MEDITATION

What is meditation? Meditation is the power which enables us to resist all this [our slavery to nature]. Nature may call us, Look, there is a beautiful thing! I do not look. Now she says, There is a beautiful smell; smell it! I say to my nose, Do not smell it, and the nose doesnt. Eyes, do not see! Nature does such an awful thing-kills one of my children, and says, Now, rascal, sit down and weep! Go to the depths! I say, I dont have to. I jump up. I must be free. Try it sometimes. In meditation, for a moment you can change this nature. Now, that be heaven, freedom? That is the power of meditation. How is it to be attained? In a dozen different ways. Each temperament has its own way. But this is the general principle: get hold of mind. The mind is like a lake, and every stone that drops into it raises waves. These waves do not let us see what we are. The full moon is reflected in the water of the lake, but the surface is so disturbed that we do not see the reflection clearly. Let it be calm. Do not let nature raise the wave. Keep quiet, and then after a little while she will give you up. Then we know what we are. God is there already, but the mind is so agitated, always running after the senses. You close the senses and let you whirl and whirl and about. Just this moment I think I am all right and I will meditate upon God, and then my mind goes to London in one minute. And if I pull it away from there, it goes to New York to think about the things I have done in past. These waves are to be stopped by the power of meditation.

Swami Vivekananda, (1863-1902)

We believe that every being is divine, is God. Every soul is a sun covered over with clouds of ignorance; the difference between soul and soul is owing to the difference in density of these layers of clouds.

For links to some information about Swami Vivekananda, please visit http://www.vivekananda.org/ http://www.ramakrishna.org/sv.htm

First, believe in the worldthat there is meaning behind everything.

Don't look backforward, infinite energy, infinite enthusiasm, infinite daring, and infinite patiencethen alone can great deeds be accomplished.

This is the first lesson to learn: be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay the blame upon anyone outside, but stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find that is always true. Get hold of yourself.

Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go; the sooner the better.

This life is a hard fact; work your way through it boldly, though it may be adamantine; no matter, the soul is stronger.

This I have seen in lifethose who are overcautious about themselves fall into dangers at every step; those who are afraid of losing honor and respect, get only disgrace; and those who are always afraid of loss, always lose.

Face the brutes. That is a lesson for all lifeface the terrible, face it boldly. Like the monkeys, the hardships of life fall back when we cease to flee before them.

Those who work at a thing heart and soul not only achieve success in it but through their absorption in that they also realize the supreme truthBrahman. Those who work at a thing with their whole heart receive help from God.

I, for one, thoroughly believe that no power in the universe can withhold from anyone anything they really deserve.

The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you free.

Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life. All the negative thoughts and ideas that are in the world have proceeded from this evil spirit of fear.

Why are people so afraid? The answer is that they have made themselves helpless and dependent on others. We are so lazy, we do not want to do anything ourselves. We want a Personal God, a Savior or a Prophet to do everything for us.

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?

There is one thing to be remembered: that the assertionI am Godcannot be made with regard to the sense-world.

All that is real in me is God; all that is real in God is I. The gulf between God and me is thus bridged. Thus by knowing God, we find that the kingdom of heaven is within us.

First get rid of the delusion I am the body, then only will we want real knowledge.

What the world wants is character. The world is in need of those whose life is one burning love, selfless. That love will make every word tell like a thunderbolt.

God is merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come.

We have to go back to philosophy to treat things as they are. We are suffering from our own karma. It is not the fault of God. What we do is our own fault, nothing else. Why should God be blamed?

Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.

Who makes us ignorant? We ourselves. We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark.

Desire, ignorance, and inequalitythis is the trinity of bondage.

We must have friendship for all; we must be merciful toward those that are in misery; when people are happy, we ought to be happy; and to the wicked we must be indifferent. These attitudes will make the mind peaceful.

Every action that helps us manifest our divine nature more and more is good; every action that retards it is evil.

We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none has the praise.

Are great things ever done smoothly? Time, patience, and indomitable will must show.

Great work requires great and persistent effort for a long time. Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles.

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.

Those who grumble at the little thing that has fallen to their lot to do will grumble at everything. Always grumbling they will lead a miserable life. But those who do their duty putting their shoulder to the wheel will see the light, and higher and higher duties will fall to their share.

Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power.

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

Watch people do their most common actions; these are indeed the things that will tell you the real character of a great person.

Comfort is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often far from being comfortable.

Whenever we attain a higher vision, the lower vision disappears of itself.

We came to enjoy; we are being enjoyed. We came to rule; we are being ruled. We came to work; we are being worked. All the time, we find that. And this comes into every detail of our life.

We are ever free if we would only believe it, only have faith enough. You are the soul, free and eternal, ever free, ever blessed. Have faith enough and you will be free in a minute.

A few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more in a year than a mob in a century.

Stand as a rock; you are indestructible. You are the Self (atman), the God of the universe.

Stand upon the Self, only then can we truly love the world. Take a very high stand; knowing our universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world.

"I am the thread that runs through all these pearls," and each pearl is a religion or even a sect thereof. Such are the different pearls, and God is the thread that runs through all of them; most people, however, are entirely unconscious of it.

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 yourselves. Therefore, make your own future.

It is the patient building of character, the intense struggle to realize the truth, which alone will tell in the future of humanity.

If there is one word that you find coming out like a bomb from the Upanishads, bursting like a bombshell upon masses of ignorance, it is the word fearlessness.

Be a hero. Always say, I have no fear. Tell this to everyoneHave no fear.

The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow. The strength and force of the blow come through concentration.

Work and worship are necessary to take away the veil, to lift off the bondage and illusion.

