Snippets of Information
Quotes - Teachings
Swami Vivekananda
22 Jan 2022
The goal of mankind is knowledge. That is the one ideal placed before us
by Eastern philosophy. Pleasure is not the goal of man, but knowledge.
Pleasure and happiness come to an end. It is a mistake to suppose that
pleasure is the goal. The cause of all the miseries we have in the world
is that men foolishly think pleasure to be the ideal to strive for.
After a time man finds that it is not happiness, but knowledge, towards
which he is going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers,
and that he learns as much from evil as from good. As pleasure and pain
pass before his soul they have upon it different pictures, and the
result of these combined impressions is what is called man's
"character". If you take the character of any man, it really is but the
aggregate of tendencies, the sum total of the bent of his mind; you will
find that misery and happiness are equal factors in the formation of
that character. Good and evil have an equal share in moulding character,
and in some instances misery is a greater teacher than happiness. In
studying the great characters the world has produced, I dare say, in the
vast majority of cases, it would be found that it was misery that
taught more than happiness, it was poverty that taught more than wealth,
it was blows that brought out their inner fire more than praise.
Source: Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1, Karma and its effect on character, ramakrishnavivekananda.info
* 12 Jan 2022
Work for work's sake. There are some who are really the salt of the
earth in every country and who work for work's sake, who do not care for
name, or fame, or even to go to heaven. They work just because good
will come of it. There are others who do good to the poor and help
mankind from still higher motives, because they believe in doing good
and love good. The motive for name and fame seldom brings immediate
results, as a rule; they come to us when we are old and have almost done
with life. If a man works without any selfish motive in view, does he
not gain anything? Yes, he gains the highest. Unselfishness is more
paying, only people have not the patience to practice it. It is more
paying from the point of view of health also. Love, truth, and
unselfishness are not merely moral figures of speech, but they form our
highest ideal, because in them lies such a manifestation of power. In
the first place, a man who can work for five days, or even for five
minutes, without any selfish motive whatever, without thinking of
future, of heaven, of punishment, or anything of the kind, has in him
the capacity to become a powerful moral giant. It is hard to do it, but
in the heart of our hearts we know its value, and the good it brings. It
is the greatest manifestation of power — this tremendous restraint;
self-restraint is a manifestation of greater power than all outgoing
action.
Source: Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1, Karma and its effect on character, ramakrishnavivekananda.info
* 11 Jan 2022
We have to begin from the beginning, to take up the works as they come
to us and slowly make ourselves more unselfish every day. We must do the
work and find out the motive power that prompts us; and, almost without
exception, in the first years, we shall find that our motives are
always selfish; but gradually this selfishness will melt by persistence,
till at last will come the time when we shall be able to do really
unselfish work. We may all hope that some day or other, as we struggle
through the paths of life, there will come a time when we shall become
perfectly unselfish; and the moment we attain to that, all our powers
will be concentrated, and the knowledge which is ours will be manifest.
Source: Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1, Karma and its effect on character, ramakrishnavivekananda.info
*10 Jan 2022
Knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside; it is all
inside. What we say a man "knows", should, in strict psychological
language, be what he "discovers" or "unveils"; what a man "learns" is
really what he "discovers", by taking the cover off his own soul, which
is a mine of infinite knowledge.
We say Newton discovered gravitation. Was it sitting anywhere in a
corner waiting for him? It was in his own mind; the time came and he
found it out. All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from
the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in your own mind. The
external world is simply the suggestion, the occasion, which sets you to
study your own mind, but the object of your study is always your own
mind. The falling of an apple gave the suggestion to Newton, and he
studied his own mind. He rearranged all the previous links of
thought in his mind and discovered a new link among them, which we call
the law of gravitation. It was not in the apple nor in anything in the
centre of the earth.
All knowledge, therefore, secular or spiritual, is in the human mind. In
many cases it is not discovered, but remains covered, and when the
covering is being slowly taken off, we say, "We are learning," and the
advance of knowledge is made by the advance of this process of
uncovering. The man from whom this veil is being lifted is the more
knowing man, the man upon whom it lies thick is ignorant, and the man
from whom it has entirely gone is all-knowing, omniscient.
Source: Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1, Karma and its effect on character, ramakrishnavivekananda.info
* 1 Jan 2022
No one can get anything unless he earns it. This is an eternal
law. We may sometimes think it is not so, but in the long run we become
convinced of it. A man may struggle all his life for riches; he may
cheat thousands, but he finds at last that he did not deserve to become
rich, and his life becomes a trouble and a nuisance to him. We may go on
accumulating things for our physical enjoyment, but only what we earn
is really ours. A fool may buy all the books in the world, and they will
be in his library; but he will be able to read only those that he
deserves to; and this deserving is produced by Karma. Our Karma
determines what we deserve and what we can assimilate. We are
responsible for what we are; and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we
have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result
of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to
be in future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know
how to act. You will say, “What is the use of learning how to work?
Everyone works in some way or other in this world.” But there is such a
thing as frittering away our energies. With regard to Karma-Yoga, the
Gita says that it is doing work with cleverness and as a science; by
knowing how to work, one can obtain the greatest results. You must
remember that all work is simply to bring out the power of the mind
which is already there, to wake up the soul. The power is inside every
man, so is knowing; the different works are like blows to bring them
out, to cause these giants to wake up.
Source: Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1, Karma-Yoga, ramakrishnavivekananda.info
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