Palindromes in Tamil

மோரு தருமோ-                            can i get some milk
காக்கா -                                          crow
விகடகவி -                                    court jester
தாத்தா -                                         grandfather
பாபா -                                            Baba
மாடு ஓடுமா -                               can the cow run

Swami Vivekananda's speech in Chicago

The following was the speech of Swami Vivekananda in Parliament of Religions held in Chicago

at 1893

Response to Welcome

Sisters and Brothers of America,

It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us. I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world. I thank you in the name of the mother of religions, and I thank you in the name of millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects.

My thanks also to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from the Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honor of bearing to different lands the idea of toleration. I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration but we accept all religions as true.

I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation.

I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, and which is every day repeated by millions of human beings:

As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which people take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.

The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita:

Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach them; all are struggling through paths which in the end lead to Me.

Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.

Why We Disagree

I will tell you a little story. You have heard the eloquent speaker who has just finished say, "Let us cease from abusing each other," and he was very sorry that there should be always so much variance.

But I think I should tell you a story that would illustrate the cause of this variance. A frog lived in a well. It had lived there for a long time. It was born there and brought up there, and yet was a little, small frog. Of course the evolutionists were not there then to tell us whether the frog lost its eyes or not but, for our story's sake, we must take it for granted that it had its eyes, and that it every day cleansed the water of all the worms and bacilli that lived in it with an energy that would do credit to our modern bacteriologists. In this way it went on and became a little sleek and fat. Well, one day another frog that lived in the sea came and fell into the well.

"Where are you from?"

"I am from the sea."

"The sea! How big is that? Is it as big as my well?" and he took a leap from one side of the well to the other.

"My friend," said the frog of the sea, "how do you compare the sea with your little well?"

Then the frog took another leap and asked, "Is your sea so big?"

"What nonsense you speak, to compare the sea with your well!"

"Well, then," said the frog of the well, "nothing can be bigger than my well. There can be nothing bigger than this. This fellow is a liar, so turn him out."

That has been the difficulty all the while.

I am a Hindu. I am sitting in my own little well and thinking that the whole world is my little well. The Christians sit in their little well and think the whole world is their well. The Muslims sit in their little well and think that is the whole world. I have to thank you of America for the great attempt you are making to break down the barriers of this little world of ours, and hope that, in the future, the Lord will help you to accomplish your purpose

The Vedas

The Hindus have received their religion through revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end. It may sound ludicrous to this audience, how a book can be without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons in different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical, and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits, were there before their discovery, and would remain even if we forgot them.

The Hindu Concept of "Creation"

The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis, and we honor them as perfected beings. I am glad to tell this audience that some of the very greatest of them were women. Here it may be said that these laws as laws may be without end, but they must have had a beginning. The Vedas teach us that creation is without beginning or end. Science is said to have proved that the sum total of cosmic energy is always the same. Then, if there was a time when nothing existed, where was all this manifested energy? Some say it was in a potential form in God. In that case God is sometimes potential and sometimes kinetic, which would make Him mutable. Everything mutable is a compound, and everything compound must undergo that change which is called destruction. So God would die, which is absurd. Therefore there never was a time when there was no creation.

If I may be allowed to use a simile, creation and creator are two lines, without beginning and without end, running parallel to each other. God is the ever active providence, by whose power systems after systems are being evolved out of chaos, made to run for a time and again destroyed. This is what the Brahmin boy repeats every day: "The sun and the moon, the Lord created like the suns and moons of previous cycles." (1)And this agrees with modern science.

Atman, or the True "Self"

Here I stand and if I shut my eyes, and try to conceive my existence, "I", "I", "I", what is the idea before me? The idea of a body. Am I, then, nothing but a combination of material substances? The Vedas declare, "No". I am a spirit living in a body. I am not the body. The body will die, but I shall not die. Here am I in this body; it will fall, but I shall go on living. I had also a past. The soul was not created, for creation means a combination, which means a certain future dissolution. If then the soul was created, it must die.

Karma and Reincarnation

Some are born happy, enjoy perfect health, with beautiful body, mental vigor and all wants supplied. Others are born miserable, some are without hands or feet, others again are idiots and only drag on a wretched existence. If they are all created, why does a just and merciful God create one happy and another unhappy, why is He so partial? Nor would it mend matters in the least to hold that those who are miserable in this life will be happy in a future one. Why should a person be miserable even here in the reign of a just and merciful God?