The powers of the mind should be concentrated and the mind turned back upon itself; as the darkest places reveal their secrets before the penetrating rays of the sun, so will the concentrated mind penetrate its own innermost secrets.

It is the cheerful mind that is persevering. It is the strong mind that hews its way through a thousand difficulties.

The mind is but the subtle part of the body. You must retain great strength in your mind and words.

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

Knowledge can only be got in one way, the way of experience; there is no other way to know.

However we may receive blows, and however knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite.

Perfection is always infinite. We are the Infinite already. You and I, and all beings, are trying to manifest that infinity.

Blows are what awaken us and help to break the dream. They show us the insufficiency of this world and make us long to escape, to have freedom.

So long as there is desire or want, it is a sure sign that there is imperfection. A perfect, free being cannot have any desire.

The more you think of yourself as shining immortal spirit, the more eager you will be to be absolutely free of matter, body, and senses. This is the intense desire to be free.

The Self when it appears behind the universe is called God. The same Self when it appears behind this little universethe bodyis the soul.

As body, mind, or soul, you are a dream; you really are Being, Consciousness, Bliss (satchidananda). You are the God of this universe.

The essence of Vedanta is that there is but one Being and that every soul is that Being in full, not a part of that Being.

As soon as I think that I am a little body, I want to preserve it, to protect it, to keep it nice, at the expense of other bodies; then you and I become separate.

Truth does not pay homage to any society, ancient or modern. Society has to pay homage to Truth or die.

If superstition enters, the brain is gone.

Superstition is our great enemy, but bigotry is worse.

A tremendous stream is flowing toward the ocean, carrying us all along with it; and though like straws and scraps of paper we may at times float aimlessly about, in the long run we are sure to join the Ocean of Life and Bliss.

God is self-evident, impersonal, omniscient, the Knower and the Master of nature, the Lord of all. He is behind all worship and it is being done according to Him, whether we know it or not.

As soon as you know the voice and understand what it is, the whole scene changes. The same world which was the ghastly battlefield of maya is now changed into something good and beautiful.

Delusion will vanish as the light becomes more and more effulgent, load after load of ignorance will vanish, and then will come a time when all else has disappeared and the sun alone shines.

Come out into the broad light of day, come out from the little narrow paths, for how can the infinite soul rest content to live and die in small ruts?

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.

This is no world. It is God Himself. In delusion we call it world.

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.

This is the great lesson that we are here to learn through myriads of births and heavens and hellsthat there is nothing to be asked for, desired for, beyond ones spiritual Self (atman).

Perfection does not come from belief or faith. Talk does not count for anything. Parrots can do that. Perfection comes through selfless work.

Strength is the sign of vigor, the sign of life, the sign of hope, the sign of health, and the sign of everything that is good. As long as the body lives, there must be strength in the body, strength in the mind, strength in the hand.

Impurity is a mere superimposition under which your real nature has become hidden. But the real you is already perfect, already strong.

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.

Astrology and all these mystical things are generally signs of a weak mind; therefore as soon as they are becoming prominent in our minds, we should see a physician, take good food, and rest.

Religion as a science, as a study, is the greatest and healthiest exercise that the human mind can have.

The varieties of religious belief are an advantage, since all faiths are good, so far as they encourage us to lead a religious life. The more sects there are, the more opportunities there are for making a successful appeal to the divine instinct in all of us.

Be perfectly resigned, perfectly unconcerned; then alone can you do any true work. No eyes can see the real forces; we can only see the results. Put out self, forget it; just let God work, it is His business.

Look upon every man, woman, and everyone as God. You cannot help anyone, you can only serve: serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord Himself, if you have the privilege.

Are you unselfish? That is the question. If you are, you will be perfect without reading a single religious book, without going into a single church or temple.

Nature, body, mind go to death, not we. We neither go nor come. The man Vivekananda is in nature, is born and dies; but the Self we see as Vivekananda is never born and never dies. It is the eternal and unchangeable Reality.

The less passion there is, the better we work. The calmer we are the better for us and the more the amount of work we can do. When we let loose our feelings, we waste so much energy, shatter our nerves, disturb our minds, and accomplish very little work.

Knowledge can only be got in one way, the way of experience; there is no other way to know.

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.

Have you got the will to surmount mountain-high obstructions? If the whole world stands against you sword in hand, would you still dare to do what you think is right?

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

Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. Those who have no faith in themselves can never have faith in God.

Every individual is a center for the manifestation of a certain force. This force has been stored up as the resultant of our previous works, and each one of us is born with this force at our back.

Why are people so afraid? The answer is that they have made themselves helpless and dependent on others. We are so lazy, we do not want to do anything ourselves. We want a Personal God, a Savior or a Prophet to do everything for us.

I fervently wish no misery ever came near anyone; yet it is that alone that gives us an insight into the depths of our lives, does it not? In our moments of anguish, gates barred forever seem to open and let in many a flood of light.

Religion has no business to formulate social laws and insist on the difference between beings, because its aim and end is to obliterate all such fictions and monstrosities.

Is there any sex-distinction in the Atman (Self)? Out with the differentiation between man and womanall is Atman! Give up the identification with the body, and stand up!

He whom the sages have been seeking in all these places is in our own hearts; the voice that you heard was right, says Vedanta, but the direction you gave to the voice was wrong.

The essential thing in religion is making the heart pure; the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, but only the pure in heart can see the King. While we think of the world, it is only the world for us; but let us come to it with the feeling that the world is God, and we shall have God.

21 Effective Quotation of Swami Vivekananda

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 loves 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 stagesridicule, 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 universewhose 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.