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In the beginning of our spiritual life, we depend upon, and are taught to depend upon, ourselves; we practice self-reliance and strengthen ourselves. And thus we start our long march of human growth and fulfillment. All the early chapters of the Gita are largely concerned with this growth of human individuality, with this development of individual identity and character-strength, as an integral part of its philosophy of a comprehensive spirituality, which is the yoga taught by the Gita.

That is a significant truth, which we often miss to recog­nize and act upon. Swami Vivekananda presents it as the central truth of his philosophy of man-making education and man-making religion. Says he in his lecture on ‘My Plan of Campaign’ (Complete Works, Vol. III, 1960 edition, pp. 224-25):

‘What we want is strength, so believe in yourselves. …Make your nerves strong. What we want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel. We have wept long enough; no more weeping, but stand on your feet and be men. It is a man-making religion that we want. It is man-making theories that we want. It is man-making education all round that we want. And here is the test of truth: Anything that makes you weak, physically, intellectually, and spiritually, reject as poison; there is no life in it, it can­not be true. Truth is strengthening; Truth is purity, Truth is all-know­ledge.’

Say two popular verses of the Indian tradition:

Udyoginam purusa-simham upaiti laksmi daivena deyamiti kapurusa vadanti;

Daivam nihatya kuru paurusam atmasaktya Yatne krte yadi na siddhyati ko’tra dosah—

‘Lakshmi, or the goddess of Fortune, comes only to the industrious lion among men; it is only weaklings that say that we have to take what fate brings unto us; forsake this dependence on fate and express your manli­ness through the strength of self-reliance; what harm is there if no results come after you put forth your endeavour?‘

Udyamena hi sidhyanti Karyani na manorathaih;

 Na hi suptasya simhasya pravisanti mukhe mrgah—

‘It is, verily, only through industriousness that we accomplish what are to be achieved, not through vain day-dreamings; no deer are going to (oblige a lion and) enter into its mouth while (it is lazily) asleep!‘

That is the first great lesson. Gain physical strength and mental strength; develop your talents and capacities and work-efficiency; gain self-confidence, practise self-reliance; and earn knowledge and wealth by hard honest labour; and share your wealth and happiness with others and earn their good-will and appreciation. All this is part and parcel of the spiritual training of man in the early stages. Renunciation of wealth, renunciation of this ‘I’, complete surrender to God, comes later; not at the beginning.

Swami Vivekananda sought to emphasize this truth about human growth very much, because he found among his people many, who were weak and good-for-nothing and yet holding the attitude: ‘God, I am nothing, You are every­thing. I surrender myself to You.’ They are really nothing!

Obviously, there is nothing praiseworthy about their state­ment of self-surrender. It is meaningless to regard any one unfit for the world as fit for God (or spiritual life). God will say to Himself: ‘What shall I do with this fellow? He or she will be a burden to me. It is not a joy to have such a devotee; bhakti, or devotion to Me, is made of a sterner stuff.’

This is a great idea. The sooner we understand it, the better. Says Swami Vivekananda in his lecture on ‘Vedanta and Its Application to Indian Life’ (Complete Works, Vol. III, p. 237):

‘Strength, strength, is what the Upanishads preach to me from every page. . . . O Man, be not weak. Are there no human weaknesses?—says man. There are, say the Upanishads; but will more weakness heal them? Would you try to wash dirt with dirt? Will sin cure sin, weakness cure weakness? . . . Ay, it is the only literature in the world where you find the word abhih, fearless, used again and again.‘

Only clean things can remove dirt, only strength can remove weakness, only light can remove darkness.

Source: Divine Grace, by Swami Ranganathananda, Published by Sri Ramakrishna Math, Chennai.

       AN ILLUMINED LOVE which never degenerates into attachment, A SUPERIOR DIGNITY untainted by the least trace of pride, a SUBLIME WISDOM which sheds light but not scorching heat – these elements characterize true greatness, a spontaneous synthesis of truth and love, of strength and grace.

