Samarth Bharat Parva : Kalptaru Day Subkamnaye

Dear Alasinga,

My son, hold fast! Do not care for anybody to help you. Is not the Lord infinitely greater than all human help? Be holy -- trust in the Lord, depend on Him always, and you are on the right track; nothing can prevail against you. . . .

Let us pray, "Lead, Kindly Light"-- a beam will come through the dark, and a hand will be stretched forth to lead us. I always pray for you: you must pray for me. Let each one of us pray day and night for the down - trodden millions in India who are held fast by poverty, priestcraft, and tyranny -- pray day and night for them. I care more to preach religion to them than to the high and the rich. I am no metaphysician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor, I love the poor. I see what they call the poor of this country, and how many there are who feel for them! What an immense difference in India! Who feels there for the two hundred millions of men and women sunken for ever in poverty and ignorance? Where is the way out? Who feels for them? They cannot find light or education. Who will bring the light to them -- who will travel from door to door bringing education to them? Let these people be your God -- think of them, work for them, pray for them incessantly -- the Lord will show you the way. Him I call a Mahatman (great soul) whose heart bleeds for the poor, otherwise he is a Duratman (wicked soul). Let us unite our wills in continued prayer for their good. We may die unknown, unpitied, unbewailed, without accomplishing anything -- but not one thought will be lost. It will take effect, sooner or later. My heart is too full to express my feeling; you know it, you can imagine it. So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them! I call those men who strut about in their finery, having got all their money by grinding the poor, wretches, so long as they do not do anything for those two hundred millions who are now no better than hungry savages! We are poor, my brothers, we are nobodies, but such have been always the instruments of the Most High. The Lord bless you all.

With all love,
Vivekananda

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The main theme of my life is to take the message of Sanatana Dharma to every home and pave the way for launching, in a big way, the man-making programme preached and envisaged by great seers like Swami Vivekananda. - Mananeeya Eknathji

विवेकानन्द केन्द्र कन्याकुमारी (Vivekananda Kendra Kanyakumari) Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra : http://www.vivekanandakendra.org Read Article, Magazine, Book @ http://eshop.vivekanandakendra.org/e-granthalaya Cell : +91-941-801-5995, Landline : +91-177-283-5995

. . . Are you Strong? Do you feel Strength? — for I know it is Truth alone that gives Strength. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease . . . This is the great fact: "Strength is LIFE; Weakness is Death."

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Punya Bhumi : Samarth Bharat Prarva

If there is any land on this earth that can lay claim to be the blessed Punya Bhumi, to be the land to which all souls on this earth must come to account for Karma, the land to which every soul that is wending its way Godward must come to attain its last home, the land where humanity has attained its highest towards gentleness, towards generosity, towards purity, towards calmness, above all, the land of introspection and of spirituality -- it is India. Hence have started the founders of religions from the most ancient times, deluging the earth again and again with the pure and perennial waters of spiritual truth. Hence have proceeded the tidal waves of philosophy that have covered the earth, East or West, North or South, and hence again must start the wave which is going to spiritualise the material civilisation of the world. Here is the life - giving water with which must be quenched the burning fire of materialism which is burning the core of the hearts of millions in other lands. Believe me, my friends, this is going to be.

I was asked by an English friend on the eve of my departure, "Swami, how do you like now your motherland after four years' experience of the luxurious, glorious, powerful West?" I could only answer, "India I loved before I came away. Now the very dust of India has become holy to me, the very air is now to me holy; it is now the holy land, the place of pilgrimage, the Tirtha."

Children of India, I am here to speak to you today about some practical things, and my object in reminding you about the glories of the past is simply this. Many times have I been told that looking into the past only degenerates and leads to nothing, and that we should look to the future. That is true. But out of the past is built the future. Look back, therefore, as far as you can, drink deep of the eternal fountains that are behind, and after that, look forward, march forward and make India brighter, greater, much higher than she ever was. Our ancestors were great. We must first recall that. We must learn the elements of our being, the blood that courses in our veins; we must have faith in that blood and what it did in the past; and out of that faith and consciousness of past greatness, we must build an India yet greater than what she has been. There have been periods of decay and degradation. I do not attach much importance to them; we all know that. Such periods have been necessary. A mighty tree produces a beautiful ripe fruit. That fruit falls on the ground, it decays and rots, and out of that decay springs the root and the future tree, perhaps mightier than the first one. This period of decay through which we have passed was all the more necessary. Out of this decay is coming the India of the future; it is sprouting, its first leaves are already out; and a mighty, gigantic tree, the Urdhvamula, is here, already beginning to appear; and it is about that that I am going to speak to you.

