Vivekananda!
I was recently asked to talk about Swami Vivekananda and how his life and works are relevant today. Here are the excerpts from that speech.
I would like to start with a sanskrit hymn for the Guru -
"Gurur brahma
gurur vishnu
gurur devo maheshwara
gurur sakshat parabrahma
tasmai shri guruve namaha",
which roughly translates as -
"Guru is Brahma, Guru isVishnu, Guru is Shiva
Guru is the absolute Brahman
Therefore I bow down to the Guru"
We are here today to celebrate Swamiji's life and message on his 156th birth anniversary. First I want to thank Mataji who has honored me by asking me to talk about my inspiration, my Guru - Swami Vivekananda. I am going to talk about how Swamiji changed my life!
I came across Vivekananda in my late 20s when life was extremely comfortable for me. I was married to an amazing husband, had a great job, house, car, money and everything that a girl my age would need to lead a successful life. I was very happy initially until after a few years that comfort became uncomfortable, the parties and hanging out with friends was no longer bringing me any joy. It all felt very empty, meaningless, nothing. I thought was this all that was to life? In a few years I will have kids and get busy with them and life will keep moving. Is there nothing more than this? I felt lost.
Around this time I started reading again...in an attempt to have something introspective in my life. Of course that time I was not aware of it! I then stumbled upon this book - "Tao of Physics" by Fritjof Capra. In there I read a quote by Swami Vivekananda - "Time, space and causation are like the glass through which the Absolute is seen...In the Absolute there is neither time, space nor causation". I found it so profound, pondering on it's meaning for weeks that followed. I started searching for Vivekananda on the internet and started frantically looking for a place where I could talk, read and understand more about Vivekananda. It was after weeks of searching that I found the Vedanta Ashram of Phoenix exactly 10 years back in mid January. It was a few days past Swami Vivekananda's birthday and He was truly born in my heart that day!
I started reading his "Complete Works" and his biographies that year. Every chapter was gradually shedding more light on what the core values of life should be. His ideas were so grand and so full of heart! In his speech at the Parliament of Religions he says "I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance". It made me think of the diversities that surrounded me while living here in America and how much I did not agree with some political or social views. I always knew about tolerance but putting the thought of "acceptance" to it was something magnificent for me. Something that expanded my heart. I don't just tolerate you but I accept you the way you are and we both move forward.
I was raised in India and have always worshiped Intelligence. It was easy for me to get attracted to Swami Vivekananda given his penchant of applying scientific reasoning to religion and spiritual values. But as I read more and more I was deeply inspired by this quote of his - "Let us then join the wonderful intellect of the Hindus with the heart, the noble soul and the wonderful humanizing power of the Buddha". It made me think how important the heart was along with the intellect. In our schools we were taught to worship intelligence and nobody talked much about the heart, about real character development. He emphasized that character development was everything and should be the one important thing that schools need to focus on. As a lover of logic and science and all things intellectual he however still goes a step further and says this "Whenever there is a conflict between pure heart and intellect always side with the heart"!. He taught me to look at the world with my heart and develop my "muscle" of compassion. Everything I looked at was with this glass of compassion. It started out slow but I started loving it. The more I thought about it, the more easy it became for me. One way of manifesting love for our human family was volunteering and charity and I ventured into that. Connecting with a fellow human and helping her was joyful and it brought tremendous value to my life. I felt good, I felt useful and I experienced the power of kindness. In my moment of pride that I was doing all this with all my heart, Swamiji reminded me of what it meant to help others - "Our duty to others means helping others, doing good to the world. Why should we do good to the world? Apparently to help the world, but really to help ourselves. We are all debtors to the world and the world does not owe us anything. It is a great privilege for all of us to be allowed to do anything for the world. By helping the world, we help ourselves!".
