12th jan'12-yuba dibos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swami_Vivekananda

A spiritual genius of commanding intellect and power, Vivekananda crammed immense labor and achievement into his short life, 1863-1902. This illustrious patriot-saint of modern India was born in Calcutta on 12 January, 1863. He was named Narendra. His father, Viswanath Datta, was a brilliant lawyer. He was highly respected for his intelligence and culture. His mother, Devi Bhuvaneshwari, was a devout woman with a great ability for training her children. As a boy, Narendra was very naughty and self-willed, and often had to be placed under a water tap to curb his mischief. Nevertheless, he was very generous, loving and devoted, with a strange attraction for wandering Sadhus. He enjoyed doing worship of Lord Rama and Lord Krishna with his mother.

After his matriculation, Narendra went to college. He was rarely absent from social parties. He was the "soul of social circles" and no gathering was deemed complete without his presence.

One day, his neighbour received a surprise visit from the saint of Dakshineshwar, Sri Ramakrishna. Narendra was also invited to sing devotional songs. As he sang, he sent thrill after thrill through Sri Ramakrishna until the saint fell into a state of ecstasy. When he became normal again, he made Narendra sit beside him and enquired lovingly of the boy. With time their friendship grew.

The death of his father forced Narendra to find work and support the family. During these years of great struggle, his sheet anchor was his Guru, Sri Ramakrishna. Narendra yearned intensely for God and began to plague the Master for realisation.

Narendra, now known as Swami Vivekananda, founded an Ashram near Calcutta, in order to organise better the Master's mission. This was the beginning of the Ramakrishna Mission.

From 1888 to 1890 Swami Vivekananda travelled widely. He went on a pilgrimage all over the country, studying the conditions of the people. Wherever he went, his magnetic personality created a great impression.

In 1893, Swami Vivekananda went to America to attend the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. His powerful speech at the opening session of the Parliament brought him instant fame and acclaimed him as a great orator and the most ideal interpreter of India's wisdom. He instantly became very popular in America.

Swami Vivekananda's powerful personality and his passionate call of service of the poor, is still influencing people all over India and the world.

Swami Vivekananda arrived in America penniless and depending only on God's Grace. After the Parliament he began to receive the homage and hospitality of all America. He lectured at all the important centres. As a true Sannyasin he refused to sell religion for the sake of amassing money. He preached the gospel of unity of faiths and scattered the seeds of purity, knowledge and faith. After his stay of two years in America he toured England and Europe for three months.

The tremendous ovation he received on his return to India in no way took his mind away from his mission of bringing religion to the doors of the poorest. His aim was to awaken the masses by reviving Vedic religion, and to clean it of the dross and impurity that had clung to it for so many centuries.

In 1902 Swami Vivekananda entered Mahasamadhi. Six years of discipleship under Sri Ramakrishna had taken him to the realms of God-vision. Seven years of travelling in India had broadened his outlook on life. Nine years of a national and international career were all that were left for him; yet, how filled with glorious work those nine years were!

Swami Vivekananda's gospel was one of hope, faith and strength. He never succumbed to despair, for he knew that India was capable of expansion and growth. His clarion call to the nation was: "Awake, arise, and stop not till the goal is reached."

Speech delivered by Swami Vivekananda at the World's Parliament of Religions, Chicago 11th September, 1893

Sisters and Brothers of America,

It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us. I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions; and I thank you in the name of millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects.

My thanks, also, to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from the Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honour of bearing to different lands the idea of toleration. I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: “As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.”

The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: “Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.” Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilisation and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.

21 Effective Quotation of Swami Vivekananda

1.    If the mind is intensely eager, everything can be accomplished—mountains can be crumbled into atoms. 

2.    Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on idea. Let the brain, 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.  

3.    Come out into the universe of Light. Everything in the universe is yours, stretch out your arms and embrace it with love. If you every felt you wanted to do that, you have felt God. 

4.    All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind. 

5.    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 succor you want is within yourself. Therefore make your own future.  6.    There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself…. Burst your own cocoon and come out aw the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth. 

7.    It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world, that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you do not understand it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!  

8.    Hold to the idea, “I am not the mind, I see that I am thinking, I am watching my mind act,” and each day the identification of yourself with thoughts and feelings will grow less, until at last you can entirely separate yourself from the mind and actually know it to be apart from yourself. 

9.    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 law of life, just as you breathe to live. 

10.     Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth. 

11.     Even the greatest fool can accomplish a task if it were after his or her heart. But the intelligent ones are those who can convert every work into one that suits their taste. 

12.     Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers and let them go their own way. 

13.     Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood. 

14.     If you think that you are bound, you remain bound; you make your own bondage. If you know that you are free, you are free this moment. This is knowledge, knowledge of freedom. Freedom is the goal of all nature. 

15.     As long as we believe ourselves to be even the least different from God, fear remains with us; but when we know ourselves to be the One, fear goes; of what can we be afraid? 

16.     Your Atman is the support of the universe—whose support do you stand in need of? Wait with patience and love and strength. If helpers are not ready now, they will come in time. Why should we be in a hurry? The real working force of all great work is in its almost unperceived beginnings. 

17.     Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power. It is not in the brain but in the heart that the Atman, possessed of knowledge, power, and activity, has its seat. 

18.     Understanding human nature is the highest knowledge, and only by knowing it can we know God? It is also a fact that the knowledge of God is the highest knowledge, and only by knowing God can we understand human nature 

19.     Purity, patience, and perseverance are the three essentials to success and, above all, love. 

20.     If you want to have life, you have to die every moment for it. Life and death are only different expressions of the same thing looked at from different standpoints; they are the falling and the rising of the same wave, and the two form one whole. 

21.     Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship or psychic control or philosophy – by one or more or all of these and be free.