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The main theme of my life is to take the message of Sanatana Dharma to every home and pave the way for launching, in a big way, the man-making programme preached and envisaged by great seers like Swami Vivekananda. - Mananeeya Eknathji

विवेकानन्द केन्द्र कन्याकुमारी (Vivekananda Kendra Kanyakumari) Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra : http://www.vivekanandakendra.org Read Article, Magazine, Book @ http://eshop.vivekanandakendra.org/e-granthalaya Cell : +91-941-801-5995, Landline : +91-177-283-5995

. . . Are you Strong? Do you feel Strength? — for I know it is Truth alone that gives Strength. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease . . . This is the great fact: "Strength is LIFE; Weakness is Death."

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Samarth Bharat Parva : Nation lives in the cottage

With the question whether caste shall go or come I have nothing to do. My idea is to bring to the door of the meanest, the poorest, the noble ideas that the human race has developed both in and out of India, and let them think for themselves. Whether there should be caste or not, whether women should be perfectly free or not, does not concern me. "Liberty of thought and action is the only condition of life, of growth and well - being." Where it does not exist, the man, the race, the nation must go down.

Caste or no caste, creed or no creed, any man, or class, or caste, or nation, or institution which bars the power of free thought and action of an individual -- even so long as that power does not injure others -- is devilish and must go down.

My whole ambition in life is to set in motion a machinery which will bring noble ideas to the door of everybody, and then let men and women settle their own fate. Let them know what our forefathers as well as other nations have thought on the most momentous questions of life. Let them see specially what others are doing now, and then decide. We are to put the chemicals together, the crystallisation will be done by nature according to her laws. Work hard, be steady, and have faith in the Lord. Set to work, I am coming sooner or later. Keep the motto before you --"Elevation of the masses without injuring their religion".

Remember that the nation lives in the cottage. But, alas! nobody ever did anything for them. Our modern reformers are very busy about widow remarriage. Of course, I am a sympathiser in every reform, but the fate of a nation does not depend upon the number of husbands their widows get, but upon the condition of the masses. Can you raise them? Can you give them back their lost individuality without making them lose their innate spiritual nature? Can you become an occidental of occidentals in your spirit of equality, freedom, work, and energy, and at the same time a Hindu to the very backbone in religious culture and instincts? This is to be done and we will do it. You are all born to do it. Have faith in yourselves, great convictions are the mothers of great deeds. Onward for ever! Sympathy for the poor, the downtrodden, even unto death -- this is our motto.

Onward, brave lads!

-Swami Vivekananda

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The main theme of my life is to take the message of Sanatana Dharma to every home and pave the way for launching, in a big way, the man-making programme preached and envisaged by great seers like Swami Vivekananda. - Mananeeya Eknathji

विवेकानन्द केन्द्र कन्याकुमारी (Vivekananda Kendra Kanyakumari) Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra : http://www.vivekanandakendra.org Read Article, Magazine, Book @ http://eshop.vivekanandakendra.org/e-granthalaya Cell : +91-941-801-5995, Landline : +91-177-283-5995

. . . Are you Strong? Do you feel Strength? — for I know it is Truth alone that gives Strength. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease . . . This is the great fact: "Strength is LIFE; Weakness is Death."

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Samarth Bharat Parva : Arise ! Awake !

Young men of Lahore, understand this, therefore, this great sin, hereditary and national, is on our shoulders. There is no hope for us. You may make thousands of societies, twenty thousand political assemblages, fifty thousand institutions. These will be of no use until there is that sympathy, that love, that heart that thinks for all; until Buddha's heart comes once more into India, until the words of the Lord Krishna are brought to their practical use, there is no hope for us.

