Swami Vivekananda—Laws of Life | Nature

Swami Vivekananda—Laws of Life | Nature:

Laws of nature

These are the laws of nature mentioned by Swami Vivekananda—

• If a stone falls, it has been thrown by a devil or a ghost, says the ignorant man, but the scientific man says it is the law of nature, the law of gravitation.

• It is a mysterious law of nature that as soon as the field is ready the seed must come, as soon as the soul wants religion, the transmitter of religious force must come. "The seeking sinner meeteth the seeking Saviour." When the power that attracts in the receiving soul is full and ripe, the power which answers to that attraction must come.

• It is not the law of nature to be always taking gifts with outstretched hands like beggars. To give and take is the law of nature.

• See how, from nebulae, the sun, moon, and stars are produced; then they dissolve and go back to nebulae. The same is being done everywhere. The plant takes material from the earth, dissolves, and gives it back. Every form in this world is taken out of surrounding atoms and goes back to these atoms. It cannot be that the same law acts differently in different places. Law is uniform. Nothing is more certain than that. If this is the law of nature, it also applies to thought. Thought will dissolve and go back to its origin. Whether we will it or not, we shall have to return to our origin which is called God or Absolute. We all came from God, and we are all bound to go back to God.

• The present is determined by our past actions, and the future by the present. The soul will go on evolving up or reverting back from birth to birth and death to death. But here is another question: Is man a tiny boat in a tempest, raised one moment on the foamy crest of a billow and dashed down into a yawning chasm the next, rolling to and fro at the mercy of good and bad actions — a powerless, helpless wreck in an ever-raging, ever-rushing, uncompromising current of cause and effect; a little moth placed under the wheel of causation which rolls on crushing everything in its way and waits not for the widow's tears or the orphan's cry? The heart sinks at the idea, yet this is the law of Nature.

• Uniformity is the rigorous law of nature; what once happened can happen always.

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Swami Vivekananda—Laws of Life | Karma

Swami Vivekananda—Laws of Life | Karma :

Laws of Karma

These are the laws of Karma mentioned by Swami Vivekananda—

• Man is not bound by any other laws excepting those which he makes for himself. Our thoughts, our words and deeds are the threads of the net which we throw round ourselves, for good or for evil. Once we set in motion a certain power, we have to take the full consequences of it. This is the law of Karma.

• Nobody has ever seen anything produced out of nothing; if anything arises in the mind, that also must have been produced from something. When we speak of free will, we mean the will is not caused by anything. But that cannot be true, the will is caused; and since it is caused, it cannot be free -- it is bound by law. That I am willing to talk to you and you come to listen to me, that is law. Everything that I do or think or feel, every part of my conduct or behaviour, my every movement -- all is caused and therefore not free. This regulation of our life and mind -- that is the law of Karma.

• The law governing functions of the human mind is called the law of Karma.

• The law of Karma is that every action must be followed sooner or later by an effect.

• The law of Karma is the law of causation.

• The law of Karma means the law of causation, of inevitable cause and sequence. Wheresoever there is a cause, there an effect must be produced; this necessity cannot be resisted, and this law of Karma, according to our philosophy, is true throughout the whole universe.

• You are all bound by the law of Karma. . .

• You know it already that each one of us is the effect of the infinite past; the child is ushered into the world not as something flashing from the hands of nature, as poets delight so much to depict, but he has the burden of an infinite past; for good or evil he comes to work out his own past deeds. That makes the differentiation. This is the law of Karma. Each one of us is the maker of his own fate.

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Swami Vivekananda -Laws of life

Swami Vivekananda -Laws of life:

Laws of life

In the following quotes the phrase "law of life" is directly mentioned.

All hatred is "killing the self by the self"; therefore, love is the law of life.

• All love is expansions all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love's sake, because it is the only law of life, just as you breathe to live. This is the secret of selfless love, selfless action and the rest.

