50 Thoughts by Swami Vivekananda

50 thoughts from Swami Vivekananda as the nation celebrates his 110th anniversary.

1. Man comes from God in the beginning, in the middle he becomes man, and in the end he goes back to God.
2. He is an Acharya through whom the Divine Power acts.
3. According to Karma Yoga, the action one has done cannot be destroyed, until it has borne its fruit; no power in nature can stop it from yielding its results.
4. Know it for certain that there is no greater Tirtha (holy spot) than the body of man. Nowhere else is the Atman so manifesting as here.
5. This world is just a gymnasium in which we play; our life is an eternal holiday.
6. Strength is the one thing needful. Strength is the medicine for the world’s disease. And nothing gives such strength as the idea of Monism.
7. Despondency is not religion, whatever else it may be. By being pleasant always and smiling, it takes you nearer to God, nearer than any prayer.
8. Any new discovery of truth does not contradict the past truth but fits into it.
9. Our King Janaka tilled the soil with his own hands, and he was also the greatest of the knowers of Truth, of his time.
10. Not believing in the glory of our own soul is what the Vedanta calls atheism.
11. You are the makers of your own fortunes. You make yourselves suffer, you make good and evil, and it is you who put your hands before your eyes and say it is dark. Take your hands away and see the light.
12. The senses cheat you day and night. Vedanta found that out ages ago, modern science is just discovering the same fact.
13. It will not do merely to listen to great principles. You must apply them in the practical field, turn them into constant practice.
14. Of Gyan and Bhakti, he who advocates one and denounces the other cannot be either a Jnanin or a Bhakta, but he is a thief and a cheat.
15. While real perfection is only one, relative perfections must be many.
16. The wind of grace of the Lord is blowing on, for ever and ever. Do you spread your sail.
17. Practice is absolutely necessary. You may sit down and listen to me by the hour every day, but if you do not practice, you will not get one step further.
18. So long as the ‘skin sky’ surrounds man, that is, so long as he identifies himself with his body, he cannot see God.
19. Men worship Incarnations such as Christ or Buddha. They are the most perfect manifestations of the eternal Self. They are much higher than all the conceptions of God that you or I can make.
20. The happiest moments we ever know are when we entirely forget ourselves.
21. Books cannot teach God, but they can destroy ignorance; their action is negative.
22. The monk is the religious expert, having made religion his one métier of life. He is the soldier of God.
23. I do not believe in a God who cannot give me bread here, giving me eternal bliss in heaven !
24. The first thing to be got rid of by him who would be a Gyanani, is fear.
25. Brahman, this Reality, is unknown and unknowable, not in the sense of the agnostic, but because to know Him would be a blasphemy, because you are He already.
26. Where do you find the Indian Society standing still ? It is always on the move. Sometimes, as in the times of foreign invasions, the movement has been slow, at other times quicker. This is what I say to my countrymen, I do not condemn them. I look into their past. I find that under the circumstances no nation could do more glorious work. I tell them that they have done well. I only ask them to do better.
27. Our ideal is the Brahmin of spiritual culture and renunciation. By the Brahmin ideal Brahminness in which worldliness is altogether absent and true wisdom is abundantly present. That is the ideal of the Hindu race.
28. Buddha was a working Gynani, Christ was a Bhakta, but the same goal was reached by them.
29. Maya is eternal both-ways, taken universally, as genus; but it is not-eternal individually.
30. Renunciation is the real beginning of religion. Nowadays it is very hard even to talk of renunciation. It was said of me in America that I was a man who came out of a land that had been dead and buried for five thousand years, and talked of renunciation. So says perhaps the English philosopher. Yet it is true that is the only path to religion. Renounce and give up.
31. It is impossible to find God outside of ourselves. We are the greatest temple.
32. Worship of God, worship of the holy ones, concentration and meditation, and unselfish work, these are the ways of breaking away from Maya’s net; but we must first have the strong desire to get free.
33. Wisdom can be practiced even on a battlefield. The Gita was preached so.
34. To think there is any imperfection creates it. Thoughts of strength and perfection alone can cure it.
35. Where is fate, and who is fate? We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none has the praise. We make our own destiny.
36. Those that want to help mankind must take their own pleasure and pain, name and fame, and all sorts of interests, and make a bundle of them and throw them into the sea, and then come to the Lord. That is what all the masters said and did.
37. The finer the organism, the higher the culture – greater is the power to enjoy pleasure, and the sharper are the pangs of pain.
38. With us, the prominent idea is Mukti; with the Westerners it is Dharma. What we desire is – Mukti; what they want is – Dharma. Dharma is that which makes man seek for happiness in this world or the next.
39. They had hundreds of Rishis in ancient India. We will have millions – we are going to have, and the sooner everyone of you believes in this, the better for India and the better for the world. Whatever you believe, that you will be.
40. The greatest men in the world have passed away unknown. Silently they live and silently they pass away; and in time their thoughts find expression in Buddhas or Christs, and it is these latter that become known to us.
41. Better be ready to live in rags with Christ than to live in palaces without him.
42. Vedanta says, ‘We are free and not free at the same time.’ That means that we are never free on the earthly plane, but ever free on the spiritual side.
43. In our country, the imparting of knowledge has always been through men of renunciation. India had all good prospects so long as tyagis (men of renunciation) used to impart knowledge.
44. Creation is infinite, without beginning and without end, the ever moving ripple in an infinite lake.
45. Monism and Dualism are essentially the same. The difference consists in the expression. Dualism is in nature, in manifestation and Monism is pure spirituality in the essence.
46. The reconciliation of the different paths of Dharma and work without desire or attachment – these are the two special characteristics of the Gita.
47. The personal God is the highest reading that can be attained to, of the impersonal, by the human intellect.
48. The teachings of Krishna as taught by the Gita are the grandest the world has ever known. He who wrote that wonderful poem was one of those rare souls whose lives send a wave of regeneration through the world.
49. The living secrets must be handed down from Guru to disciple, in every science, much more so in religion.
50. Jesus Christ was a Jew, and Shakya Muni was a Hindu. The Jews rejected Jesus Christ, nay crucified him, and the Hindus have accepted Shakya Muni as God and worship him.
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