One of the other things that I struggled in my life was my career. I could never love my job and my profession and I always complained that I should have chosen something else that I loved and always dreamed of as a child. Lot of Swamiji's writings on Karma Yoga quote the Bhagawad Gita and what work really means. I quote "Be unattached, let things work, let brain centers work, work incessantly, but let not a ripple conquer the mind". I loved the theory but was not able to practice it. The whole notion of working for work's sake, for the love of work, as an act of worship were big ideals but I could not make peace with them. I was getting torn between "Follow your Heart" and "It doesn't matter what you do but how you do it" ideals. My heart wanted to stop everything and start studying medicine but my Guru's words made me contemplate on the real nature of work. Was happiness something outside me? Will I be happy if I became a doctor and was that the only thing that was coming in my way? If I cannot do the task at hand with utmost love and concentration, how can I trust myself with doing something that was completely new to me with a lot of dedication? Was my love and dedication for work so dependent on what work I do? Cause if that was true, then I had to dig deeper in my soul to find out what work and happiness really meant to me. I tried various things to figure out if that was what I wanted like going to a community college and taking medical courses, working in a Hospice, etc. and I realized that true happiness from your work comes when you connect with your work, you do your work with all your heart, with a purpose of using your skills to serve the people and the world around you and having gratitude to be able to do that. I can today say that I love my work and find immense joy in just being able to contribute to the world through it. One of my guiding quotes for work and success by Swamiji is this - "Take up one idea, make that one idea your life, think of it, dream of it, 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."
To complete the circle, from where I started, I think Swami Vivekananda gave meaning to my life. The emptiness I felt was filled with purpose and the joy that comes from it. If I have to summarize the purpose of my life in one line it would be by using Ramakrishna Mission's motto as given by Swami Vivekananda - "Atmano mokshartham, jagad hitaya cha" which means "For your own evolution and for the goodness of the world". Everything I do, I think of these two things. This just says it out loud what I want my life to be. I will be forever grateful to Swamiji for bringing meaning to my life and for making me contemplate on the real things of the world.
I will end my talk with a quote by Swami Vivekananda -
"May He who is the Brahman of the Hindus, the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Buddha of the Buddhists, the Jenovah of the Jews, the Father in Heaven of the Christians, give strength to you to carry out your noble idea!"
Jai Swamiji!
I would like to start with a sanskrit hymn for the Guru -
"Gurur brahma
gurur vishnu
gurur devo maheshwara
gurur sakshat parabrahma
tasmai shri guruve namaha",
which roughly translates as -
"Guru is Brahma, Guru isVishnu, Guru is Shiva
Guru is the absolute Brahman
Therefore I bow down to the Guru"
We are here today to celebrate Swamiji's life and message on his 156th birth anniversary. First I want to thank Mataji who has honored me by asking me to talk about my inspiration, my Guru - Swami Vivekananda. I am going to talk about how Swamiji changed my life!
I came across Vivekananda in my late 20s when life was extremely comfortable for me. I was married to an amazing husband, had a great job, house, car, money and everything that a girl my age would need to lead a successful life. I was very happy initially until after a few years that comfort became uncomfortable, the parties and hanging out with friends was no longer bringing me any joy. It all felt very empty, meaningless, nothing. I thought was this all that was to life? In a few years I will have kids and get busy with them and life will keep moving. Is there nothing more than this? I felt lost.
Around this time I started reading again...in an attempt to have something introspective in my life. Of course that time I was not aware of it! I then stumbled upon this book - "Tao of Physics" by Fritjof Capra. In there I read a quote by Swami Vivekananda - "Time, space and causation are like the glass through which the Absolute is seen...In the Absolute there is neither time, space nor causation". I found it so profound, pondering on it's meaning for weeks that followed. I started searching for Vivekananda on the internet and started frantically looking for a place where I could talk, read and understand more about Vivekananda. It was after weeks of searching that I found the Vedanta Ashram of Phoenix exactly 10 years back in mid January. It was a few days past Swami Vivekananda's birthday and He was truly born in my heart that day!