In the second place, the idea of a creator God does not explain the anomaly, but simply expresses the cruel fiat of an all-powerful being. There must have been causes, then, before our birth, to make us miserable or happy and those were our past actions.

Are not all the tendencies of the mind and the body accounted for by inherited aptitude? Here are two parallel lines of existence--one of the mind ["subtle" matter], the other of [gross] matter. If [gross] matter and its transformations answer for all that we have, there is no necessity for supposing the existence of a [mind and a] soul. But it cannot be proved that thought has evolved out of matter, and if a philosophical monism is inevitable, spiritual monism is certainly logical and no less desirable than a materialistic monism; but neither of these is necessary here.

We cannot deny that bodies acquire certain tendencies from heredity, but those tendencies only mean the physical configuration through which a peculiar mind alone can act in a peculiar way. There are other tendencies peculiar to a mind caused by the person’s past actions. And a soul with a certain mental tendency would by the laws of affinity take birth in a body which is the fittest instrument for the display of that tendency. This is in accord with science, for science wants to explain everything by habit, and habit is got through repetitions. So repetitions are necessary to explain the natural habits of a new-born soul. And since they were not obtained in this present life, they must have come down from past lives.

There is another suggestion. Taking all these for granted, how is it that I do not remember anything of my past life? This can be easily explained. I am now speaking English. It is not my mother tongue, in fact no words of my mother tongue are now present in my consciousness; but let me try to bring them up, and they rush in. That shows that consciousness is only the surface of the mental ocean, and within its depths are stored up all our experiences. Try and struggle, they would come up and you would be conscious even of your past life.

This is direct and demonstrative evidence. Verification is the perfect proof of a theory, and here is the challenge thrown to the world by the Rishis. We have discovered the secret by which the very depths of the ocean of memory can be stirred up--try it and you would get a complete reminiscence of your past life.

Ignorance, the Prime Cause of Bondage

So then the Hindus believe that every person is a spirit. The sword cannot pierce the spirit, the fire cannot burn it, the water cannot melt it, and the air cannot dry it. [Gita 2.23]⁽²⁾ The Hindus believe that every soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose center is located in the body, and that death means the change of this center from body to body. Nor is the soul bound by the conditions of matter. In its very essence it is free, unbounded, holy, pure, and perfect. But somehow or other it finds itself tied down to matter, and thinks of itself as matter.

Why should the free, perfect, and pure being be thus under the thralldom of matter, is the next question. How can the perfect soul be deluded into the belief that it is imperfect? We have been told that the Hindus shirk the question and say that no such question can be there. Some thinkers want to answer it by positing one or more quasi-perfect beings, and use big scientific names to fill up the gap. But naming is not explaining. The question remains the same. How can the perfect become the quasi-perfect; how can the pure, the absolute, change even a microscopic particle of its nature? But the Hindus are sincere. They do not want to take shelter under sophistry. They are brave enough to face the question in a manly fashion; and their answer is: "I do not know. I do not know how the perfect being, the soul, came to think of itself as imperfect, as joined to and conditioned by matter." But the fact is a fact for all that. It is a fact in everybody's consciousness that one thinks of oneself as the body. The Hindus do not attempt to explain why one thinks one is the body. The answer that it is the will of God is no explanation. This is nothing more than what the Hindus say, "I do not know."⁽³⁾

Well, then, the human soul is eternal and immortal, perfect and infinite, and death means only a change of center from one body to another. The present is determined by our past actions, and the future by the present. The soul will [apparently] go on evolving up or reverting back from birth to birth and death to death.

But here is another question: Is a human being a tiny boat in a tempest, raised one moment on the foamy crest of a billow and dashed down into a yawning chasm the next, rolling to and fro at the mercy of good and bad actions--a powerless, helpless wreck in an ever-raging, ever-rushing, uncompromising current of cause and effect; a little moth placed under the wheel of causation which rolls on crushing everything in its way and waits not for the widow's tears or the orphan's cry? The heart sinks at the idea, yet this is the law of Nature.

