Patriotism...

Three things are necessary for great achievements :

First, feel from the heart. What is in the intellect or reason? It goes a few steps and there it stops. But through the heart comes inspiration.

Love opens the most impossible gates; love is the gate to all the secrets in the universe. Feel, therefore, my would-be reformers, my would-be patriots! Do you feel? Do you feel that the millions and millions of the descendants of gods and of sages have become next-door neighbours to brutes? Do you feel that millions have been starving today, and millions have been starving for ages? Do you feel that ignorance has come over the land as a dark crowd? Does it make you restless? Does it make you sleepless? Has it gone over your blood, coursing through your veins, becoming consonanant with your heart-beats? Has it made you almost mad? Are you seized with the one idea of misery and ruin, and have you forgotten all about your name, your fame, your wives, your children, your property, even your own bodies? Have you done that? This is the first step to become a patriot, the very first step.......

You may feel, then; but instead of spending your energies on frothy talk, have you found any way out, any practical solution, some help instead of condemnation, some sweet words to soothe their miseries, to bring them out of this living death?

Yet that is not all.

Have you got the will to surmount mountain high obstructions?

If the whole world stands against you sword in hand, would you still dare to do what you think is right? If your wife and children are against you, if all your money goes, your name dies, your wealth vanishes, would you still stick to it? Would you still pursue it and go on steadily towards your own goal? As the great King Bhartehari says (Niti-sataka, verse 74) :

Nindantu nitinpunah yadi va stuvantu
Laksmih samavisatu gacchatu va yathestam;
Adyaiva va maranamastu yugantare va
Nyayyat pathat pravicalanti padam na dhirah-

"Let the sages blame or let them praise;
let the goddess of fortune come or let her go wherever she likes;
let death come today, or let it come after millions of years;
he indeed is the steady man who does not move one inch from the way of truth."

Have you got that steadfastness?

If you have these three things, each one of you will make miracles.

Vivekananda on Love

I once had a friend who grew to be very close to me. Once when we were sitting at the edge of a swimming pool, she filled the palm of her hand with some water and held it before me, and said this: "You see this water carefully contained on my hand? It symbolizes Love. This was how I saw it: As long as you keep your hand caringly open and allow it to remain there, it will always be there. However, if you attempt to close your fingers round it and try to posses it, it will spill through the first cracks it finds. This is the greatest mistake that people do when they meet love ... they try to posses it, they demand, they expect ... and just like the water spilling out of your hand, love will retrieve from you. For love is meant to be free, you can not change its nature. If there are people you love, allow them to be free beings. Give and don't expect. Advise, but don't order. Ask, but never demand. It might sound simple, but it is a lesson that may take a lifetime to truly practice. It is the secret to true love.To truly practice it, you must sincerely feel no expectations from those who you love, and yet an unconditional caring.

Truth....

Freedom is the motive of the universe, freedom its goal. The laws of nature are the methods through which we are struggling to reach that freedom, under the guidance of Mother. This universal struggle for freedom attains its highest expression in our conscious desire to be free.

Death is only a change of condition. Time and space are in you; you are not in time and space. It is enough to know that as we make our lives purer and nobler, either in the seen or the unseen world, the nearer we approach God, who is the center of all spiritual beauty and eternal joy.

Our pessimism is a dread reality, our optimism is a faint cheering, making the best of a bad job.

On the one hand there is the conservative society, like a mass of inert matter and, on the other, the restless, impatient, fire-darting reformer. The way to good lies between the two.