Swami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda
Swami VivekanandaBengali: , Shāmi Bibekānondo; 12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902), born Narendranath Datta, was an Indian Hindu monk, a chief disciple of the 19th-century Indian mystic Ramakrishna. He was a key figure in the introduction of the Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world and is credited with raising interfaith awareness, bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion during the late 19th century. He was a major force in the revival of Hinduism in...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth12 January 1863
CountryIndia
All sectarian religions take for granted that all men are equal. This is not warranted by science. There is more difference between minds than between bodies. One fundamental doctrine of Hinduism is that all men are different, there being unity in variety. Even for a drunkard, there are some Mantras-even for a man going to a prostitute!
Society is an organism which obeys the immutable law of progress; and change, judicious and cautious change, is necessary for the well being, and indeed the preservation of the social system.
The development of man is a return to an original perfection.
The real work is in the practice.
When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state.
Whenever we attain a higher vision, the lower vision disappears of itself.
A man could be in a throne and have no attachment at all; another one could be in rags and have many attachments.
The hard discipline, with the exception of one great good point, is fraught with evil. The good point is that men can do one or two things well with very little effort, having practiced them every day through generations.
Never can a reforming sect survive if it is only reforming; the formative elements alone - the real impulse, that is, the principles - live on and on.
The progress of the world means more enjoyment and more misery too.
The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun when they are concentrated they illumine.
One atom in this universe cannot move without dragging the whole world along with it. There cannot be any progress without the whole world following in the wake, and it is becoming every day dearer that the solution of any problem can never be attained on racial, or national, or narrow grounds.
It is good and very grand to conquer external nature, but grander still to conquer our internal nature.... This conquering of the inner man, understanding the secrets of the subtle workings that are within the human mind, and knowing its wonderful secrets, belong entirely to religion.
If you want to have life, you have to die every moment for it. Life and death are only different expressions of the same thing looked at from different standpoints; they are the falling and the rising of the same wave, and the two form one whole.