New Delhi:
Swami Vivekananda is relevant to the entire mankind even today. January 12 is celebrated as the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda. On the great man’s birth anniversary here are some of his quotes that give us a reason to love him.
On 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.”
On love
“Is not your husband God, your child God? If you can love your wife, you have all the religion in the world. You have the whole secret of religion and Yoga in you. But can you love? That is the question. You say, “I love…. Oh Mary, I die for you!” But if you see Mary kissing another man, you want to cut his throat. If Mary sees John talking to another girl, she cannot sleep at night, and she makes life hell for John. This is not love. This is barter and sale in sex. It is blasphemy to talk of it as love.”
On tolerance and feeling
“You may talk doctrines by the millions, you may have sects by the hundreds of millions; but it is nothing, until you have the heart to feel. Feel for them as your Veda teaches you, till you find they are parts of your own bodies, till you realise that you and they, the poor and the rich, the saint and the sinner, are all parts of One Infinite Whole, which you call Brahman.”
Be not afraid
“Be not afraid, my children. Look not up in that attitude of fear towards that infinite starry vault as if it would crush you. Money does not pay, nor name; fame does not pay, nor learning. It is love that pays; it is character that cleaves its way through adamantine walls of difficulties.”
On politics
“I will have nothing to do with cowards or political nonsense. I do not believe in any politics. God and truth are the only politics in the world, everything else is trash.”