Therefore, young men of Lahore, raise once more that mighty banner of Advaita, for on no other ground can you have that wonderful love until you see that the same Lord is present everywhere. Unfurl that banner of love! "Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached." Arise, arise once more, for nothing can be done without renunciation. If you want to help others, your little self must go. In the words of the Christians -- you cannot serve God and Mammon at the same time. Have Vairagya. Your ancestors gave up the world for doing great things. At the present time there are men who give up the world to help their own salvation. Throw away everything, even your own salvation, and go and help others. Ay, you are always talking bold words, but here is practical Vedanta before you. Give up this little life of yours. What matters it if you die of starvation -- you and I and thousands like us -- so long as this nation lives? The nation is sinking, the curse of unnumbered millions is on our heads -- those to whom we have been giving ditch - water to drink when they have been dying of thirst and while the perennial river of water was flowing past, the unnumbered millions whom we have allowed to starve in sight of plenty, the unnumbered millions to whom we have talked of Advaita and whom we have hated with all our strength, the unnumbered millions for whom we have invented the doctrine of Lokachara (usage), to whom we have talked theoretically that we are all the same and all are one with the same Lord, without even an ounce of practice. "Yet, my friends, it must be only in the mind and never in practice!" Wipe off this blot. "Arise and awake." What matters it if this little life goes? Everyone has to die, the saint or the sinner, the rich or the poor. The body never remains for anyone. Arise and awake and be perfectly sincere. Our insincerity in India is awful; what we want is character, that steadiness and character that make a man cling on to a thing like grim death.

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The main theme of my life is to take the message of Sanatana Dharma to every home and pave the way for launching, in a big way, the man-making programme preached and envisaged by great seers like Swami Vivekananda. - Mananeeya Eknathji

विवेकानन्द केन्द्र कन्याकुमारी (Vivekananda Kendra Kanyakumari) Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra : http://www.vivekanandakendra.org Read Article, Magazine, Book @ http://eshop.vivekanandakendra.org/e-granthalaya Cell : +91-941-801-5995, Landline : +91-177-283-5995

. . . Are you Strong? Do you feel Strength? — for I know it is Truth alone that gives Strength. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease . . . This is the great fact: "Strength is LIFE; Weakness is Death."

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Samarth Bharat Parva : Abhih, Abhih

Young men of Calcutta, arise, awake, for the time is propitious. Already everything is opening out before us. Be bold and fear not. It is only in our scriptures that this adjective is given unto the Lord -- Abhih, Abhih. We have to become Abhih, fearless, and our task will be done. Arise, awake, for your country needs this tremendous sacrifice. It is the young men that will do it. "The young, the energetic, the strong, the well - built, the intellectual"-- for them is the task. And we have hundreds and thousands of such young men in Calcutta. If, as you say, I have done something, remember that I was that good - for - nothing boy playing in the streets of Calcutta. If I have done so much, how much more will you do! Arise and awake, the world is calling upon you. In other parts of India, there is intellect, there is money, but enthusiasm is only in my motherland. That must come out; therefore arise, young men of Calcutta, with enthusiasm in your blood. Think not that you are poor, that you have no friends. Ay, who ever saw money make the man? It is man that always makes money. The whole world has been made by the energy of man, by the power of enthusiasm, by the power of faith.

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The main theme of my life is to take the message of Sanatana Dharma to every home and pave the way for launching, in a big way, the man-making programme preached and envisaged by great seers like Swami Vivekananda. - Mananeeya Eknathji

विवेकानन्द केन्द्र कन्याकुमारी (Vivekananda Kendra Kanyakumari) Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra : http://www.vivekanandakendra.org Read Article, Magazine, Book @ http://eshop.vivekanandakendra.org/e-granthalaya Cell : +91-941-801-5995, Landline : +91-177-283-5995

. . . Are you Strong? Do you feel Strength? — for I know it is Truth alone that gives Strength. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease . . . This is the great fact: "Strength is LIFE; Weakness is Death."

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Samarth Bharat Parva : Awake, awake, great ones!

     63 St. George's Road, London

     7th June, 1896

     Dear Miss Noble [(Sister Nivedita)],

     My ideal indeed can be put into a few words and that is: to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life.

     This world is in chain of superstition. I pity the oppressed, whether man or woman, and I pity more the oppressors.

     One idea that I see clear as daylight is that misery is caused by ignorance and nothing else. Who will give the world light? Sacrifice in the past has been the Law, it will be, alas, for ages to come. The earth's bravest and best will have to sacrifice themselves for the good of many, for the welfare of all. Buddhas by the hundred are necessary with eternal love and pity.

     Religions of the world have become lifeless mockeries. What the world wants is character. The world is in need of those whose life is one burning love, selfless. That love will make every word tell like thunderbolt.

