Statue of Swami Vevekananda at Belgaum, Karnataka, where he stayed from October 19 to October 27 in 1892. Later he started Ramakrishna Mission at Belgaum. (Image: Shutterstock)
A precocious interest in spirituality marked Swami Vivekananda’s youth. He meditated before idols of Hindu deities and displayed a keenness for all things religious and spiritual.
Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) was a prominent monk and a key figure in the introduction of Indian philosophies. Born in an affluent Bengali family in Calcutta (now Kolkata), Swami Vivekananda’s birth name was Narendranath Dutta. He was the chief disciple of the saint Ramakrishna Paramahansa and the founder of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission.
A precocious interest in spirituality marked Vivekananda’s youth. He meditated before idols of Hindu deities and displayed a keenness for all things religious and spiritual. In 1893, at the behest of Maharaja Ajit Singh (ruler of the small state of Khetri in Rajasthan), he acquired the name ‘Vivekananda’.
Swami Vivekanand represented India at the World’s Religions Parliament Conference in 1893 in Chicago. He delivered a courageous speech based on the agenda, ‘All the religions are different paths leading to the one Lord’.
Swami Vivekanand visualised, “As such, religion and science are not contradictory to each other but are complementary. This universal conception frees religion from the hold of superstitions, dogmatism, priestcraft and intolerance, and makes religion the highest and noblest pursuit – the pursuit of Supreme Freedom, Supreme Knowledge, Supreme Happiness.”
10 Inspiring Quotes By Swami Vivekananda
- “You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.”
- “Arise! Awake! And stop not until the goal is reached.”
- “Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to give; it will come back to you but do not think of that now.”
- “When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state.”
- “Do one thing at a Time, and while doing it put your whole Soul into it to the exclusion of all else.”
- “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; dream of it; think of it; live on that idea. Let the brain, the body, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced.”
- “In a conflict between the heart and the brain, follow your heart.”
- “Anything that makes weak – physically, intellectually and spiritually, reject it as poison.”
- “We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.”
- “All love is expansion, 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.”