The Way to Freedom

Is there no hope? Is there no escape?--was the cry that went up from the bottom of the heart of despair. It reached the throne of mercy, and words of hope and consolation came down and inspired a Vedic sage, and he stood up before the world and in trumpet voice proclaimed the glad tidings: "Hear, ye children of immortal bliss!--even ye that reside in higher spheres![Svetasvatara Upanishad, 2.5] ⁽⁴⁾ I have found the Ancient One who is beyond all darkness, all delusion: knowing Him alone you shall be saved from death over again." [Svetasvatara Upanishad, 3.8](5)

"Children of immortal bliss" --what a sweet, what a hopeful name! Allow me to call you, brethren, by that sweet name--heirs of immortal bliss--yea, the Hindus refuse to call you sinners. Ye are the Children of God, the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings. Ye divinities on earth--sinners! It is a sin to call anyone so; it is a standing libel on human nature. Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal; ye are not matter, ye are not bodies; matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter.

Thus it is that the Vedas proclaim not a dreadful combination of unforgiving laws, not an endless prison of cause and effect, but that at the head of all these laws, in and through every particle of matter and force, stands One "by whose command the wind blows, the fire burns, the clouds rain, and death stalks upon the earth." [Taittiriya Upanishad, 8.1](6)

And what is His nature? He is everywhere, the pure and formless One, the Almighty and the All-merciful. "Thou art our father, Thou art our mother, Thou art our beloved friend, Thou art the source of all strength; give us strength. Thou art He that beareth the burdens of the universe; help me bear the little burden of this life." Thus sang the Rishis of the Vedas. And how to worship Him? Through love. "He is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and the next life."

This is the doctrine of love declared in the Vedas. Let us see how it is fully developed and taught by Krishna, whom the Hindus believe to have been God incarnate on earth. He taught that we ought to live in this world like a lotus leaf, which grows in water but is never moistened by water [Cp. Gita 5.10]; so we ought to live in the world--our heart to God and our hands to work. It is good to love God for hope of reward in this or the next world, but it is better to love God for love's sake, and the prayer goes: "Lord, I do not want wealth, nor children, nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth, but grant me this, that I may love Thee without the hope of reward--love unselfishly for love's sake."

One of the disciples of Krishna, the then Emperor of India, was driven from his kingdom by his enemies and had to take shelter with his queen in a forest in the Himalayas, and there one day the queen asked him how it was that he, the most virtuous of men, should suffer so much misery. Yudhishthira answered, "Behold, my queen, the Himalayas, how grand and beautiful they are; I love them. They do not give me anything, but my nature is to love the grand, the beautiful, therefore I love them. Similarly, I love the Lord. He is the source of all beauty, of all sublimity. He is the only object to be loved; my nature is to love Him, and therefore I love. I do not pray for anything; I do not ask for anything. Let Him place me wherever He likes. I must love Him for love's sake. I cannot trade in love."

The Vedas teach that the soul is divine, only held in the bondage of matter; perfection will be reached when this bond will burst, and the word they use for it is therefore, mukti--freedom, freedom from the bonds of imperfection, freedom from death and misery. And this bondage can only fall off through the mercy of God, and this mercy comes on the pure. So purity is the condition of His mercy.

How does that mercy act? God reveals Himself to the pure heart. The pure and the stainless see God, yea, even in this life; then and then only all the crookedness of the heart is made straight. Then all doubt ceases. [Cp. Mundaka Upanishad, 2.2.8](7) We are no more the freaks of a terrible law of causation. This is the very center, the very vital conception of Hinduism. The Hindus do not want to live upon words and theories. If there are existences beyond the ordinary sensuous existence, they want to come face to face with them. If there is a soul which is not matter, if there is an all-merciful universal Soul, the Hindus will go to Him direct. They must see Him and that alone can destroy all doubts. So the best proof a Hindu sage gives about the soul, about God, is: "I have seen the soul; I have seen God." And that is the only condition of perfection. 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 the Hindu system is by constant struggle to become perfect, to become divine, to reach God and see God. This reaching God, seeing God, becoming perfect even as the Father in Heaven is perfect, constitutes the religion of the Hindus. And what becomes of those who attain perfection? They live a life of bliss infinite. They enjoy infinite and perfect bliss, having obtained the only thing in which we ought to have pleasure, namely God, and enjoy the bliss with God.

