Swami Vivekananda, the Living Vedanta Quotes

“The essence of the Vedanta is that there is but one Being and that every soul is that Being in full, not a part of that Being. All the sun is reflected in each dew-drop…We are not drops to fall into the ocean and be lost; each one is the whole, infinite ocean, and will know it when released from the fetters of illusion. Infinity cannot be divided, the ‘One without a second’ can have no second, all is that One. This knowledge will come to all, but we should struggle to attain it now, because until we have it, we cannot really give mankind the best help.89”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“…I have become horribly radical. I am just going to India to see what I can do in that awful mass of conservative jelly-fish, and start a new thing, entirely new—simple, strong, new, and fresh as the first born baby. The eternal, the infinite, the omnipresent, the omniscient is a principle, not a person. You, I, and everyone are but embodiments of that principle: and the more of this infinite principle is embodied in a person, the greater is he, and all in the end will be the perfect embodiment of that, and thus all will be one, as they are now essentially. This is all there is of religion, and the practice is through this feeling of oneness that is love.”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“This strong faith, expressed in even a stronger voice, of the man looked upon as the dominant voice of renascent Hinduism, is muted, ignored and forgotten by those who call themselves his disciples and followers. But, then, this is not the only teaching of Swami Vivekananda that is now muted, ignored and forgotten.”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“One who has given, however mistakenly, has not fallen, never—never—never. He who takes, has. Selfishness is the only sin.”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“At twenty years of age I was the most unsympathetic, uncompromising fanatic; I would not walk on the footpath on the theatre side of the streets in Calcutta. At thirty-three, I can live in the same house with prostitutes and never would think of saying a word of reproach to them. Is it degenerate? Or is it that I am broadening out into the Universal Love which is the Lord Himself?”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“In his letter of 10 June 1898 to Mohammed Sarfaraz Hussain of Nainital, Swami Vivekananda said: Whether we call it Vedantism or any ism, the truth is that Advaitism is the last word of religion and thought and the only position from which one can look upon all religions and sects with love. I believe it is the religion of the future enlightened humanity. The Hindus may get the credit of arriving at it earlier than other races, they being an older race than either the Hebrew or the Arab; yet practical Advaitism, which looks upon and behaves to all mankind as one’s own soul, was never developed among the Hindus. On the other hand, my experience is that if ever any religion approached to this equality in an appreciable manner, it is Islam and Islam alone. Therefore, I am firmly persuaded that without the help of practical Islam, theories of Vedantism, however fine and wonderful they may be, are entirely valueless to the vast mass of mankind. We want to lead mankind to the place where there is neither the Vedas, nor the Bible, nor the Koran; yet this has to be by harmonizing the Vedas, the Bible, and the Koran. Mankind ought to be taught that religions are the varied expressions of THE RELIGION, which is Oneness, so that each may choose the path that suits him best. For our motherland a junction of the two great systems, Hinduism and Islam—Vedanta brain and Islam body—is the only hope. I see in my mind’s eye the future perfect India rising out of this chaos and strife, glorious and invincible, with Vedanta brain and Islam body.”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“The Lord has shown me that religion is not in fault, but it is the Pharisees and Sadducees in Hinduism, hypocrites, who invent all sorts of engines of tyranny…”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“The masses will always have the person, the higher ones the principle. We want both. But principles are universal, not persons. Therefore stick to the principles he taught, let people think whatever they like of his person.80 The distinction Swami Vivekananda drew in this respect between ‘the masses’ and ‘the higher ones’ was, however, more conceptual than real. ‘The higher ones’ in India are occupied with the person no less than ‘the masses’ are, and no more mindful of the principles. Indeed, if there is mindfulness to principles, it is more visible among the masses than among the higher ones.”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“Swami Vivekananda knew the Hindu psyche embedded in the ‘Incarnation’ idea. He knew, too, that if that web were not cleared, what would remain would be the ‘Ramakrishna-Paramahamsa-is-God’ litany, and his essential message to our troubled times drowned in the ringing of bells and the waving of lamps, morning and noon and evening, in front of his photograph. Immediately after saying to his brother-monks that he was ready to lay down his life to help Sri Ramakrishna’s message spread all over the world, he said: What I am most afraid of is the worship-room. It is not bad in itself, but there is a tendency in some to make this all in all and set up that old-fashioned nonsense over again—this is what makes me nervous. I know why they busy themselves with those old, effete ceremonials. Their spirit craves for work, but having no outlet they waste their energy in ringing bells and all that.”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“…it is not necessary to preach that Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was an Incarnation, and things of that sort. He came to do good to the world, not to trumpet his own name—you must always remember this. Disciples pay their whole attention to the preservation of their master’s name, and throw overboard his teachings; and sectarianism etc., are the result…I have nothing to do with sectarianism, or party-forming and playing the frog-in-the-well, whatever else I may do…It is impossible to preach the catholic ideas of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and form sects at the same time.”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“In the disciple mentality that has grown among those of Ramakrishna Order, to which the Indian mind is most prone anyway, anyone who loved and helped the Swami has promptly been described as his ‘disciple’. The truth is that neither Sri Ramakrishna nor Swami Vivekananda ever entertained this disciple business. Neither of them was out to make disciples, but only to open the minds of others to the incalculable treasures of the spirit that lie veiled within each human being, and then let each work out his and her freedom. Neither of them liked labels as descriptions of a person. The reader should recall what Sri Ramakrishna had said when Dr Mahendra Lal Sarkar, his physician, told him that his son Amrit was a disciple of his (Sri Ramakrishna’s).76 ‘There is not a fellow under the sun who is my disciple. On the contrary, I’m everybody’s disciple. All are the children of God. All are His Servants. I too am a child of God. I too am His servant.”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“…I hate this world, this dream, this horrible nightmare, with its churches and chicaneries, its books and black-guardisms, its fair faces and false hearts, its howling righteousness on the surface and utter hollowness beneath, and, above all, its sanctified shopkeeping. What! Measure my soul according to what the bond-slaves of the world say?”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“Come out, if you can, of this network of foolishness they call this world. Then I will call you indeed brave and free. If you cannot, cheer those that dare dash this false God, society, to the ground and trample on its unmitigated hypocrisy; if you cannot cheer them pray, be silent, but do not try to drag them down again into the mire with such false nonsense as compromise and becoming nice and sweet.”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“In one word, I have a message to give. I have no time to be sweet to the world, and every attempt at sweetness makes me a hypocrite. I will die a thousand deaths rather than lead a jelly-fish existence and yield to every requirement of this foolish world, no matter whether it be my own country or a foreign country. You are mistaken, utterly mistaken, if you think I have a work, as Mrs. Bull thinks; I have no work under or beyond the sun. I have a message, and I will give it after my own fashion. I will neither Hinduise my message, nor Christianise it, nor make it any ‘ise’ in the world. I will only my-ise it and that is all. Liberty, Mukti, is all my religion, and everything that tries to curb it, I will avoid by fight or flight.”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“the attitude commonly seen among the spiritually great and those believed to be enlightened souls is that they owe nothing to ordinary mortals, and none among the latter will ever presume that they do. The ordinary mortal is conditioned to think that, should no more than even their fleeting glance float towards him or her, it is he, or she, who would owe a deep debt of gratitude to them. This is the result of the theory of anugraha or ‘grace’. And grace in spiritual India is always a one-way street. Sri Ramakrishna, among the greatest of mystic saints, was singularly free from that attitude.”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“…American women! A hundred lives would not be sufficient to pay my deep debt of gratitude to you! I have not words enough to express my gratitude to you! ‘The Oriental hyperbole’ alone expresses the depth of Oriental gratitude—‘If the Indian Ocean were an inkstand, the highest mountain of the Himalayas, the pen, the earth, the scroll and time itself, the writer, still it will not express my gratitude to you!’ Last year I came to this country in summer, a wandering preacher of a far distant country, without name, fame, wealth, or learning to recommend me—friendless, helpless, almost in a state of destitution—and American women befriended me, gave me shelter and food, took me to their homes and treated me as their own son, their own brother. They stood my friends even when their own priests were trying to persuade them to give up the ‘dangerous heathen’—even when day after day their best friends had told them not to stand by this ‘unknown foreigner, may be, of dangerous character’. But they are better judges of character and soul—for it is the pure mirror that catches the reflection.”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“John Stuart Mill, in his Autobiography, had acknowledged his intellectual and emotional debt to Mrs Harriet Taylor (1807–1858), who had liberated him from his father’s soul-less utilitarianism, and later (in 1851) became his wife. John Stuart Mill was the Swami’s favourite English philosopher.51 The editor who wrote the introduction to Mill’s Autobiography expressed his, unwritten but visible, astonishment bordering on disbelief, not that so great a mind as John Stuart Mill should have owed so much to another, but that so great a mind should have owed so much to a woman!52 Mill must have been applauding, from heavens above, another great mind acknowledging his debt to women. Swami Vivekananda was expressing his gratitude to women, not only to them but was also conveying it to his countrymen first of all.”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“Those who, even in a chapel, would think this is a public woman, that man is of a low caste, a third is poor, and yet another belongs to the masses—the less be the number of such people (whom you call gentlemen, that is), the better. Will they who look to the caste, sex, or profession of Bhaktas appreciate our Lord? I pray to the Lord that hundreds of public women may come and bow their heads at His feet; it does not matter if not one gentleman comes. Come public women, come drunkards, come thieves and all—His gate is open to all.”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“As a sannyasin, Swami Vivekananda had taken two vows: of poverty and chastity; and these two vows he never broke. Having made this limited statement about him—in the genre ‘he never did this, he never did that’—it must be said that Swami Vivekananda was far too great a person to be measured by the yardstick of sexual chastity alone. One day, I hope, some student of human psyche will devote his, or her, attention to the question: why is it that, to the Hindu mind, sexual chastity confers such an extraordinary value (even upon a fool)? That Swami Vivekananda remained sexually chaste, and there is no evidence that he did not, is by no means central to his personality and its meaning to our times. What is important about him is the fact that, although he put distinct emphasis on the need to transmute sexual energy into spiritual force, and praised chastity highly, he did not reduce spirituality to sexual chastity. As if one could, by walking the path only of sexual chastity, see God. Swami Vivekananda kept saying, ‘God is no fool!’ Selflessness, concern for the happiness of the other, freedom and liberty to others, trust, childlike simplicity, honesty to himself and to others, and the power to awaken the deeper self of another by his love—manifest in every relationship of Swami Vivekananda—were infinitely more worthy of respect and example.”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta

“In his own words, repeated with varying degrees of emphasis, Swami Vivekananda was saying that the Hinduism he was talking about was not the brahmanical Hinduism of priests and pundits, the Hinduism of ceremonials and rituals and of caste restrictions, if that is what was meant by ‘orthodox Hinduism’. ‘Was I ever an orthodox, Pauranika Hindu, an adherent of social usages? I do not pose as one.’27 He was preaching the Hinduism the essence of which is to be found in the Upanishads. His message was the message of the Vedanta and the Vedanta is not ‘Hinduism’; it is the universal foundation of what religion truly is, beyond its Semitic meanings. Even his Vedanta was not the Vedanta confined to some ontological theory of man and the universe; it was the living Vedanta, to be realized in the oneness of all life, not in theory alone but in daily practice, in the living of relationships. Swami Vivekananda was no salesman of ‘Hinduism’; indeed, he was a salesman of no ism. Rather, living in Truth and in God, he was a scourge of all isms.”
― Chaturvedi Badrinath, Swami Vivekananda: The Living Vedanta