     It is no superstition with you, I am sure, you have the making in you of a world - mover, and others will also come. Bold words and bolder deeds are what we want. Awake, awake, great ones! The world is burning with misery. Can you sleep? Let us call and call till the sleeping gods awake, till the god within answers to the call. What more is in life? What greater work? The details come to me as I go. I never make plans. Plans grow and work themselves. I only say, awake, awake!

     May all blessings attend you for ever!

     Yours affectionately,

     Vivekananda

   

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The main theme of my life is to take the message of Sanatana Dharma to every home and pave the way for launching, in a big way, the man-making programme preached and envisaged by great seers like Swami Vivekananda. - Mananeeya Eknathji

विवेकानन्द केन्द्र कन्याकुमारी (Vivekananda Kendra Kanyakumari) Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra : http://www.vivekanandakendra.org Read Article, Magazine, Book @ http://eshop.vivekanandakendra.org/e-granthalaya Cell : +91-941-801-5995, Landline : +91-177-283-5995

. . . Are you Strong? Do you feel Strength? — for I know it is Truth alone that gives Strength. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease . . . This is the great fact: "Strength is LIFE; Weakness is Death."

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Samarth Bharat Parva : THE LIVING GOD

He who is in you and outside you,

Who works through all hands,

Who walks on all feet,

Whose body are all ye,

Him worship, and break all other idols!

He who is at once the high and low,

The sinner and the saint,

Both God and worm,

Him worship -- visible, knowable, real, omnipresent,

Break all other idols!

In whom is neither past life

Nor future birth nor death,

In whom we always have been

And always shall be one,

Him worship. Break all other idols!

Ye fools! who neglect the living God,

And His infinite reflections with which the world is full.

While ye run after imaginary shadows,

That lead alone to fights and quarrels,

Him worship, the only visible!

Break all other idols!

Written to an American friend from Almora, 9th July 1897.

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The main theme of my life is to take the message of Sanatana Dharma to every home and pave the way for launching, in a big way, the man-making programme preached and envisaged by great seers like Swami Vivekananda. - Mananeeya Eknathji

विवेकानन्द केन्द्र कन्याकुमारी (Vivekananda Kendra Kanyakumari) Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra : http://www.vivekanandakendra.org Read Article, Magazine, Book @ http://eshop.vivekanandakendra.org/e-granthalaya Cell : +91-941-801-5995, Landline : +91-177-283-5995

. . . Are you Strong? Do you feel Strength? — for I know it is Truth alone that gives Strength. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease . . . This is the great fact: "Strength is LIFE; Weakness is Death."

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Samarth Bharat Parva : Rouse yourselves

THAT IS my plan. It may appear gigantic, but it is much needed. You may ask, where is the money. Money is not needed. Money is nothing. For the last twelve years of my life, I did not know where the next meal would come from; but money and everything else I want must come, because they are my slaves, and not I theirs; money and everything else must come. Must -- that is the word. Where are the men? That is the question.

Young men of Madras, my hope is in you. Will you respond to the call of your nation? Each one of you has a glorious future if you dare believe me. Have a tremendous faith in yourselves, like the faith I had when I was a child, and which I am working out now. Have that faith, each one of you, in yourself -- that eternal power is lodged in every soul -- and you will revive the whole of India. Ay, we will then go to every country under the sun, and our ideas will before long be a component of the many forces that are working to make up every nation in the world. We must enter into the life of every race in India and abroad; we shall have to work  to bring this about. Now for that, I want young men. "It is the young, the strong, and healthy, of sharp intellect that will reach the Lord", say the Vedas. This is the time to decide your future -- while you possess the energy of youth, not when you are worn out and jaded, but in the freshness and vigour of youth. Work -- this is the time; for the freshest, the untouched, and unsmelled flowers alone are to be laid at the feet of the Lord, and such He receives. Rouse yourselves, therefore, for life is short. There are greater works to be done than aspiring to become lawyers and picking quarrels and such things. A far greater work is this sacrifice of yourselves for the benefit of your race, for the welfare of humanity. What is in this life? You are Hindus, and there is the instinctive belief in you that life is eternal. Sometimes I have young men come and talk to me about atheism; I do not believe a Hindu can become an atheist. He may read European books, and persuade himself he is a materialist, but it is only for a time. It is not in your blood. You cannot believe what is not in your constitution; it would be a hopeless task for you. Do not attempt that sort of thing. I once attempted it when I was a boy, but it could not be. Life is short, but the soul is immortal and eternal, and one thing being certain, death, let us therefore take up a great ideal and give up our whole life to it. Let this be our determination, and may He, the Lord, who "comes again and again for the salvation of His own people", to quote from our scriptures -- may the great Krishna bless us and lead us all to the fulfilment of our aims!

