THE LAW OF KARMA MUST HAVE ITS POUND OF FLESH

" Possibly the priest says his routine words and expects something. Sixty thousand people look to the skies and pray and pay the priest. Month after month they still look, still pay and pray. ...Think of that! Is it not lunacy? What else is it? Who is responsible? You may preach religion, but to excite the minds of undeveloped children...! You will have to suffer for that. In your heart of hearts, what are you? For every weakening thought you have put into anybody's head you will have to pay with compound interest. The law of Karma must have its pound of flesh......"

- Swami Vivekananda

WORK THROUGH YOGA [ CONCENTRATION ]

Gita teaches Karma - Yoga. We should work through Yoga ( concentration ). In such concentration in action ( Karma - Yoga ), there is no consciousness of the lower ego present. The consciousness that I doing this and that is never present when one works through Yoga.

- Swami Vivekananda [ Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda - V5, Page 248 ]

THE HEART MUST BECOME A BURIAL GROUND

“The heart must become a burial ground” “Pride, selfishness, and desire all broken into dust” “Then and then alone will the Mother (Kali) dance there!”

- Swami Vivekananda
[From: Sister Nivedita - The Master as I Saw Him]

ADAPTABILITY - THE WHOLE MYSTERY OF LIFE

 What I say is not “Reform ", but “Move on". Nothing is too bad to reform. Adaptability is the whole mystery of life - the principle underneath, which serves to unfold it. Adjustment or adaptation i...s the outcome of the self-pitted against external forces tending to suppress it. He who adjusts himself best lives the longest. Even if I do not preach this, society is changing, it must change.

- Swami Vivekananda

I WANT SAPPERS AND MINERS IN THE ARMY OF RELIGION

I want sappers and miners in the army of religion. So, boys, set yourselves to the task of training your muscles. For ascetics, mortification is all right, for workers, well - developed bodies, muscles of iron and nerves of steel

- Swami Vivekananda

COMMON RUN OF MEN

 

“Won’t you do something to show that you are in any way removed from the common run of men?”

- Swami Vivekananda
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 6/Epistles - Second Series/XLV Brothers

TO WHOM SHALL I BOW DOWN ?

What does the Advaitist preach? He dethrones all the gods that ever existed, or ever will exist in the universe and places on that throne the Self of man, the Atman, higher than the sun and the moon, higher than the heavens, greater than this great universe itself. No books, no scriptures, no science can ever imagine the glory of the Self that appears as man, the most glorious God that ever was, the only God that ever existed, exists, or ever will exist. I am to worship, therefore, none but myself. "I worship my Self," says the Advaitist. To whom shall I bow down? I salute my Self.

 - Swami Vivekananda
 The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 2/Jnana-Yoga/The Atman