Nonduality, or the Unity of All Existence

So far all the Hindus are agreed. This is the common religion of all the sects of India; but, then, perfection is absolute, and the absolute cannot be two or three. It cannot have any qualities. It cannot be an individual. And so when a soul becomes perfect and absolute, it must become one with Brahman, and it would only realize the Lord as the perfection, the reality, of its own nature and existence, the existence absolute, knowledge absolute, and bliss absolute. We have often and often read this called the losing of individuality and becoming a stock or a stone.

"He jests at scars that never felt a wound."

I tell you it is nothing of the kind. If it is happiness to enjoy the consciousness of this small body, it must be greater happiness to enjoy the consciousness of two bodies, the measure of happiness increasing with the consciousness of an increasing number of bodies, the aim, the ultimate of happiness being reached when it would become a universal consciousness.

Therefore, to gain this infinite universal individuality, this miserable little prison-individuality must go. Then alone can death cease when I am one with life, then alone can misery cease when I am one with happiness itself, then alone can all errors cease when I am one with knowledge itself; and this is the necessary scientific conclusion. Science has proved to me that physical individuality is a delusion, that really my body is one little continuously changing body in an unbroken ocean of matter; and Advaita, or nonduality, is the necessary conclusion with my other counterpart, soul.

Science is nothing but the finding of unity. As soon as science will reach perfect unity, it will stop from further progress because it will have reached the goal. Thus Chemistry will not progress farther when it will discover one element out of which all others can be made. Physics will stop when it will be able to fulfill its services in discovering one energy of which all the others are but manifestations. The science of religion became perfect when it discovered the Being who is the one life in a universe of death, the one who is the constant basis of an ever-changing world, the one who is the only Soul of which all souls are but delusive manifestations. Thus is it, through multiplicity and duality that the ultimate unity is reached. Religion can go no farther. This is the goal of all science.

All science is bound to come to this conclusion in the long run. Manifestation, and not creation, is the word of science today, and the Hindus are only glad that what they have been cherishing in their bosom for ages is going to be taught in more forcible language, and with further light from the latest conclusions of science.

Image Worship

Descend we now from the aspirations of philosophy to the religion of the ignorant. At the very outset, I may tell you that there is no polytheism in India. In every temple, if one stands by and listens, one will find the worshippers applying all the attributes of God, including omnipresence, to the images. It is not polytheism, nor would the name henotheism explain the situation. "The rose called by any other name would smell as sweet." Names are not explanations.

I remember, as a boy, hearing a Christian missionary preach to a crowd in India. Among other sweet things he was telling them was that if he gave a blow to their idol with his stick, what could it do? One of his hearers sharply answered, "If I abuse your God, what can He do?" "You will be punished," said the preacher, "when you die." "So my idol will punish you when you die," retorted the Hindu.

The tree is known by its fruits. When I have seen amongst them that are called idolaters, people the like of whom in morality and spirituality and love I have never seen anywhere, I stop and ask myself, "Can sin beget holiness?"

Superstition is our great enemy but bigotry is worse. Why does a Christian go to church? Why is the cross holy? Why is the face turned toward the sky in prayer? Why are there so many images in the Catholic Church? Why are there so many images in the minds of Protestants when they pray? My brethren, we can no more think about anything without a mental image than we can live without breathing. By the law of association, the material image calls up the mental idea and vice versa. This is why the Hindus use an external symbol when they worship. They will tell you that it helps to keep their minds fixed on the Being to whom they pray. They know as well as you do that the image is not God, is not omnipresent. After all, how much does omnipresence mean to almost the whole world? It stands merely as a word, a symbol. Has God superficial area? If not, when we repeat that word "omnipresent", we think of the extended sky or of space, that is all.

As we find that somehow or other, by the laws of our mental constitution, we have to associate our ideas of infinity with the image of the blue sky, or of the sea, so we naturally connect our idea of holiness with the image of a church, a mosque, or a cross. The Hindus have associated the idea of holiness, purity, truth, omnipresence, and such other ideas with different images and forms. But with this difference that while some people devote their whole lives to their idol of a church and never rise higher, because with them religion means an intellectual assent to certain doctrines and doing good to their fellows, the whole religion of the Hindus is centered in realization. We are to become divine by realizing the divine. Idols or temples or churches or books are only the supports, the helps, of our spiritual childhood: but on and on we must progress.