- Swami Vivekananda

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The main theme of my life is to take the message of Sanatana Dharma to every home and pave the way for launching, in a big way, the man-making programme preached and envisaged by great seers like Swami Vivekananda. - Mananeeya Eknathji

विवेकानन्द केन्द्र कन्याकुमारी (Vivekananda Kendra Kanyakumari) Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra : http://www.vivekanandakendra.org Read Article, Magazine, Book @ http://eshop.vivekanandakendra.org/e-granthalaya Cell : +91-941-801-5995, Landline : +91-177-283-5995

. . . Are you Strong? Do you feel Strength? — for I know it is Truth alone that gives Strength. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease . . . This is the great fact: "Strength is LIFE; Weakness is Death."

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Sister Nivedita Letter to Maa Sarada

To Holy Mother Sarada Devi

Cambridge, Mss, 11th december, 1910

Beloved Mother,

This morning, early, I went to church - to pray for Sara. All the people there were thinking of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and suddenly I thought of you. Your dear face, and your loving look, and your white sari and your bracelets. It was all there. And it seemed to me that yours was the Presence that was to soothe and bless poor S. Sara's sick-room. And-do you know? - I thought I had been very foolish to sit in your room, at the evening service to Sri Ramkrishna, trying to meditate - why did I not understand that it was quite enough to be a little child at your dear feet? Dear Mother! you are full of love! And it is not a flushed and violent love, like ours, and like the world's, but a gentle peace that brings good to everyone     and wishes ill to none. It is a golden radiance, full of play. What a blessed Sunday that was, a few months ago, when I ran in to you, the last thing before I went on the Ganges, and ran back to you for a moment, as soon as I came back! I felt such a wonderful freedom in the blessing you gave me, and in your welcome home! Dearest Mother - I wish we send you a wonderful hymn, or a prayer. But somehow even that would seem too loud, too full of noise! Surely you are the most wonderful thing of God-Sri Ramkrishna's own chalice of His Love for the world-a token left with His children, in these lonely days, and we should be very still and quiet before you-except indeed for a little fun! Surely the 'wonderful things of God', are all quiet-stealing unnoticed into our lives-the air and sunlight and the sweetness of gardens and of the Ganges, these are the silent things that are like you!

Do send to poor S. Sara the mantle of your peace. Isn't your thought, now and then, of the high calm that neither loves nor hates? Isn't that the sweet benediction that trembles in God, like the dew-drop on the lotus-leaf, and touches not the world?

Ever, my darling Mother, your foolish Khooki,
Nivedita

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विवेकानन्द केन्द्र कन्याकुमारी (Vivekananda Kendra Kanyakumari)
Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra : http://www.vivekanandakendra.org
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Let's work on "Swamiji's Vision - Eknathji's Mission"

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मुक्तसंग्ङोऽनहंवादी धृत्युत्साहसमन्वित:।
सिद्ध‌‌यसिद्धयोर्निर्विकार: कर्ता सात्त्विक उच्यते ॥१८.२६॥

Freed from attachment, non-egoistic, endowed with courage and enthusiasm and unperturbed by success or failure, the worker is known as a pure (Sattvika) one. Four outstanding and essential qualities of a worker. - Bhagwad Gita : XVIII-26

The Universal Mother

YOU HAVE NOT yet understood the wonderful significance of Mother's life - none of you. But gradually you will know. Without Shakti (Power) there is no regeneration for the world. Why is it that our country is the weakest and the most backward of all countries? Because Shakti is held in dishonour there. Mother has been born to revive that wonderful Shakti in India; and making her the nucleus, once more will Gargis and Maiteryis be born into the world. Dear brother, you understand little now, but by degrees you will come to know it all.

To me, Mother's grace is a hundred thousand times more valuable than Father's. Mother's grace, Mother's blessings are all paramount to me…please pardon me, I am a little bigoted here, as regards Mother. If but Mother orders, her demons can work anything.  - Swami Vivekananda

Work and Purity of Mind - Maa Sarada

One must do some work. Through work alone one can remove the bondage of work, not by avoiding work. Total detachment comes later on. One should not be without work even for a moment.