The truly great ones are whole and wholesome, not the victims of partial and mutually incompatible virtues so much apparent in lesser men. Their life as well as words reveal a fascinating harmony of rare qualities. Witness the struggles of the aspirant in whom one virtue can hardly co-exist with another; whose truth hurts, whose frankness is obviously ‘brutal’, whose sincerity is embarrassing, whose strength is withering, or whose sympathy and compassion only serve to encourage weaknesses.

It needs a perfected soul to harmonize strength and grace even under the most delicate and provocative of circumstances; and precisely one such was the Buddha, the Blessed One.

On one occasion his dear and remarkable disciple, Sariputra, approached the Guru in an exalted mood of adoration. After saluting reverently he took his seat by the Master’s side and burst into a high eulogy: “Lord! There is none greater than you, the Blessed One; there never has been any, there never will be, and none other exists now – greater or wiser. That is what I think; that is my faith.”

The Blessed One was free to accept this praise and adoration, coming as it did from a sincere heart; free to approve of it and bask in its welcome warmth – the way many lesser teachers are often tempted to do.

Or like certain stern ‘impersonalists’  he could have over-reacted, coming down heavily on the disciple and reduced him to pulp with stinging words and ridicule. None of the personality cult!

One way he could have inflated his own ego; the other way he could have broken and crushed that of the disciple. He did something infinitely better; made both shine out better.

Gently and calmly, he just put a counter-question: “Is that so Sariputra? Grand and bold indeed is your assertion. That means you have obviously known all the Blessed Ones of the whole past, and that thoroughly…?”

Honest that he was, Sariputra would not try to defend his position emotionally. Plain was his answer. “How can I say that, Lord? I can’t.”

A little pause, and the Buddha again inquired: “Then you must surely have known all the Blessed Ones yet to come, and that perfectly…?”

Sariputra might have felt embarrassed but that did not come in the way of his truthfulness. So he replied:  “Not so, O Lord… I have not.”

A little more pause and the Blessed One asked: “But then, at least you know me as the holy Buddha now alive, and you have penetrated my mind fully and completely…?”

Sariputra could only say, “No Lord… Not that even.”

The very nature of the question-answer process was enough to awaken the needed perspective in Sariputra’s mind. That done, the Buddha clinched the issue saying, “You see then, Sariputra! You know not the hearts of the Buddhas of the past nor the future… nor even of myself. How then can you make such a grand and bold statement?”

Sariputra admitted that his statement was not based on knowledge of facts but on his own deep faith, and tried to explain himself.

“Great is your faith, Sariputra,” declared the Blessed One appreciatively, yet at the same time adding the warning, “but take heed that it is well-grounded.”

The superior teacher, the right kind of Guru he was, the Buddha would not destroy the disciple’s faith nor allow it to run in wrong channels. He would not allow the other great ones to be belittled; but neither would he unnecessarily belittle himself, nor would he make the disciple feel small.

All concerned would be borne aloft by the uplifting breeze of gentle wisdom.

So it is no wonder that he declared on another occasion, “Those that take refuge in me with faith and devotion will get Svarga, paradise. Those who, with full faith, will follow my Dharma (the path of Truth) will become Buddhas like me.”

Source: Profiles in Greatness, Swami Sastrananda, Published by Sri Ramakrishna Math, Chennai, India.

We ask: When shall we begin our spiritual life? The Gita and the Upanishads answer: When you are young, when your body is strong, when your mind is fresh and vigorous. But the answer of an other-worldly piety will be quite otherwise; it will tell you: Begin to think of religion when you are old and jaded! Enjoy sensory pleasures to the full in your youth and manhood and concern yourself with your other-worldly prospects when the body becomes unfit for them.

The philosophy of Vedanta bridges the gulf between action and contemplation, work and worship, the secular and the sacred. This was the philosophy that Swami Vivekananda preached in East and West alike at the end of the last century. Highlighting its unifying vision, Sister Nivedita {Miss Margaret Noble) writes (‘Introduction: Our Master and His Message’, Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. 1, p. xv):

‘The many and the One are the same Reality, perceived by the mind at different times and in different attitudes.’