• In the material physical world, expansion is life, and contraction is death. Whatever ceases to expand ceases to live. Translating this in the moral world we have: If one would expand, he must love, and when he ceases to love he dies. It is your nature; you must, because that is the only law of life. Therefore, we must love God for love's sake, so we must do our duty for duty's sake; we must work for work's sake without looking for any reward — know that you are purer and more perfect, know that this is the real temple of God.

• What is life but growth, i.e. expansion, i.e. love? Therefore all love is life, it is the only law of life; all selfishness is death, and this is true here or hereafter. It is life to do good, it is death not to do good to others. Ninety per cent of human brutes you see are dead, are ghosts — for none lives, my boys, but he who loves. Feel, my children, feel; feel for the poor, the ignorant, the downtrodden; feel till the heart stops and the brain reels and you think you will go mad — then pour the soul out at the feet of the Lord, and then will come power, help, and indomitable energy. Struggle, struggle, was my motto for the last ten years. Struggle, still say I. When it was all dark, I used to say, struggle; when light is breaking in, I still say, struggle. Be not afraid, my children. Look not up in that attitude of fear towards that infinite starry vault as if it would crush you. Wait! In a few hours more, the whole of it will be under your feet. Wait, 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.

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"Laws Of Life" by Swami Vivekananda

"Laws Of Life" by Swami Vivekananda:

Introduction

In this article we'll try to write on the laws of life mentioned by Swami Vivekananda. Swami Vivekananda has thousands of quotations and sayings, how can we conclude which is a "law of life" and which is a general quotation? For example, a quote like "All the powers in the universe are already ours. . . " or "Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. . " — these are definitely motivational words but not laws of life.

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Lal Krishna Advani On Swami Vivekananda

Lal Krishna Advani On Swami Vivekananda:

Lal Krishna Advani (Sindhi: لال ڪرشنا آڏواڻي, Hindi: लालकृष्ण आडवाणी) or L. K. Advani (born. 8 November 1927) is an Indian politician and a senior leader of Bharatiya Janata Party. A detailed biography of Advani is available at Wikipedia. In this article our topic is Lal Krishna Advani's quotes and comments on Swami Vivekananda.

The following excerpts have been collected from L. K. Advani's autobiographical book My Country My Life 

• “. . . The spectacular public response to my Ram Rath Yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya in September-October 1990 far exceeded my own expectations. Just as the struggle against the Emergency opened my eyes to the Indian people’s unfl inching faith in democracy, the Ayodhya movement opened my eyes to the deep-rooted infl uence of religion in the lives of Hindus of all castes and sects across the country. Recalling what Swami Vivekananda had said about the place of religion in India's national life, I realised that if this religiosity were to be channelled in a positive direction, it could unleash tremendous energy for national reconstruction. The Ayodhya movement also brought to the fore people’s revulsion for pseudo-secularism, as practised by the Congress party, communists and some other parties, and projected my party, the BJP, as a spirited champion of genuine secularism. . .”

L. K. Advani quoted the following words of Swami Vivekananda at the beginning of the third chapter My first twenty years in Sindh of My Country My Life—

Let positive, strong, helpful thoughts enter into your brains from very childhood. Lay yourselves open to these thoughts, and not to weakening and paralysing ones.

• “I recently came across a concise edition of Swamiji's* four-volume writings on the Bhagavad Gita. Titled The Charm and Power of the Gita, Swamiji in the book gives an example to illustrate the difference between the traditional orientation towards the Gita and the new man-making and nation-building orientation towards the Gita, which was imparted by Swami Vivekananda. 'In the past', Swamiji writes, 'people mostly read the Gita as a pious act, and for a little peace of mind. We never realized that this is a book of intense practicality. We never understood the practical application of the Gita’s teachings. If we had done so, we would not have had the thousand years of foreign invasions, internal caste conflicts, feudal oppression and mass poverty. We never took the Gita seriously; but now we have to. We need a philosophy that can help us build a new welfare society, based on human dignity, freedom and equality. This new orientation, this practical orientation was given to the Gita for the first time in the modern age by Swami Vivekananda.”