We must not stop anywhere. "External worship, material worship," say the scriptures, "is the lowest stage; struggling to rise high, mental prayer is the next stage, but the highest stage is when the Lord has been realized." [Cp. Mahanirvana Tantra,14.122](8) Mark, the same earnest people who are kneeling before the idol tell you, "Him the sun cannot express, nor the moon, nor the stars, the lightning cannot express Him, nor what we speak of as fire; through Him they shine." (Mundaka Upanishad,2.2.10)(9) But they do not abuse anyone's idol or call its worship sin. They recognize in it a necessary stage of life. "The child is father of the man." Would it be right for an old man to say that childhood is a sin or youth a sin?

If we can realize our divine nature with the help of an image, would it be right to call that a sin? Nor even when we have passed that stage, should we call it an error. To the Hindus, human beings are not traveling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth. To the Hindus all the religions, from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, 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 these marks a stage of progress; and every soul is a young eagle soaring higher and higher, gathering more and more strength, till it reaches the Glorious Sun.

Unity in variety is the plan of nature, and the Hindus have recognized it. Every other religion lays down certain fixed dogmas and tries to force society to adopt them. It places before society only one coat that must fit Jack and John and Henry, all alike. If it does not fit John or Henry, he must go without a coat to cover his body. The Hindus have discovered that the absolute can only be realized, or thought of, or stated, through the relative, and the images, crosses, and crescents are simply so many symbols--so many pegs to hang the spiritual ideas on. It is not that this help is necessary for everyone, but those that do not need it have no right to say that it is wrong. Nor is it compulsory in Hinduism.

One thing I must tell you. Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible. It is not the mother of harlots. On the other hand, it is the attempt of undeveloped minds to grasp high spiritual truths. The Hindus have their faults, they sometimes have their exceptions; but mark this, they are always for punishing their own bodies, and never for cutting the throats of their neighbors. If the Hindu fanatics burn themselves on the pyre, they never light the fire of Inquisition. And even this cannot be laid at the door of their religion any more than the burning of witches can be laid at the door of Christianity.

Harmony of Religions

To the Hindus, then, the whole world of religions is only a traveling, a coming up, of different men and women, through various conditions and circumstances, to the same goal. Every religion is only evolving a God out of the material person, and the same God is the inspirer of all of them. Why, then, are there so many contradictions? They are only apparent, say the Hindus. The contradictions come from the same truth adapting itself to the varying circumstances of different natures.

It is the same light coming through glasses of different colors. And these little variations are necessary for purposes of adaptation. But in the heart of everything the same truth reigns. The Lord has declared to the Hindus in His incarnation as Krishna, "I am in every religion as the thread through a string of pearls. Wherever thou seest extraordinary holiness and extraordinary power raising and purifying humanity, know thou that I am there." [Cp. Gita 7.7, 10.41](10) And what has been the result? I challenge the world to find, throughout the whole system of Sanskrit philosophy, any such expression as that the Hindus alone will be saved and not others. Says Vyasa, "We find perfect men even beyond the pale of our caste and creed."

One thing more. How, then, can the Hindus, whose whole fabric of thought centers in God, believe in Buddhism which is agnostic, or in Jainism which is atheistic? The Buddhists or the Jains do not depend upon God; but the whole force of their religion is directed to the great central truth in every religion, to evolve a God out of a human being. They have not seen the Father, but they have seen the Son. And he that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father also.

The Ideal of a Universal Religion

This, then, is a short sketch of the religious ideas of the Hindus. The Hindus may have failed to carry out all their plans, but if there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one which will have no location in place or time; which will be infinite like the God it will preach, and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and of Christ, on saints and sinners alike; which will not be Brahminic or Buddhistic, Christian or Islamic, but the sum total of all these, and still have infinite space for development; which in its catholicity will embrace in its infinite arms, and find a place for, every human being, from the lowest groveling savage not far removed from the brute, to the highest beings towering by the virtues of their heads and hearts almost above humanity, making society stand in awe of them and doubt their human nature. It will be a religion which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will recognize divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be created in aiding humanity to realize its own true, divine nature.