‘It is this which adds its crowning significance to our Master’s life, for here he becomes the meeting-point, not only of East and West, but also of past and future. If the many and the One be indeed the same Reality, then it is not all modes of worship alone, but equally all modes of work, all modes of struggle, all modes of creation, which are paths of realization. No distinction, henceforth, between sacred and secular. To labour is to pray. To conquer is to renounce. Life is itself religion. To have and to hold is as stern a trust as to quit and to avoid.’

‘This is the realization which makes Vivekananda the great preacher of karma (detached action), not as divorced from, but as expressing, jnana (Self-knowledge) and bkakti (love of God). To him, the workshop, the study, the farmyard, and the field are as true and fit scenes for the meet­ing of God with man as the cell of the monk or the door of the temple. To him, there is no difference between service of man and worship of God, between manliness and faith, between true righteousness and spiritu­ality.’

Pointing out what such a unifying philosophy means to the emerging world and to all modern men and women— theists or atheists, believers or agnostics —I cannot do any­thing better than quote a moving passage, almost prophetic in spirit, from a lecture of Swami Vivekananda on ‘The Necessity of Religion’ delivered in London in 1896 (Complete Works, Vol. II, Tenth Edition, pp. 67-68):

‘As the human mind broadens, its spiritual steps broaden too. The time has already come when a man cannot record a thought without its reaching to all corners of the earth; by merely physical means, we have come into touch with the whole world; so the future religions of the world have to become as universal, as wide.

‘The religious ideals of the future must embrace all that exists in the world and is good and great, and, at the same time, have infinite scope for future development. All that was good in the past must be preserved and the doors kept open for future addition to the already existing store. Religions must also be inclusive and not look down with contempt upon one another because their particular ideas of God are different. In my life I have seen a great many spiritual men, a great many sensible persons, Who did not believe in God at all, that is to say, not in our sense of the word. Perhaps they understood God better than we can ever do.

The Personal idea of God or the Impersonal, the Infinite, the Moral Law, or the Ideal Man—these all have to come under the definition of religion. And when religions have become thus broadened, their power for good will have increased a hundredfold. Religions having tremendous power in them have often done more injury to the world than good, simply on account of their narrowness and limitations.’

‘…Religious ideas will have to become universal, vast, and infinite, and then alone we shall have the fullest play of religion, for the power of religion has only just begun to manifest in the world. It is sometimes said that religions are dying out, that spiritual ideas are dying out of the world. To me it seems that they have just begun to grow. The power of religion, broadened and purified, is going to penetrate every part of human life. So long as religion was in the hands of a chosen few or of a body of priests, it was in temples, churches, books, dogmas, ceremonials, forms, and rituals. But when we come to the real, spiritual, universal concept, then and then alone religion will become real and living; it will come into our very nature, live in our every movement, penetrate every pore of our society, and be infinitely more a power for good than it has ever been before.’

Spiritual life, according to Vedanta, thus covers the whole range of man’s life, including its so called worldly stage [day-to-day life], when man is the sole and supreme agent of his life with no partner called God.

Source: Divine Grace, by Swami Ranganathananda, Published (1980) by Sri Ramakrishna Math, Chennai, India.

To live with Sri Ramakrishna was a great education. He taught his disciples how to attain perfection in service as well as samadhi. Harinath (later Swami Turiyananda) recalled:

One day at Dakshineswar the Master (Sri Ramakrishna) said to me:

“Go to the Panchavati. Some devotees had a picnic there. See if they have left anything behind. If you find anything, bring it here.”

I went and found an umbrella in one place, a knife in another place, and some other articles. I gathered them up and took them to the Master. The knife had been borrowed from him. I was just placing it on the shelf when he said:

“Where are you putting it? No, not there. Put it underneath this small bedstead. That is where it belongs. You must put everything in its proper place. Suppose I need the knife during the night. If you put it anywhere you please, I will have to go around the room in the dark, stretching out my arms in search of it, wondering where you put it. Is such a service a service? No! You do things as you like and thereby only cause trouble. If you want to serve properly, you should completely forget yourself.”

Source: Spiritual Treasures – Letters of Swami Turiyananda, p15, 1st Indian Edition, Swami Chetanananda, Advaita Ashrama Publication.