• “A towering testimony to such perseverance was a project, which Eknathji had himself envisioned—to construct the Vivekananda Rock Memorial at Kanyakumari. . . . . . This is the rock on which Swami Vivekananda meditated for three days in December 1892, during his extensive travels in South India. He would say later that he meditated about the past, present and future of India. The following year, on 11 September 1893, the meditation found its most eloquent expression in Swamiji's historic speech on universal brotherhood and inter-faith harmony at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago.”

Lal Krishna Advani about  Swami Vivekananda:

• “. . . we wanted to counter communists' claim to be the sole champion of the poor. We wanted to demonstrated that the concept of 'socialism', like the concept of 'secularism', has Indian roots, and that only the Indian way of achieving economic and social justice would ultimately succeed. We wanted to reaffirm that all great thinkers and social reformers in the Hindu tradition, including Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi in the modern era, had been votaries of what can be termed as 'spiritual socialism'. . .”

• “. . . It is appropriate for me to quote here what Swami Vivekananda said about the lesson of medieval iconoclasm of Indian history. 'Temple alter temple was broken down by the foreign conqueror, but no sooner had the wave passed than the spire of the temple rose up again. Some of these old temples of Southern India and those like Somnâth of Gujarat will teach you volumes of wisdom, will give you a keener insight into the history of the race than any amount of books. Mark how these temples bear the marks of a hundred attacks and a hundred regenerations, continually destroyed and continually springing up out of the ruins, rejuvenated and strong as ever! That is the national mind, that is the national life-current. Follow it and it leads to glory.'”

• “. . . independent India is acutely conscious of the fact that it is the dreams of visionaries like Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Tagore and Gandhi that have inspired the nation during the freedom struggle and finally helped liberate it.”

L. K. Advani quotes the following words of Swami Vivekananda at the beginning of the seventeenth chapter Reminiscences and Reflections of his autobiography—

• In religion lies the vitality of India, and so long as the Hindu race do not forget the great inheritance of their forefathers, there is no power on earth to destroy them. Nowadays everybody blames those who constantly look back to their past. It is said that so much looking back to the past is the cause of all India's woes. To me, on the contrary, it seems that the opposite is true. So long as they forgot the past, the Hindu nation remained in a state of stupor; and as soon as they have begun to look into their past, there is on every side a fresh manifestation of life. It is out of this past that the future has to be moulded; this past will become the future.

• “. . . considerable progress has indeed been achieved in the modern era, both during the freedom movement and the decades that followed. This is due to the efforts of many modern-day saints Swami Vivekananda, Swami Dayananda, Raja Ram Mohun Roy. . .”

• “Today, when the country is celebrating its day of deliverance from foreign subjection, it is well for us to remember Swami Vivekananda and his conception of the future of our country. He believed that our culture is a rich mosaic containing Hindu, Muslim and other elements. He also believed that the Hindus and the Muslims have certain things to learn from each other, which would make them not merely better Hindus and better Muslims, but, what is more important, better men. Since man-making was his religion, he exhorted his countrymen to discard narrow loves and hates and grow into that wholeness which is perfection of character. In the same vein, he exhorted the Hindus to discard the sectional loyalties of caste and sect and grow into that fullness and wholeness expressive of the Divine in man. It is as an effective help to this religion of man-making that he upheld the modern theory and practice of democracy with its faith in freedom and equality and the sacredness of personality.”

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"Be Strong My Friend" — A Suggestion by Swami Vivekananda

 "Be Strong My Friend" — A Suggestion by Swami Vivekananda:

Have faith in yourselves, and stand up on that faith and be strong; that is what we need.

• First of all, our young men must be strong. Religion will come afterwards. Be strong, my young friends; that is my advice to you. You will be nearer to Heaven through football than through the study of the Gita. These are bold words; but I have to say them, for I love you. I know where the shoe pinches. I have gained a little experience. You will understand the Gita better with your biceps, your muscles, a little stronger.

