1st March 2024- “Mother, manifested as light in all beings, we bow down to Thee!” She is equally in suffering, hunger, pleasure, sublimity.
5th March 2024- Just as a race advances, so individuals have to advance. The steps which the human race has taken to reach to the highest pinnacles of religious thought, every individual will have to take. Only, while the human race took millions of years to reach from one step to another, individuals may live the whole life of the human race in a much shorter duration. But each one of us will have to go through these steps.
6th March 2024- Tremendous contradictions in our intellect, in our knowledge, in all facts of our life face us on all sides. A reformer arises and wants to remedy the evils that are existing in a certain nation; and before they have been remedied, a thousand other evils arise in another place. It is like an old house that is falling; you patch it up in one place and the ruin extends to another. … It is like chronic rheumatism: you drive it from the head, and it goes to the body; you drive it from there, and it goes to the feet.
7th March 2024- “When the bee sucks honey, the Lord is eating.” Knowing that the Lord is everywhere, the sages give up praising and blaming. Know that nothing can hurt you. How? Are you not free? Are you not Ātman? The Ātman is “the Life of our lives, the hearing of our ears, the sight of our eyes.” (Retreat given at the Thousand Island Park, USA. June 19, 1895. Complete Works, 7.6. The second quote is from Kena Upaniṣhad, 1.2.)
8th March 2024- Ignorance constitutes the only darkness, which makes all things look mysterious. When everything is lighted by knowledge, the sense of mystery vanishes from the face of things. Even such an inscrutable thing as Maya, which seemingly brings the most impossible things to pass, disappears.
12th March 2024- The action of healing men at a glance is forgotten, but Christ’s saying, “Blessed are the pure in heart,” that lives today. These words are a gigantic magazine of power-inexhaustible. So long as the human mind lasts, so long as the name of God is not forgotten, these words will roll on and on and never cease to be. These are the powers Jesus taught, and the powers he had. The power of purity-that is a definite power.
Sri Sri Ramakrishna Jayanti
अद्वय तत्त्व समाहित चित्तं
प्रोज्ज्वल भक्तिपटावृतवृत्तम्।।
कर्म कलेवरमद्भुतचेष्टं
यामि गुरुं शरणं भववैद्यम्।
नरदेव देव जय जय नरदेव।।४।।
श्रीमद् स्वामी विवेकानन्द विरचितं श्रिरमक्रिष्णस्तोत्रम्।।
I surrender myself to my Guru the Nara-Deva, the physician for the malady of this Samsāra (relative existence), whose mind ever dwelt on the non-dualistic Truth, whose personality was covered by the cloth of Supreme Devotion, who was ever active (for the good of humanity) and whose actions were all superhuman. Hail, O Lord of Men! Victory unto You!
-(A Hymn to Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol 8, Writings: Prose and Poems)
13th March 2024- We go through the world like a man pursued by a policeman and see the barest glimpses of the beauty of it. All this fear that pursues us comes from the believing in matter. Matter gets its existence from the presence of mind behind it. What we see is God percolating through nature. (Retreat given at the Thousand Island Park, USA. June 19, 1895. Complete Works, 7.6. In this quote, “nature” is used in the sense of matter and mind.)
14th March 2024- When the mind has been trained to remain fixed on a certain internal or external location, there comes to it the power of flowing in an unbroken current, as it were, towards that point. This state is called Dhyāna.
When one has so intensified the power of Dhyāna as to be able to reject the external part of perception and remain meditating only on the internal part, the meaning, that state is called Samādhi.
The three-Dhārana, Dhyāna, and Samādhi-together, are called Samyama. That is, if the mind can first concentrate upon an object, and then is able to continue in that concentration for a length of time, and then, by continued concentration, to dwell only on the internal part of the perception of which the object was the effect, everything comes under the control of such a mind.
15th March 2024- My children, the secret of religion lies not in theories but in practice. To be good and to do good–that is the whole of religion.
16th March 2024- Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.
19th March 2024- The Indo-Aryan, which spent the best part of its energies in the inquiry into the nature of man as a thinking being, soon found out that beyond this body, beyond even the shining body which their forefathers longed after, is the real person, the principle, the individual who clothes himself with this body, and then throws it off when worn out. Was such a principle created? If creation means something coming out of nothing, their answer is a decisive “No.” This soul is without birth and without death; it is not a compound or combination but an independent individual, and as such it cannot be created or destroyed.
20th March 2024- Know God, think of God, by knowing whom everything else is known. And when the Atman is realized, the essence of all scriptures will be perceived as clearly as a fruit on the palm of one’s hand.
The greater a man has become, the fiercer ordeal he has had to pass through.
22nd March 2024- One who does a lower work is not a lowly person. No one should be judged by the mere nature of their duties. All should be judged by the manner and the spirit in which they perform their duties.
26th March 2024- This Atman is the same in all, there is only a difference of manifestation in different individuals. Try to manifest the Atman, and you will see your intellect penetrating into all subjects. The intellect of one who has not realized the Atman is one-sided, whereas the genius of the knower of Atman is all-embracing. With the manifestation of the Atman you will find that science, philosophy and everything will be easily mastered. Proclaim the glory of the Atman with roar of a lion, and impart fearlessness unto all beings by saying, “Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached.”
27th March 2024- Those of you who are nondualists look back to the period of your lives when you were strong dualists. As soon as you think you are a body and a mind, you will have to take the whole of this dream. If you take one portion, you must take the whole. The person who says, here in this world, but there is no (personal) God, is a fool; because if there is a world, there will have to be a cause, and that is what is God. You cannot have an effect without knowing that there is a cause. God will only vanish when this world vanishes; then you will become God (Absolute) and this world.
28th March 2024- In worshiping Christ, in praying to him, we must always remember what we are seeking. Not those foolish things of miraculous display, but the wonderful powers of the Spirit, which make us free, give us control over the whole of nature, take from us the badge of slavery, and show God unto us.
29th March 2024- Don’t be ruffled if now and then you get a blow from the world. It will be over in no time, and everything will be alright.