Swami Vivekananda's Message(2)

The fact of our isolation from all the other nations of the world is the cause of our degeneration and its only remedy is getting back into the current of the rest of the world. Motion is the sign of life. America is a grand country. It is a paradise of the poor and women. There is almost no poor in the country, and nowhere else in the world women are so free, so educated, so cultured. They are everything in society.


This is a great lesson. The Sannyasin has not lost a bit of his Sannyasinship, even his mode of living. And in this most hospitable country, every home is open to me. The Lord who guides me in India, would He not guide me here? And He has.


You may not understand why a Sannyasin should be in America, but it was necessary. Because the only claim you have to be recognised by the world is your religion, and good specimens of our religious men are required to be sent abroad to give other nations an idea that India is not dead.


Some representative men must come out of India and go to all the nations of the earth to show at least that you are not savages. You may not feel the necessity of it from your Indian home, but, believe me, much depends upon that for your nation. And a Sannyasin who has no idea of doing good to his fellows is a brute, not a Sannyasin.


I am neither a sightseer nor an idle traveller; but you will see, if you live to see, and bless me all your life.

Bear in mind--the eyes are two in number and so the ears, but the mouth is but one! Indifference, indifference, indifference! " --The doer of good deeds never comes to grief, my dear". Ah! To fear! and whom are we going to fear, brother? Here the missionaries and their ilk have howled themselves into silence--and the whole world will but do likewise.


--Whether people skilled in policy praise or blame, whether the Goddess of Fortune favours or goes her way, whether death befalls today or after hundreds of years--persons of steady mind never swerve from the path of righteousness" (Bhartrihari, Nitishataka )


You need not even mix with the humdrum people, nor beg of them either. The Lord is supplying everything and will do so in future. What fear, my brother?


All great undertakings are achieved through mighty obstacles. You valiant one, put forth your manly efforts; wretched people under the grip of lust and gold deserve to be looked upon with indifference. Now I have got a firm footing in this country, and therefore need no assistance. But my one prayer to you all is that you should apply to the service of the Lord that active impulse of manliness which your eagerness to help me through brotherly love has brought out in you.


Take care and work on.


-Swami Vivekananda.