I started reading his "Complete Works" and his biographies that year. Every chapter was gradually shedding more light on what the core values of life should be. His ideas were so grand and so full of heart! In his speech at the Parliament of Religions he says "I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance". It made me think of the diversities that surrounded me while living here in America and how much I did not agree with some political or social views. I always knew about tolerance but putting the thought of "acceptance" to it was something magnificent for me. Something that expanded my heart. I don't just tolerate you but I accept you the way you are and we both move forward.
I was raised in India and have always worshiped Intelligence. It was easy for me to get attracted to Swami Vivekananda given his penchant of applying scientific reasoning to religion and spiritual values. But as I read more and more I was deeply inspired by this quote of his - "Let us then join the wonderful intellect of the Hindus with the heart, the noble soul and the wonderful humanizing power of the Buddha". It made me think how important the heart was along with the intellect. In our schools we were taught to worship intelligence and nobody talked much about the heart, about real character development. He emphasized that character development was everything and should be the one important thing that schools need to focus on. As a lover of logic and science and all things intellectual he however still goes a step further and says this "Whenever there is a conflict between pure heart and intellect always side with the heart"!. He taught me to look at the world with my heart and develop my "muscle" of compassion. Everything I looked at was with this glass of compassion. It started out slow but I started loving it. The more I thought about it, the more easy it became for me. One way of manifesting love for our human family was volunteering and charity and I ventured into that. Connecting with a fellow human and helping her was joyful and it brought tremendous value to my life. I felt good, I felt useful and I experienced the power of kindness. In my moment of pride that I was doing all this with all my heart, Swamiji reminded me of what it meant to help others - "Our duty to others means helping others, doing good to the world. Why should we do good to the world? Apparently to help the world, but really to help ourselves. We are all debtors to the world and the world does not owe us anything. It is a great privilege for all of us to be allowed to do anything for the world. By helping the world, we help ourselves!".
One of the other things that I struggled in my life was my career. I could never love my job and my profession and I always complained that I should have chosen something else that I loved and always dreamed of as a child. Lot of Swamiji's writings on Karma Yoga quote the Bhagawad Gita and what work really means. I quote "Be unattached, let things work, let brain centers work, work incessantly, but let not a ripple conquer the mind". I loved the theory but was not able to practice it. The whole notion of working for work's sake, for the love of work, as an act of worship were big ideals but I could not make peace with them. I was getting torn between "Follow your Heart" and "It doesn't matter what you do but how you do it" ideals. My heart wanted to stop everything and start studying medicine but my Guru's words made me contemplate on the real nature of work. Was happiness something outside me? Will I be happy if I became a doctor and was that the only thing that was coming in my way? If I cannot do the task at hand with utmost love and concentration, how can I trust myself with doing something that was completely new to me with a lot of dedication? Was my love and dedication for work so dependent on what work I do? Cause if that was true, then I had to dig deeper in my soul to find out what work and happiness really meant to me. I tried various things to figure out if that was what I wanted like going to a community college and taking medical courses, working in a Hospice, etc. and I realized that true happiness from your work comes when you connect with your work, you do your work with all your heart, with a purpose of using your skills to serve the people and the world around you and having gratitude to be able to do that. I can today say that I love my work and find immense joy in just being able to contribute to the world through it. One of my guiding quotes for work and success by Swamiji is this - "Take up one idea, make that one idea your life, think of it, dream of it, 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."
To complete the circle, from where I started, I think Swami Vivekananda gave meaning to my life. The emptiness I felt was filled with purpose and the joy that comes from it. If I have to summarize the purpose of my life in one line it would be by using Ramakrishna Mission's motto as given by Swami Vivekananda - "Atmano mokshartham, jagad hitaya cha" which means "For your own evolution and for the goodness of the world". Everything I do, I think of these two things. This just says it out loud what I want my life to be. I will be forever grateful to Swamiji for bringing meaning to my life and for making me contemplate on the real things of the world.
I will end my talk with a quote by Swami Vivekananda -
"May He who is the Brahman of the Hindus, the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Buddha of the Buddhists, the Jenovah of the Jews, the Father in Heaven of the Christians, give strength to you to carry out your noble idea!"
Jai Swamiji!
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