Many of you remember the thrill of joy with which in your childhood you saw the glorious rising sun; all of you, sometimes in your life, stand and gaze upon the glorious setting sun, and at least in imagination, try to pierce through the beyond. This, in fact, is at the bottom of the whole unive
Mary Tappan Wright was the wife of Harvard Professor of Greek, John Henry Wright, who was a good friend of Vivekananda. As a faculty spouse, she attended the swami 's talk at Radcliffe and recorded the following in her journal:
' The Necessity of Religion' was a lecture delivered by Swami Vivekananda in England in June 1896. While we have no intention of making any judgement on the editing of Swami Vivekananda's works, we feel it is important to point out that his lectures were edited. Much was done with his permission - i
Probably at the turn of the century, Miss Ellen Waldo gave these undated notes in Swami Vivekananda’s handwriting to her friend Sister Devamata, a member of the Boston Vedanta Centre, where they were later made available for publication.
In studying the religions of the world we generally find two methods of procedure. The one is from God to man. That is to say, we have the Semitic group of religions in which the idea of God comes almost from the very first, and, strangely enough, without any idea of soul. It was very remarkable
( Delivered under the auspices of tile Brooklyn Ethical Society, in the Art Gallery of tile Pouch Mansion, Clinton Avenue, Brooklyn, U.S.A. )
( Delivered at Dacca, 30th March, 1901 ) At Dacca Swamiji delivered two lectures in English. The first was on "What have I learnt?" and the second one was " The Religion we are born in ". The following is translated from a report in Bengali by a disciple, and it contains the substance of the fir
( Delivered at the Washington Hall, San Francisco, April 18, 1900 )
Those of you who have been attending my lectures for the last month or so must, by this time, be familiar with the ideas contained in the Vedanta philosophy. Vedanta is the most ancient religion of the world; but it can never be said to have become popular. Therefore the question "Is it going to
( Delivered at the Washington Hall, San Francisco, April 3, 1900 )
My subject is "Discipleship". I do not know how you will take what I have to say. It will be rather difficult for you to accept it — the ideals of teachers and disciples in this country vary so much from those in ours. An old proverb of India comes to my mind: "There are hundreds of thousands of
Buddhism is historically the most important religion — historically, not philosophically — because it was the most tremendous religious movement that the world ever saw, the most gigantic spiritual wave ever to burst upon human society. There is no civilisation on which its effect has not been f
( Delivered at the Washington Hall, San Francisco, March 16, 1900 )
( Delivered at the Shakespeare Club, Pasadena, California, on February 3, 1900 )
( Delivered at the Shakespeare Club, Pasadena, California, on February 2, 1900 )
( Delivered at the Shakespeare Club, Pasadena, California, on February 1, 1900 )
( Delivered at the Shakespeare Club, Pasadena, California, on January 31, 1900 )
( Delivered at the Shakespeare Club House, in Pasadena, California, on January 27, 1900 )
( Delivered at the Shakespeare Club House, in Pasadena, California, on January 18, 1900 )
All over the world there has been the belief in the supernatural throughout the ages. All of us have heard of extraordinary happenings, and many of us have had some personal experience of them. I would rather introduce the subject by telling you certain facts which have come within my own experi
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,
The Swami Vivekananda presided over a meeting at which the Sister Nivedita (Miss M. E. Noble) delivered a lecture on "The Influence of Indian Spiritual Thought in England" on 11th March, 1898, at the Star Theatre, Calcutta. Swami Vivekananda on rising to introduce Miss Noble spoke as follows:
On his arrival at Almora, Swamiji received an Address of Welcome in Hindi from the citizens of Almora, of which the following is a translation:
On his arrival in Calcutta, the Swami Vivekananda was greeted with intense enthusiasm, and the whole of his progress through the decorated streets of the city was thronged with an immense crowd waiting to have a sight of him. The official reception was held a week later, at the residence of the
During his stay in Madras the Swami presided at the annual meeting of the Chennapuri Annadâna Samâjam, an institution of a charitable nature, and in the course of a brief address referred to a remark by a previous speaker deprecating special alms-giving to the Brahmin over and above the other ca
This is the ancient land where wisdom made its home before it went into any other country, the same India whose influx of spirituality is represented, as it were, on the material plane, by rolling rivers like oceans, where the eternal Himalayas, rising tier above tier with their snowcaps, look a
In speaking of the sages of India, my mind goes back to those periods of which history has no record, and tradition tries in vain to bring the secrets out of the gloom of the past. The sages of India have been almost innumerable, for what has the Hindu nation been doing for thousands of years
The problem of life is becoming deeper and broader every day as the world moves on. The watchword and the essence have been preached in the days of yore when the Vedantic truth was first discovered, the solidarity of all life. One atom in this universe cannot move without dragging the whole wo
As the other day we could not proceed, owing to the crowd, I shall take this opportunity of thanking the people of Madras for the uniform kindness that I have received at their hands. I do not know how better to express my gratitude for the beautiful words that have been expressed in the addre
When the Swami Vivekananda arrived at Madras an address of welcome was presented to him by the Madras Reception Committee. It read as follows:
