years then passed-- A fire was in the brain; I knew not when day changed in night, The heart seemed rent in twain. I laid me down on Ganga's shore, Exposed to sun and rain; With burning tears I laid the dust And wailed with waters' roar. I called on all the holy names Of every clime and creed, "Show me the way, in mercy, ye Great ones who have reached the goal". Years then passed in bitter cry, Each moment seemed an age, Till one day midst my cries and groans Some one seemed calling me. A gentle soft and soothing voice That said "my son", "my son", That seemed to thrill in unison With all the chords of my soul. I stood on my feet and tried to find The place the voice came from; I searched and searched and turned to see Round me, before, behind. Again, again it seemed to speak-- The voice divine to me. In rapture all my soul was hushed, Entranced, enthralled in bliss. A flash illumined all my soul; The heart of my heart opened wide. O joy, O bliss, what do I find! My love, my love, you are here, And you are here, my love, my all! And I was searching thee! From all eternity you were there Enthroned in majesty! From that day forth, where'er I roam, I feel Him standing by O'er hill and dale, high mount and vale, Far far away and high. The moon's soft light, the stars so bright, The glorious orb of day, He shines in them; His beauty--might-- Reflected lights are they. The majestic morn, the melting eve, The boundless billowy sea, In nature's beauty, songs of birds, I see through them--it is He. When dire calamity seizes me, The heart seems weak and faint, All nature seems to crush me down, With laws that never bend. Meseems I hear Thee whispering sweet My love, "I am near", "I am near". My heart gets strong. With Thee, my love, A thousand deaths no fear. Thou speakest in the mother's lay That shuts the baby's eye; When innocent children laugh and play I see Thee standing by. When holy friendship shakes the hand, He stands between them too; He pours the nectar in mother's kiss And the baby's sweet "mama". Thou wert my God with prophets old; All creeds do come from Thee; The Vedas, Bible, and Koran bold Sing Thee in harmony. "Thou art", "Thou art" the Soul of souls In the rushing stream of life. "Om tat sat Om." Thou art my God. My love, I am thine, I am thine.
My comments : After reading through the "Complete Works Of Swami Vivekanand" - one uncanny thing did happen - I could no longer read any fiction anymore. If I tried, my eyes used to start burning !..as if my personal set of deities - who had been taking care of me (still are in fact) stopped me from collecting further garbage in my small brain. After being exposed to the beautiful piece of work & deed , I too yearned to see & seek God ! What happened after this episode of my life.... you can read in Beauty & the Beast - the true story of my life ! You can also go through my poems on what I learnt from this great Personality and how I made it practical in my life. My seeking started in 1992 (Kharga Library, Ambala Cantt) and culminated in 2002 after I was led to Sahaja Yoga (www.sahajayoga.org).

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