(To a person who carelessly threw away the broom after sweeping the courtyard) "What is this? You have thrown away the broom with such disrespect when the work is done. It takes only the same length of time to put it gently in a corner as it does to throw it aside. One should not trifle with a thing, though it may be very insignificant. Will you not again need that broom? One should perform even an insignificant work with respect.

Holy Mother: "One must bear with everything, because all our facilities are determined by actions. Again, actions can be cancelled by actions."

Disciple : "Can action ever cancel action?"

Holy Mother: "Why not? If you do a good action, that will counteract your past evil action. Past sins can be counteracted by meditation, japa and spiritual thought."

How many are there who can meditate and practice japa all the time? At first they earnestly practice these disciplines, but their brains become heated in the long run by sitting constantly on their prayer rugs. They become very vain. They also suffer from mental worries by reflecting on different things. It is much better to work than to allow the mind to roam at large. For when the mind gets a free scope to wander, it creates much confusion. My Naren (Swami Vivekananda) thought of these things and wisely founded institutions where people would do disinterested work.

No doubt, you must do your duties. It keeps one's mind in good condition. But it is also very necessary to practice japa, meditation and prayer. One must practice these disciplines at least in the morning and the evening. Such practice is like the rudder of a boat.

The householders have no need of external renunciation. They will spontaneously get the internal renunciation. But some people need external renunciation.

Why should you be afraid? Surrender yourself to Sri Ramakrishna and always remember that he stands behind you.

It is true that He is doing everything, but very few feel like that. Being maddened with pride, people think that they are doing everything and do not depend upon Him. God protects that person from all dangers who depends upon him.

Such is the fascination of money that if your involve yourself too much in it, you will feel attracted to it. You may think that you are above money and that you will never feel any attraction for it as you have once renounced it. No, my child, never harbor this thought in your mind. Through a tiny little loophole it will enter into your mind then strangle you gradually quite undetected.

The rich should serve God and his devotees with money and the poor should worship God by repeating his name.

The mind is everything. It is in the mind alone that one feels pure and impure. A person, first of all must make his or her own mind guilty and then alone they can see another's guilt. Does anything ever happen to another if you enumerate their faults? It only injures you. This has been my attitude. Hence I cannot see anybody's faults. If someone does a trifle for me, I try to remember that person even for that. To see the faults of others! One should never do it. Forgiveness is indeed tapasya—spiritual austerity.

One should not hurt others even by words. One must not speak even an unpleasant truth unnecessarily. By indulging in rude words one's nature becomes rude. One's sensitivity is lost if one has no control over one's speech. Sri Ramakrishna used to say, "One should not ask a lame person how he became lame."

Let me tell you one thing. If you want peace of mind, do not find fault with others. Rather see your own faults. Learn to make the whole world your own. No one is a stranger, my child; the whole world is your own.

One must be patient like the earth. What inequities are being perpetrated on her! Yet she quietly endures them all. People, too, should be like that.

(Advice given to a young widow): Don't be familiar with anybody. Don't take much part in the social functions of the family. Say, "O mind, always keep to yourself. Don't be inquisitive about others." Gradually increase the period of meditation and prayer, and read the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna.

(To the mother of a monk) "It is a rare good fortune to be the mother of a monk. People cannot give up attachment even to a brass pot. Is it an easy thing to renounce the world?

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The main theme of my life is to take the message of Sanatana Dharma to every home and pave the way for launching, in a big way, the man-making programme preached and envisaged by great seers like Swami Vivekananda. - Mananeeya Eknathji

विवेकानन्द केन्द्र कन्याकुमारी (Vivekananda Kendra Kanyakumari) Vivekananda Rock Memorial & Vivekananda Kendra : http://www.vivekanandakendra.org Read Article, Magazine, Book @ http://eshop.vivekanandakendra.org/e-granthalaya Cell : +91-941-801-5995, Landline : +91-177-283-5995

. . . Are you Strong? Do you feel Strength? — for I know it is Truth alone that gives Strength. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease . . . This is the great fact: "Strength is LIFE; Weakness is Death."

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Sarada Maa Jayanti is approaching...

