Some beutiful thoughs of Great Swami Vivekanda on Hindu religion :
“Three religions now stand in the world which have come down to us from time prehistoric - Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism. They have all received tremendous shocks and all of them prove, by their survival, their internal strength. But while Judaism failed to absorb Christianity and was driven out of its place of birth by its all - conquering daughter, and a handful of Parsees is all that remains to tell the tale of their grand religion, sect after sect arose in India and seemed to shake
the religion of the Vedas to its foundations, but like the waters of the seashore in a tremendous earthquake, it receded only for a while, only to return in an all - absorbing flood, a thousand times more vigorous, and when the tumult of the rush, was over these sects were all sucked in absorbed and assimilated into the immense body of the mother faith.”
“From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists, and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hindu’s religion.”
“The Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realizing - not in believing, but in being and becoming. Thus the whole object of their system is by constant struggle to become perfect, to become divine, to reach God and see God, and this reaching God, becoming perfect, even as the father in Heaven is perfect, constitutes the religion of the Hindus.”
“We not only tolerate, but we Hindus accept every religion, praying in the mosque of the Mohamedans, worshipping before the fire of the Zoroastrians, and kneeling before the cross of the Christians, knowing that all the religions, from the lowest fetishism, mean so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realize the infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and association, and each of them making a stage of progress. We gather all these flowers and bind them with the twine of love, making a wonderful bouquet ofworship”
"The religion of the Vedanta can satisfy the demands of the scientific world, by referring it to the highest generalization and to the law of evolution. "
"Vedanta lays down that each man should be treated not as what he manifests, but as what he stands for. Each human being
stands for the divine, and, therefore, every teacher should be helpful, not by condemning man, but by helping him to call
forth the divinity that is within him. "
“In India there never was any religious persecution by the Hindus, but only that wonderful reverence, which they have for all the religions of the world.”
"If your mind says something and the Vedas say something else, stop your mind and believe in the Vedas. "
"Not only is Vedanta the highest philosophy in the world, but it is the greatest poem. "
“In one word, the ideal of Vedanta is to know man as he really is and this is its message, that if you cannot worship your brother
man, the manifested God, how can you worship a God who is unmanifested?”
"Taking country with country, there is not one race on this earth to which the world owes so much as to the patient Hindu, the mild Hindu. The mild Hindu' sometimes is used as an expression of reproach; but if ever a reproach - concealed a wonderful truth, it is in the termthe mild Hindu’ who has always been the blessed child of God. "
"One thing we may note that whereas you will find that good and great men of other countries take pride in tracing back their descent to some robber-baron who lived in a mountain fortress and emerged from time to time to plunder passing wayfarers, we, Hindus, on the other hand, take pride in being the descendants of Rishis and sages who lived on roots and fruits in mountain and caves, meditating on the Supreme. "
"We must remember that for all periods the Vedas are the final goal and authority, and if the Puranas differ in any respect from the Vedas, that part of the Puranas is to be rejected without mercy. "
“Here we are, the Hindu race, whose vitality, whose life-principle, whose very soul, as it were, is in religion.”
“…I think that it is Vedanta, and Vedanta alone that can become the universal religion of man, and no other is fitted for the role. Excepting our own, almost all the other great religions in the world are inevitably connected with the life or lives of one or more of their founders. All their theories, their teachings, their doctrines and their ethics are built round the life of a personal founder from whom they get their sanction, their authority and their power; and, strangely enough, upon the
historicity of the founder’s life is built, as it were, all the fabric of such religions. If there is one blow dealt to the historicity of that life, … if that rock of historicity … is shaken and shattered, the whole building tumbles down, broken absolutely, never to regain its lost status.”
"Every one of the great religions in the world, excepting our own, is built upon such historical characters; but ours rests upon principles. There is no man or woman who can claim to have created the Vedas. They are the embodiment of eternal principles; sages discovered them … "
“India alone was to be, of all lands, the land of toleration and of spirituality: … For one of the greatest sages that was ever born found out here in India even at that distant time, which history cannot reach and into whose gloom even tradition itself dares not peep - in that distant time the sage arose and declared Ekkam Sad Vipra Bahuda Vedanti - `He who exists is one; the sages
call Him variously”. This is one of the most memorable sentences that was ever uttered, one of the grandest truths that was ever discovered. And for us Hindus this truth has been the very backbone of our national existence. For throughout the vistas of the centuries of our national life this one idea - Ekkam Sad Vipra Bahuda Vedanti - comes down gaining in volume and in fullness till it has permeated the whole of our national existence, till it has mingled in our blood, and has become one with us.
“We live that grand truth in every vein, and our country has become the glorious land of religious tolerance. It is here and here alone that they build temples and churches for the religions which have come with the object of condemning our own religion.”
"…our religion is not based upon persons but on principles. That you obey your religion is not because it came through the
authority of a sage, no, not even of an incarnation of Krishna is not authority of the Vedas, but of vedas are the authority of the
Krishna himself. His glory is that he is the greatest preacher of the vedas that ever existed. "
"The Hindu can worship any sage and any saint from any country what so ever and as a fact we know that we go and worship
may times in the churches of the Christians and many, many times in the Mohammedan mosques and that is good. Why not? outs as I have said is the universal religion. It is intrusive enough is broad enough to include all the ideals. also the ideals of religion that already exist in the world can be
immediately included and we can patiently wait for all the ideals that are to come in the future to be taken in the same fashion, embraced in the infinite arms of the religion of the Vedanta "
"Ours is the religion of which Buddhism, with all its greatness is a rebel child, and of which Christianity is very patchy imitation. "
"Ours is the only religion that does not depend on a person or persons; it is based upon principles. "
“If there is any sect here which believes that Aum ought not to be the symbol of Hinduism it has no right to call itself Hindu.”
"Whether we are conscious of it or not we think the Vedanta, we live in the Vedanta, we believe the Vedanta and we die in the Vedanta, every Hindu
does that. To preach Vedanta in the land of India, and before an Indian audience seems therefore to be an anomaly. But it is the
one thing that has to be preached and it is the necessity of the age that it must be preached. "
If at present the word Hindu means anything bad never mind by our action let us be ready to show that this is the highest word and any language can invent. It had been one of the principles of my life not be ashamed of my own
ancestors.
"Aye when a man has begun to hate himself the last blow has come. When a man has begun to be ashamed of his own ancestors. The end has come. Here am I, one of the least of the Hindu race, yet proud of my race proud of my ancestors, I am proud to call myself a Hindu, I am proud to call myself a Hindu, I am proud that I am one of your unworthy servants. This proud that I am
a countrymen of yours;-you, the descendants for the sages, you the descendant of the most glorious Rishis the world ever saw. Therefor have faith in yourselves be proud of your ancestors instead of being ashamed of them. "
"I found Hinduism to be the most perfectly satisfying religion in the world. "
"The principles of the Vedanta not only should be preached everywhere in India but also outside. Our thought must enter into the make-up of the Hindus of every nation not through writings, but thorough persons. "
“No religion on earth preaches the dignity of humanity in such a lofty strain as Hinduism and no religion on earth treads upon the necks of the poor and the low in such a fashion as Hinduism.”
“the Hindu must not give up his religion but must keep religion, within its proper limits and give freedom to society to grow. All the reformers in India made the serious mistake of holding religion accountable for all the horrors of religion accountable of all the horrors of priest craft and degeneration and went forthwith to pull down the indestructible structure and what was the
result?”