Offer such a religion and all the nations will follow you. Ashoka's council was a council of the Buddhist faith. Akbar's, though more to the purpose, was only a parlor meeting. It was reserved for America to proclaim to all quarters of the globe that the Lord is in every religion.

May He who is the Brahman of the Hindus, the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Buddha of the Buddhists, the Jehovah of the Jews, the Father in Heaven of the Christians, give strength to you to carry out your noble idea! The star arose in the East; it traveled steadily towards the West, sometimes dimmed and sometimes effulgent, till it made a circuit of the world; and now it is again rising on the very horizon of the East, the borders of the Sanpo, a thousandfold more effulgent than it ever was before.

Hail, Columbia, motherland of liberty! It has been given to thee, who never dipped her hand in her neighbor’s blood, who never found out that the shortest way of becoming rich was by robbing one's neighbors, it has been given to thee to march at the vanguard of civilization with the flag of harmony.

Religion Not the Crying Need of India

Christianity must always be ready for good criticism, and I think that you will hardly mind if I make a little criticism. Christian brethren of America, you are so fond of sending out missionaries to save the souls of heathens. I ask you: what have you done and are doing to save their bodies from starvation? In India, there are 300 million men and women living on an average of a little more than 50 cents a month. I have seen them living for years upon wild flowers. During the terrible famines, thousands died from hunger but the missionaries did nothing. They come and offer life but only on condition that the Hindus become Christians, abandoning the faith of their fathers and forefathers. Is it right? There are hundreds of asylums, but if the Muslims or the Hindus go there, they are kicked out. There are thousands of asylums erected by Hindus where anybody is received. There are hundreds of churches that have been erected with the assistance of the Hindus, but no Hindu temples for which a Christian has given a penny.

Brethren of America, you erect churches all through India, but the crying evil in the East is not religion. They have religion enough, but it is bread that the suffering millions of burning India cry out for with parched throats. What they want is bread, but they are given a stone. It is an insult to a starving people to offer them religion; it is an insult to a starving man to teach him metaphysics. Therefore, if you wish to illustrate the meaning of "brotherhood," treat the Hindus more kindly, even though they are Hindus and are faithful to their religion. Send missionaries to them to teach them how better to earn a piece of bread and not to teach them metaphysical nonsense.

[At this point, Swami Vivekananda said that he was not feeling too well that day and so wished to be excused. But, we read in the newspaper report, "there were thunders of applause and cries of ‘Go on,’" so Vivekananda continued:]

The earlier speaker said something about the miserable and ignorant priests in China. The same may be said of the priests in India. I am one of those monks who have been described as beggarly. That is the pride of my life. I am proud in that sense to be Christ-like. I eat what I have today and think not of tomorrow. "Behold the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin." The Hindu carries that out literally. Many gentlemen present in Chicago sitting on this platform can testify that for the last twelve years I never knew whence my next meal would come. I am proud to be a beggar for the sake of the Lord. The idea in the East is that to preach or teach anything for the sake of money is low and vulgar, but to teach the name of the Lord for pay is such degradation as would cause the priest to lose caste and be spat upon.

There is one suggestion in the earlier speaker’s paper that is true: If the priests of China and India were organized, there is an enormous amount of potential energy that could be used for regeneration of society and humanity. I endeavored to organize it in India but failed for lack of money. It may be I shall get the help I want in America.

I came here to seek help for my impoverished people and I fully realized how difficult it was to get help for heathens from Christians in a Christian land. I have heard so much of this land of freedom, of liberty and freedom of thought, that I am not discouraged. I thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Buddhism, the Fulfillment of Hinduism

I am not a Buddhist, as you have heard, and yet I am. If China and Japan and Sri Lanka follow the teachings of the Buddha, India worships him as God incarnate on earth.