• Give up these weakening mysticisms and be strong. Go back to your Upanishads — the shining, the strengthening, the bright philosophy — and part from all these mysterious things, all these weakening things. Take up this philosophy; the greatest truths are the simplest things in the world, simple as your own existence. The truths of the Upanishads are before you. Take them up, live up to them, and the salvation of India will be at hand.

• Go back, go back to the old days when there was strength and vitality. Be strong once more, drink deep of this fountain of yore, and that is the only condition of life in India.

• God is not to be reached by the weak. Never be weak. You must be strong; you have infinite strength within you. How else will you conquer anything? How else will you come to God?

• He who wants to become a Bhakta must be strong, must be healthy. When the miserably weak attempt any of the Yogas, they are likely to get some incurable malady, or they weaken their minds. Voluntarily weakening the body is really no prescription for spiritual enlightenment.

• Have faith in yourselves, and stand up on that faith and be strong; that is what we need.

• "नायमात्मा बलहीनेन लभ्य:-- the Atman is not to be gained by the weak." If there is no strength in the body and mind, the Atman cannot be realised. First you have to build the body by good nutritious food -- then only will the mind be strong. The mind is but the subtle part of the body. You must retain great strength in your mind and words. "I am low, I am low"-- repeating these ideas in the mind, man belittles and degrades himself. Therefore, the Shastra (Ashtavakra Samhita, I.11) says:

मुक्ताभिमानी मुक्तो हि बद्धो बद्धाभिमान्यपि।

किम्वदन्तीह् सत्येयं या मति: सा गतिर्भवेत्॥

• --He who thinks himself free, free he becomes; he who thinks himself bound, bound he remains -- this popular saying is true: 'As one thinks, so one becomes'." He alone who is always awake to the idea of freedom, becomes free; he who thinks he is bound, endures life after life in the state of bondage. It is a fact. This truth holds good both in spiritual and temporal matters. Those who are always down - hearted and dispirited in this life can do no work; from life to life they come and go wailing and moaning. "The earth is enjoyed by heroes"-- this is the unfailing truth. Be a hero.

• O man, be not weak. Are there no human weaknesses? — says man. There are, say the Upanishads, but will more weakness heal them, would you try to wash dirt with dirt? Will sin cure sin, weakness cure weakness? Strength, O man, strength, say the Upanishads, stand up and be strong.

• Stand up and die game! ... Do not add one lunacy to another. Do not add your weakness to the evil that is going to come. That is all I have to say to the world. Be strong! ... You talk of ghosts and devils. We are the living devils. The sign of life is strength and growth. The sign of death is weakness. Whatever is weak, avoid! It is death. If it is strength, go down into hell and get hold of it! There is salvation only for the brave. "None but the brave deserves the fair." None but the bravest deserves salvation. Whose hell? Whose torture? Whose sin? Whose weakness? Whose death? Whose disease?

• Mystery mongering and superstition are always signs of weakness. These are always signs of degradation and of death. Therefore beware of them; be strong, and stand on your own feet.

• The highest things are under your feet, because you are Divine Stars; all these things are under your feet. You can swallow the stars by the handful if you want; such is your real nature. Be strong, get beyond all superstitions, and be free.

• The third requisite seems to be that a religion, to be strong and sure of itself, must believe that it alone is the truth; otherwise it cannot influence people.

• What can mere book-learning do? What can meditation do even? What can the Mantras and Tantras do? You must stand on your own feet. You must have this new method — the method of man-making. The true man is he who is strong as strength itself and yet possesses a woman's heart. You must feel for the millions of beings around you, and yet you must be strong and inflexible and you must also possess Obedience; though it may seem a little paradoxical — you must possess these apparently conflicting virtues. If your superior order you to throw yourself into a river and catch a crocodile, you must first obey and then reason with him. Even if the order be wrong, first obey and then contradict it. The bane of sects, especially in Bengal, is that if any one happens to have a different opinion, he immediately starts a new sect, he has no patience to wait. So you must have a deep regard for your Sangha. There is no place for disobedience here. Crush it out without mercy. No disobedient members here, you must turn them out. There must not be any traitors in the camp. You must be as free as the air, and as obedient as this plant and the dog.