When we had the privilege of seeing her she had grown into a mighty spiritual teacher who could transform the most morally degraded and evil-minded by her blessings. Among those who came to her for refuge were people of whom she said:

"Several among those who come here are up to anything in life. No type of sin has been left undone by them. But when they come here and address me as mother, I forget everything and they get more than they deserve."

Once, when someone protested against her blessing a young man who had gone astray, she bluntly said: 'If my child gets covered with mud or dust, is it not my duty to cleanse him and take him on my lap?'

To a woman who repented of the evil life she Iived, the Mother said: 'Don't despair for whatever you have done. You will get over all your sinful tendencies.'  She also gave initiation to that woman and inspired her to live a spiritual life.

Here we get a glimpse of the mighty mother-heart, the divine grace, which makes the impure pure, the ignorant enlightened and the bound free.

Conscious of her cosmic, divine nature and power, she said: 'I am as much the mother of the good as of the bad.'

With her deep spiritual introspection she saw the essential spiritual core of all and refused to see their superficial defects. One day, when Golap-Ma was scolding a maid- servant,  the Holy Mother asked her the reason for it and got a piqued reply:  'Mother, what is the good of telling you. You cannot see the defects of others!'

 To this the Mother replied mildly:  'Well Golap! There is no want of people to see the faults of others. The world will not come to a standstill if I am otherwise. '

It is in this uplifting strain that the Mother spoke only a few days before her passing away to a devotee:  " If you want peace of mind, do not find fault with others. Rather see your own faults. Learn to make the whole world your own. No one is a stranger, my child; this whole world is your own! "

Srinivasa Ramanujan

"Srinivasa Ramanujan," an Englishman would later say of him, "was a mathematician so great that his name transcends jealousies, the one superlatively great mathematician. whom India has produced in the last thousand years." His leaps of intuition confound mathematicians even today, seven decades after his death. His papers are still plumbed for their secrets. His theorems are being applied in areas-polymer chemistry, computers, even (it has recently been suggested) cancer-scarcely imaginable during his lifetime.

And always the nagging question: What might have been, had he been discovered a few years earlier, or lived a few years longer? Ramanujan was a simple man. His needs were simple. So were his manners, his humor. He was no idiot savant; he was intelligent in realms outside mathematics, persistent, hardworking, and even, in his own way, charming. But by the lights of Cambridge or, for that matter, of Calcutta or Bombay, he was supremely narrow and naive. Something so small as Mahalanobis's lesson in the art of blanketing could leave him "extremely touched."

He was shamed by the most insignificant slight. His letters, outside their mathematical content, are barren of grace or subtlety. The story of Ramanujan is the story of an inscrutable intellect and a simple heart. It is a story of the clash of cultures between India and the West, between the world of Sarangapani Sannidhi Street in Kumbakonam in South India, where Ramanujan grew up, and the glittering world of Cambridge; between the pristine proofs of the Western mathematical tradition and the mysterious powers of intuition with which Ramanujan dazzled East and West alike. It is a story of one man and his stubborn faith in his Own abilities.

But it is not a story that concludes, Genius will out-though Ramanujan's, in the main, did. Because so nearly did events turn out otherwise that we need no imagination to see how the least bit less persistence, or the least bit less luck, might have consigned him to obscurity. In a way, then, his is also a story about social and educational systems, and about how they matter, and how they can sometimes nurture talent and sometimes crush it. How many Ramanujans, his life begs us to ask, dwell in India today, unknown and unrecognized? And how many in America and Britain, locked away in racial or economic ghettos, scarcely aware of worlds outside their own?

His is a story, too, about what you do with genius once you find it. Ramanujan was brought to Cambridge by an English mathematician of aristocratic mien and peerless academic credentials, G. H. Hardy, to whom he had written for help. Hardy saw that Ramanujan was a rare flower, one not apt to tolerate being stuffed methodically full of all the mathematical knowledge he'd never acquired in India. "I was afraid," he wrote, "that if I insisted unduly on matters which Ramanujan found irksome, I might destroy his confidence and break the spell of his inspiration."

Ramanujan was a man who grew up praying to stone deities; who for most of his life took counsel from a family goddess, declaring it was She to whom his mathematical insights were owed; whose theorems would, at intellectually backbreaking cost, be proved true-yet leave mathematicians baffled that anyone could divine them in the first place. Ramanujan's story is about an uncommon and individual mind, and what its quirks may suggest about creativity, intuition, and intelligence.

....From the Man who knew Infinity