You have just now heard that I am going to criticize Buddhism, but by that I wish you to understand only this. Far be it from me to criticize him whom I worship as God incarnate on earth. Our view about the Buddha is that he was not understood properly by his disciples. The relation between Hinduism (by Hinduism, I mean the religion of the Vedas) and what is called Buddhism at the present day is nearly the same as between Judaism and Christianity. Jesus Christ was a Jew, and Shakya Muni [Buddha] was a Hindu. The Jews rejected Jesus Christ, nay, crucified him, whereas the Hindus accept Shakya Muni as God incarnate and worship him.

But the real difference that we Hindus want to show between modern Buddhism and what we should understand as the teachings of the Buddha lies principally in this: Shakya Muni came to preach nothing new. Like Jesus, the Buddha came to fulfill and not to destroy. In the case of Jesus, it was the old people, the Jews, who did not understand him, while in the case of the Buddha, it was his own followers who did not realize the import of his teachings. As the Jew did not understand the fulfillment of the Old Testament, so the Buddhist did not understand the fulfillment of the truths of the Hindu religion. Again, I repeat, Shakya Muni came not to destroy, but he was the fulfillment, the logical conclusion, the logical development of the religion of the Hindus.

The religion of the Hindus is divided into two parts: the ceremonial and the spiritual. The spiritual portion is specially studied by the monks. In it, there is no caste. In India a man from the highest caste and a man from the lowest can become monks, thus the two castes become equal. In religion there is no caste; caste is simply a social institution. Shakya Muni himself was a monk, and it was his glory that he had the large-heartedness to bring out the truths hidden in the Vedas and throw them broadcast all over the world. He was the first being in the world who brought missionaries into practice--nay, he was the first to conceive the idea of proselytizing.

The great glory of the Master lay in his wonderful sympathy for everybody, especially for the ignorant and the poor. Some of his disciples were Brahmins. When Buddha was teaching, Sanskrit was no more the spoken language in India. It was then only in the books of the learned. Some of Buddha's Brahmin disciples wanted to translate his teachings into Sanskrit, but he distinctly told them, "I am for the poor, for the people; let me speak in the tongue of the people." And so to this day the great bulk of his teachings are in the vernacular of that day in India.

Whatever may be the position of philosophy, whatever may be the position of metaphysics, so long as there is such a thing as death in the world, so long as there is such a thing as weakness in the human heart, so long as there is a cry going out of the human heart, there shall be faith in God.

On the philosophic side, the disciples of the Great Master dashed themselves against the eternal rocks of the Vedas and could not crush them; and on the other side, they took away from the nation that eternal God to which every one, man or woman, clings so fondly. And the result was that Buddhism had to die a natural death in India. At the present day there are very few who call themselves Buddhists in India, the land where Buddhism was born.

But at the same time, Hinduism lost something--that reforming zeal, that wonderful sympathy and charity for everybody, that wonderful leaven which Buddhism had brought to the masses and which had rendered Indian society so great that a Greek historian who wrote about India of that time was led to say that no Hindu was known to tell an untruth and no Hindu woman was known to be unchaste.

Hinduism cannot live without Buddhism, nor Buddhism without Hinduism. Then realize what the separation has shown to us, that the Buddhist cannot stand without the brain and philosophy of the Hindu, nor the Hindu without the heart of the Buddhist. This separation between the Buddhists and the Hindus is the cause of the downfall of India. That is why India is populated by three hundred millions of beggars, and that is why India has been the slave of conquerors for the last thousand years. Let us then join the wonderful intellect of the Hindus with the heart, the noble soul, the wonderful humanizing power of the Buddha.

Address at the Final Session

The World's Parliament of Religions has become an accomplished fact, and the merciful Father has helped those who labored to bring it into existence, and crowned with success their most unselfish labor. My thanks to those noble souls whose large hearts and love of truth first dreamed this wonderful dream and then realized it. My thanks to the shower of liberal sentiments that has overflowed this platform. My thanks to this enlightened audience for their uniform kindness to me and for their appreciation of every thought that tends to smooth the friction of religions. A few jarring notes were heard from time to time in this harmony. My special thanks to them, for they have, by their striking contrast, made general harmony the sweeter.

Much has been said of the common ground of religious unity. I am not going just now to venture my own theory. But if anyone here hopes that this unity will come by the triumph of any one of the religions and the destruction of the other, to them I say, "Friends, yours is an impossible hope." Do I wish that the Christian would become Hindu? God forbid. Do I wish that the Hindu or Buddhist would become Christian? God forbid. 

