Swami Vivekananda150: 2014

As usual Independence Day was celebrated at Ramakrishna Mission Headquarters at Belur Math on 15th August in the morning 7.30 am. See below some of the photos taken on the occasion.

Students of Veda Vidyalaya, Belur Math

Monks & Brahmacharis of Ramakrishna Order at Belur Math

Swami Bhajananandaji, Asst. Secretary hoisting National Flag.

Swami Bhajananandaji, Asst. Secretary hoisted National Flag.

Swami Vivekananda on India

• History itself bears testimony to the fact. All the soul-elevating ideas and the different branches of knowledge that exist in the world are found on proper investigation to have their roots in India.

• From time immemorial India has been the mine of precious ideas to human society; giving birth to high ideas herself, she has freely distributed them broadcast over the whole world.

• Proudly proclaim at the top of thy voice: "The Indian is my brother, the Indian is my life, India's gods and goddesses are my God. India's society is the cradle of my infancy, the pleasure-garden of my youth, the sacred heaven, the Varanasi of my old age."

• Say, brother: "The soil of India is my highest heaven, the good of India is my good," and repeat and pray day and night, "O Thou Lord of Gauri, O Thou Mother of the Universe, vouch safe manliness unto me! O Thou Mother of Strength, take away my weakness…!"

• “To make a great future India, the whole secret lies in organization, accumulation of power, co-ordination of wills.”

• Have that faith, each one of you, in yourself – that eternal power is lodged in every soul - and you will revive the whole of India. Ay, we will then go to every country under the sun, and our ideas will before long be a component of the many forces that are working to make up every nation in the world

• “With every man, there is an idea; the external man is only the outward manifestation, the mere language of this idea within. Likewise, every nation has a corresponding national idea. This idea is working for the world and is necessary for its preservation”

• “It is when the national body is weak that all sorts of disease germs, in the political state of the race or in its social state, in its educational or intellectual state, crowd into the system and produce disease. To remedy it, therefore, we must go to the root of this disease and cleanse the blood of all impurities.”

• If there is any land on this earth that can lay claim to be the blessed Punya Bhumi, to be the land to which all souls on this earth must come to account for Karma, the land to which every soul that is wending its way Godward must come to attain its last home, the land where humanity has attained its highest towards gentleness, towards generosity, towards purity, towards calmness, above all, the land of introspection and of spirituality - it is India.

• Crossing over mountains, rivers, arid oceans, setting at naught, as it were, the obstacles of the distance of space and time, the blood of Indian thought has flowed, and is still flowing into the veins of other nations of the globe, whether in a distinct or in some subtle unknown way. Perhaps to us belongs the major portion of the universal ancient inheritance.

• “Do you love your country? Then come, let us struggle for higher and better things; look not back, no, not even if you see the dearest and nearest cry.

Look not back, but forward!”

• “India must conquer the World and nothing less than that is my ideal.”

• “To make a great future India, the whole secret lies in organization,

accumulation of power, co-ordination of wills.”

• “Renunciation, that is the flag, the banner of India, floating over the world, the one undying thought which India sends again and again as a warning to dying races, as a warning to all tyranny, as a warning to wickedness in the world.”

• “Each nation must give in order to live. When you give life, you will have life; when you receive, you must pay for it by giving to all others.”

• Renunciation conquered India in days of yore; it has still to conquer India.

Still it stands as the greatest and highest of Indian ideals - this renunciation.

• “Make way for the life-current of the nation. Take away the blocks that bar the way to the progress of this mighty river, cleanse its path, dear the channel, and out it will rush by its own natural impulse, and the nation will go on careering and progressing”

• “With all my love for India, and with all my patriotism and veneration for the ancients, I cannot but think that we have to learn many things from other nations. We must be always ready to sit at the feet of all, for, mark you, everyone can teach us great lessons. At the same time we must not forget that we have also to teach a great lesson to the world.” • “When the real history of India will be unearthed, it will be proved that, as in matters of religion, so in fine arts, India is the primal Guru of the whole world.”

• “The Indian nation cannot be killed. Deathless it stands, and it will stand so long as that spirit shall remain as the background, so long as her people do not give up their spirituality.”

• Happy is the nation which can rise to the necessity of but few law books, and needs no longer to bother its head about this or that institution. Good men rise beyond all laws, and will help their fellows to rise under whatever conditions they live. The salvation of India, therefore, depends on the strength of the individual, and the realisation by each man of the divinity within.

• One thing that is at the root of all evils in India is the condition of the poor. The poor in the West are devils; compared to them ours are angels, and it is therefore so much the easier to raise our poor. The only service to be done for our lower classes is to give them education, to develop their lost individuality.

• “What India wants is a new electric fire to stir up a fresh vigour in the national veins. Be brave, be brave, man dies but once!”

• “Shall India die? Then from the world all spirituality will be extinct; all moral perfection will be extinct...such a thing can never be.”

• “What the nation wants is pluck and scientific genius. We want great spirit, tremendous energy, and boundless enthusiasm.”

• “A nation is advanced in proportion as education & intelligence spread among the masses. The chief cause of India's ruin has been the

monopolising of the whole education & intelligence of the land, by dint of pride & royal authority, among a handful of men. If we are to rise again, we shall have to do it in the same way, i.e. by spreading education among the masses.”

• “Being of one mind is the secret of society. Our solution is renunciation, giving up, fearlessness, and love, these are the fittest to survive.”

• “If there is any land on this earth that can lay claim to be the blessed Punya Bhumi, to be the land to which all souls on this earth must come to account for Karma, the land to which every soul that is wending its way Godward must come to attain its last home, the land where humanity has attained its highest towards gentleness, towards generosity, towards purity, towards calmness, above all, the land of introspection and of spirituality — it is India.”

• “The little toleration that is in the world, the little sympathy that is yet in

the world for religious thought, is practically here in the land of the Aryan, and nowhere else. It is here that Indians build temples for Mohammedans and Christians; nowhere else…The one great lesson, therefore, that the world wants most, that the world has yet to learn from India, is the idea not only of toleration, but of sympathy.”

• “One vision I can see clear as life before me that the ancient Mother has awakened once more, sitting on her throne- rejuvenated, more glorious than ever. Proclaim her to the entire world with the voice of peace and benediction”

• The national ideals of India are RENUNCIATION AND SERVICE. Intensify her in these channels, and the rest will take care of itself.

• “The uplift of the women, the awakening of the masses must come first, and then only can any real good come about for the country, for India.”

COURTESY: narendramodi.in