Wisdom Beyond Charity: Decoding Swami Vivekananda’s Hidden Teaching on Self-Reliance After a night of heavy rain and thunderstorms, the village road had turned into a muddy mess. Deep puddles, slippery tracks, and water-filled potholes made every step difficult. Swami Vivekananda and a group of his disciples were walking along this road toward a nearby monastery. A little ahead, they saw a bullock cart stuck deep in the mud. The cart was heavily loaded with goods meant for the local market. Instead of trying to free the wheel, the cart driver stood beside it shouting at every passerby. "Someone help me! Push my cart!" The disciples immediately assumed that Swami Vivekananda would stop and ask them to help. To their surprise, he simply continued walking without even pausing. As they walked away, they could hear the driver complaining and even cursing those who ignored him. A short distance later, they came across another cart trapped in almost the same situation. ...

Swami Vivekananda’s interpretation of Vedanta transformed it from an esoteric philosophy limited to forest hermitages into a practical guide for daily life, thus making it accessible to the modern world. Through his teachings, he provided a new perspective on the age-old Vedantic dictums, ‘sarvam khalvidam brahma’ (‘Everything is Brahman’) and ‘jivo brahmaiva naaparah’ (‘The individual soul is none other than the cosmic Soul’). By bringing these concepts out of the seclusion of ancient forests and into the streets, shops, and marketplaces, Vivekananda made spirituality a living, breathing force that anyone could practice. This essay explores Swami Vivekananda’s contributions to Vedanta, its connection to Hindu scripture and teachings, the role of saints and gurus, the relevance of these ideas in the modern world, and the scientific and practical aspects of Vedantic thought. Vedanta: A Lofty Philosophy Rooted in Hindu Scripture Vedanta is one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philoso...

Swami Vivekananda Jayanti 2026 date based on Hindu panchang and calendar. According to the English calendar or the generally used Indian Calendar, Swami Vivekananda was born on January 12, 1863 .  In 2027 , the date of the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda as per Hindu Lunar Calendar Tithi is on   January 28 . In 2027, it is the 164th birth anniversary. Swami Vivekananda Jayanti celebrates the birthday of Swami Vivekananda. Swami Vivekananda's birthday falls on the Paush Krishna Saptami, the 7th day after the full moon day in the Hindu month of Paush. Therefore the date varies from year to year.  Indian Government and certain organizations observe the birth anniversary on January 12 . Ramakrishna mission and many other organizations associated with Swami Vivekananda observe it annually on Paush Krishna Paksha Saptami Tithi. ( January 28 , 2027 ) Numerous programs are organized in India and in several countries around the world on the day. In In...

You may exhaust the literature of the world that is past, and ... future, before finding another Sita. Sita is unique; that character was depicted once and for all. There may have been several Ramas, perhaps, but never more than one Sita! She is the very type of the true Indian woman, for all the Indian ideals of a perfected woman have grown out of that one life of Sita.( The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 9 vols (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1–8, 1989; 9, 1997), 3.255. ‘Sita, purer than purity itself, all patience, and all suffering. She who suffered ... without a murmur, she the ever-chaste and ever-pure wife, she the ideal of the people, the ideal of the gods. ... Sita has gone into the very vitals of our race. She is there in the blood of every Hindu man and woman; we are all the children of Sita. ... The women of India must grow and develop in the footprints of Sita, and that is the only way.’ (Complete Works, 3.256) Apart from scholarly analyses, the character of Sita is ...

A collection of some of the important teachings of Swami Vivekananda. Teachings are mostly from the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vedanta Kesari and Prabuddha Bharata magazines. We hear ‘Be good,’ and ‘Be good,’ and ‘Be good,’ taught all over the world. There is hardly a child, born in any country in the world, who has not been told, ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not tell a lie,’ but nobody tells the child how he can help doing them. Talking will not help him. Why should he not become a thief? We do not teach him how not to steal; we simply tell him, ‘Do not steal.’ Only when we teach him to control his mind do we really help him. All actions, internal and external, occur when the mind joins itself to certain centers, called the organs. Willingly or unwillingly it is drawn to join itself to the centers, and that is why people do foolish deeds and feel miserable, which, if the mind were under control, they would not do. What would be the result of controlling the mind...

Selfishness is at the root of all expectations and consequent attachment to work. Swami Vivekananda equated selfishness with the world and unselfishness with God. He considered unselfishness as the secret of true happiness. Swami Vivekananda Teachings On Selfishness We are all beggars. Whatever we do, we want a return. We are all traders. We are traders in life, we are traders in virtue, we are traders in religion. And alas! we are also traders in love. … We get caught. How? Not by what we give, but by what we expect. We get misery in return for our love; not from the fact that we love, but from the fact that we want love in return. There is no misery where there is no want. … 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, it will come back multiplied a thousand fold — but the attention must not be on that. Yet have the power to give: give, and there it ends. Learn that the whole of life is giving, that ...

The Mahavakya Tat Tvam Asi occurs in the Chandogya Upanishad. Aruni, a great sage, teaches his son Shvetaketu that Brahman is the ultimate source of all the individual beings. Then he put the very essence of his teaching in the following words – Now, that which is the subtle essence – in it all that exists has its Self. That is the truth. That is the Self. Thou art That (Tat Tvam Asi), Shvetaketu. Swami Vivekananda in his lecture ‘The Free Soul’, has put forward the Vedantic position on the Nature and the Soul scientifically. The Sankhya philosophy says that there are two absolutes – Nature and Spirit. However, the Vedantists argue that there cannot be two absolutes. According to them, the sentient power (God) is the motive power of insentient Nature which undergoes modification. Also, Vedanta teaches that God is not just the instrumental cause of this universe, but also the material cause. That means, it is God himself, who has become this universe. Then, what about the individual...