• What work do you expect from men of little hearts? — Nothing in the world! You must have an iron will if you would cross the ocean. You must be strong enough to pierce mountains.

• Who advises you to jump into fire? If you don't find the Himalayas a place for Sadhana, go somewhere else then. So many gushing inquiries simply betray a weak mind. Arise, ye mighty one, and be strong! Work on and on, struggle on and on!

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"Be Strong My Friend" — Swami Vivekananda Suggestion

"Be Strong My Friend" — Swami Vivekananda Suggestion:

Strength, O man, strength, say the Upanishads,
stand up and be strong.
—Swami Vivekananda 

• The sign of life is strength and growth. The sign of death is weakness. Whatever is weak, avoid! It is death. If it is strength, go down into hell and get hold of it! There is salvation only for the brave.

• Now in this article we'll make a collection of only those quotations where Swami Vivekananda directly asked/suggested to be strong.

• All weakness, all bondage is imagination. Speak one word to it, it must vanish. Do not weaken! There is no other way out.... Stand up and be strong! No fear. No superstition. Face the truth as it is! If death comes — that is the worst of our miseries — let it come! We are determined to die game. That is all the religion I know. I have not attained to it, but I am struggling to do it. I may not, but you may. Go on!

• Be strong and have this Shraddha, and everything else is bound to follow.

• Be strong and stand up and seek the God of Love. This is the highest strength. What power is higher than the power of purity? Love and purity govern the world. This love of God cannot be reached by the weak; therefore, be not weak, either physically, mentally, morally or spiritually. The Lord alone is true. Everything else is untrue; everything else should be rejected for the salve of the Lord. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Serve the Lord and Him alone.

• Believe in India and in our Indian faith. Be strong and hopeful and unashamed, and remember that with something to take, Hindus have immeasurably more to give than any other people in the world.

• Blame none for your own faults, stand upon your own feet, and take the whole responsibility upon yourselves. Say, "This misery that I am suffering is of my own doing, and that very thing proves that it will have to be undone by me alone." That which I created, I can demolish; that which is created by some one else I shall never be able to destroy. Therefore, stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. All the strength and succour you want is within yourselves. Therefore, make your own future. "Let the dead past bury its dead." The infinite future is before you, and you must always remember that each word, thought, and deed, lays up a store for you and that as the bad thoughts and bad works are ready to spring upon you like tigers, so also there is the inspiring hope that the good thoughts and good deeds are ready with the power of a hundred thousand angels to defend you always and for ever.                                                                                     
• Do not be led aside into any byways or seek after power. Love is the only power that stays by us and increases. He who seeks to come to God through Raja - yoga must be strong mentally, physically, morally, and spiritually. Take every step in that light.

• Do you consider yourselves as men? You have got only a bit of rationality -- that's all. How will you struggle with the mind unless the physique be strong? Do you deserve to be called men any longer -- the highest evolution in the world? What have you got besides eating, sleeping, and satisfying the creature - comforts? Thank your stars that you have not developed into quadrupeds yet! Shri Ramakrishna used to say, "He is the man who is conscious of his dignity". You are but standing witnesses to the lowest class of insect - like existence of which the scripture speaks, that they simply undergo the round of births and deaths without being allowed to go to any of the higher spheres! You are simply living a life of jealousy among yourselves and are objects of hatred in the eyes of the foreigner. You are animals, therefore I recommend you to struggle. Leave aside theories and all that. Just reflect calmly on your own everyday acts and dealings with others and find out whether you are not a species of beings intermediate between the animal and human planes of existence! First build up your own physique. Then only you can get control over the mind. "नायमात्मा बलहीनेन लभ्य:-- this Self is not to be attained by the weak" (Katha Upanishad, I.ii.23).

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