Part 18 (2/2)

50. ”Is it so easy to be Janaka - to sit on a throne absolutely unattached, caring nothing for wealth or fame, for wife or child? One after another in the West has told me that he has reached this. But I could only say, 'Such great men are not born in India!'”.

51. ”Never forget to say to yourself and to teach to your children, as the difference between a firefly and the blazing sun, between the infinite ocean and a little pond, between a mustard seed and the mountain Meru, such is the difference between the householder and the Sannyasin!

”Everything is fraught with fear: Renunciation alone is fearless. ”Blessed be even the fraudulent Sdhus and those who have failed to carry out their vows, inasmuch as they also have witnessed to their ideal and so are in some degree the cause of the success of others!

”Let us never, never, forget our ideal!”

52. ”The river is pure that flows, the monk is pure that goes!”

53. ”The Sannyasin who thinks of gold, to desire it, commits suicide.”

54. ”What do I care if Mohammed was a good man, or Buddha? Does that altar my goodness or evil? Let us be good for our own sake on our own responsibility.” 55. ”You people in this country are so afraid of losing your in-di-vid-u-al-i-ty! Why, you are not individuals yet. When you realise your whole nature, you will attain your true individuality, not before. There is another thing I am constantly hearing in this country, and that is that we should live in harmony with nature. Don't you know that all the progress ever made in the world was made by conquering nature? We are to resist nature at every point if we are to make any progress.”

56. ”In India they tell me I ought not to teach Advaita Vedanta to the people at large; but I say, I can make even a child understand it. You cannot begin too early to teach the highest spiritual truths.”

57. ”The less you read, the better. Read the Gita and other good works on Vedanta. That is all you need. The present system of education is all wrong. The mind is crammed with facts before it knows how to think. Control of the mind should be taught first. If I had my education to get over again and had any voice in the matter, I would learn to master my mind first, and then gather facts if I wanted them. It takes people a long time to learn things because they can't concentrate their minds at will.”

58. ”If a bad time comes, what of that? The pendulum must swing back to the other side. But that is no better. The thing to do is to stop it.”

COMPLETE WORKS OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ”I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.”

Swami Vivekananda Representative of Hindus Parliament of Religions Columbian Exposition, Chicago World Fair 11 September 1893.

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Acknowledgements:

1. Special thanks to Swami Bodhasaranandaji of Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata, India, for his whole-hearted support for this project.

2. Special thanks to the volunteer who has so graciously agreed to proof read Volume 1 and wishes to remain annonymous. 3. The Devanagari font used has been prepared by Murari Dasa and used with his permission. It is available at /fonts/ as a free download. The material in Devanagari font is included in graphics mode and so it is not necessary to install the Devanagari fonts to see the Sanskrit quotes used by Swami Vivekananda.

Complete

Works of

Swami

Vivekananda

Introduction.

Volume 1

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