‘Benefits of breath control’ is from the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, (Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama, 2016), 1.490-92. We see with our common sense that it is the breath that is setting everything in motion. If I stop breathing, I stop. If the breath begins, the body begins to move. What we want to get at is not the breath itself. By the help of things on the material plane, we have come to finer and finer perceptions. The universe is one, whatever point you touch. All the points are but variations of that one point. Throughout the universe is a unity at bottom. Even through such a gross thing as breath I can get hold of the Spirit itself. By the exercise of breathing we begin to feel all the movements of the body that we now do not feel. As soon as we begin to feel them, we begin to master them. Thoughts in the germ will open to us, and we will be able to get hold of them. Of course, not all of us have the opportunity nor the will nor the patience nor the faith to pursue such a thi...

What are the Vedas? They are no mere holy books in Hinduism, but eternal, without a beginning or an end, spiritual laws discovered by rishis. Swami Vivekananda says that they are ‘the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws.’ Veda means the sum total of eternal truths; the Vedic Rishis experienced those truths; they can be experienced only by seers of the supersensuous … That is why in the Vedas the term Rishi means ‘the seer of the truth of the Mantras’, and not any Brahmin with the holy thread hanging down the neck. The division of society into castes came about later on. Veda is of the nature of Shabda or of idea. It is but the sum total of ideas. Shabda, according to the old Vedic meaning of the term, is the subtle idea, which reveals itself by taking the gross form later on. So owing to the dissolution of the creation the subtle seeds of the future creation become involved in the Veda. All the created objects began to take concrete shape out of the Shabdas or ideas in the Ved...

Hindu teaching advices a devotee to not to give too much importance to result or goal. We should be concerned more about the means not the end. Swami Vivekananda states that the great defect in life is that we are so much drawn to the goal. One of the greatest lessons I have learnt in my life is to pay as much attention to the means of work as to its end. He was a great man from whom I learnt it, and his own life was a practical demonstration of this great principle. I have been always learning great lessons from that one principle, and it appears to me that all the secret of success is there; to pay as much attention to the means as to the ends. Our great defect in life is that we are so much drawn to the ideal, the goal is so much more enchanting, so much more alluring, so much bigger in our mental horizon, that we lose sight of the details altogether. But whenever failure comes, if we analyze it critically, in ninety-nine percent of cases we shall find that it was because we did not...

An article on Apparent existence by Swami Vivekananda. Just as in a lake, various strata of ice of various degrees of solidity are formed, or as in an ocean of vapour there are various degrees of density, so is this universe an ocean of matter. This is an ocean of ether in which we find the sun, moon, stars, and ourselves – in different states of solidity; but the continuity is not broken; it is the same throughout. Now, when we study metaphysics, we come to know the world is one, not that the spiritual, the material, the mental, and the world of energies are separate. It is all one, but seen from different planes of vision. When you think of yourself as a body, you forget that you are a mind, and when you think of yourself as a mind, you will forget the body. There is only one thing, that you are; you can see it either as matter or body – or you can see it as mind or spirit. Birth, life, and death are but old superstitions. None was ever born, none will ever die; one changes one’s pos...

Swami Vivekananda brought out four yogas from the Gita: Karma yoga, Raja yoga, Bhakti yoga, and Jnana yoga. Through his masterly expositions on these yogas, he gave to the spiritual and philosophical world, treatises that double as manuals for following these disciplines, which are meant to manifest one’s innate divinity. The goal of raja yoga is to achieve a complete cessation of thoughts or mental activity. The goal of bhakti yoga is to attain supreme bhakti. The goal of jnana yoga is to attain supreme jnana. However, the goal of karma yoga is not to engage in maximum activity but to go beyond all activity. There is a great risk of misunderstanding this idea of karma yoga and that is why Swamiji cautioned the aspirants and advised them to emphasize on being selfless while doing work. Source -  Prabuddha Bharata magazine editorial June 2017

Swami Vivekananda answers the question - What is meant by knowledge? From  The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda Vol.2  page 132 - 134.  What is meant by knowledge in our common sense idea? It is only something that has become limited by our mind, that we know, and when it is beyond our mind, it is not knowledge. Now if the Absolute becomes limited by the mind, it is no more absolute; it has become finite. Everything limited by the mind becomes finite. Therefore, to know the absolute is a contradiction in terms. That is why this question has never been answered, because if it were answered, there would no more be an absolute. A God known is no more God; he has become finite like one of us. He cannot be known; He is always the unknowable one. But what Advaita says is that God is more than knowable. This is a great fact to learn…For instance, here is a chair, it is known to us. But what is beyond ether or whether people exist there or not is possibly unknowable. B...

He Alone Teaches Who Has Something To Give – Swami Vivekananda on Sri Ramakrishna from The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 4.177. My Master (Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa) taught me this lesson hundreds of times, yet I often forget it. Few understand the power of thought. If a man goes into a cave, shuts himself in, and thinks one really great thought and dies, that thought will penetrate the walls of that cave, vibrate through space, and at last permeate the whole human race. Such is the power of thought; be in no hurry therefore to give your thoughts to others. First have something to give. He alone teaches who has something to give, for teaching is not talking, teaching is not imparting doctrines, it is communicating. Spirituality can be communicated just as really as I can give you a flower. This is true in the most literal sense. This idea is very old in India and finds illustration in the West in the theory, in the belief, of apostolic succession. Therefore, first make...