The seed is put in the ground, and earth and air and water are placed around it. Does the seed become the earth, or the air, or the water? No. It becomes a plant, it develops after the law of its own growth, assimilates the air, the earth, and the water, converts them into plant substance, and grows into a plant. Similar is the case with religion. The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet preserve their individuality and grow according to their own law of growth.

If the Parliament of Religions has shown anything to the world it is this: It has proved to the world that holiness, purity and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character. In the face of this evidence, if some people still dream of the exclusive survival of their own religion and the destruction of the others, I pity them from the bottom of my heart, and point out to them that upon the banner of every religion will soon be written, in spite of resistance: "Help and not Fight", "Assimilation and not Destruction",; "Harmony and Peace and not Dissension."

Quotes about Bhagavad Gita

When I read the Bhagavad-Gita and reflect about how God created this universe, everything else seems so superfluous.

- Albert Einstein

When doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face, and I see not one ray of hope on the horizon, I turn to Bhagavad-gita and find a verse to comfort me; and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. Those who meditate on the Gita will derive fresh joy and new meanings from it every day.

- Mahatma Gandhi

The Bhagavad-Gita deals essentially with the spiritual foundation

of human existence. It is a call of action to meet the obligations

and duties of life; yet keeping in view the spiritual nature and

grander purpose of the universe.

- Jawaharlal Nehru

I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad-gita. It was the first of books;

it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large,

serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and

climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same

questions which exercise us.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

From a clear knowledge of the Bhagavad-Gita all the goals of human

existence become fulfilled. Bhagavad-Gita is the manifest quintessence

of all the teachings of the Vedic scriptures.

- Adi Shankara

The Bhagavad-Gita was spoken by Lord Krishna to reveal

the science of devotion to God which is the essence of all spiritual

knowledge. The Supreme Lord Krishna's primary purpose for descending

and incarnating is relieve the world of any demoniac and negative, undesirable

influences that are opposed to spiritual development,

yet simultaneously it is His incomparable intention

to be perpetually within reach of all humanity.

- Ramanuja

The Bhagavad-Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual

evolution of endowing value to mankind. It is one of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed; hence its enduring value

is subject not only to India but to all of humanity.

- Aldous Huxley

Visiting Temples

Visiting temples Elders tell us to visit temples, and to offer worship to the deity there. But we are too lazy to do as they say. Many argue that since they have puja rooms in their house, they are quite content to worship there, and that there is no need for them to go to a temple. But even if we do have a puja room and do worship there, we must still go to an ancient temple everyday. Ancient temples have been visited by sages and saints, and if we go there, the breeze that touched them will touch us too. And can there be a greater blessing than this? We cannot assume that merely reading of scriptures is enough, without temple worship. If knowledge alone is enough, then why would great saints have visited temples? Gnanasambandar saw Lord Siva and Goddess Parvati, and was fed milk by the Goddess. He was only three when they appeared before him. And yet his visits to temples began only after this, showing that although he had seen God in person, he still wanted to go to temples. Ramalinga Adigalar saw Lord Subrahmanya at the age of seven, and composed verses in praise of the Lord at the age of nine. Yet he would walk all the way to the Siva temple at Thiruvottriyur everyday, a considerable distance from his house. He would worship the deities there, and then go to the grave of Pattinathar and worship there too.


Thanks Rama Charyulu

Science and Hinduism

While we respect the findings of scientists, we are not even aware of what has been said in our religious literature about scientific facts.
Some of them are : 

Evaporation :     
Science tells us that water evaporates and turns clouds into rain bearing ones. But the same scientific fact is mentioned in ancient religious literature too. There is a verse which talks of how sea water evaporates and makes clouds heavy with moisture. It was mentioned in the poem sung by one of the Alwars "Kothai Nachiyar" popularly named as Aandal 


"aazhi mazhai(k) kaNNaa onRu nee kai karavEl
aazhi uL pukku mugandhu kodu aarthu ERi
oozhi mudhalvan uruvam pOl mey kaRuththu(p)
paazhiy am thOLudai(p) paRpanaaban kaiyil
aazhi pOl minni valamburi pOl ninRu adhirndhu
thaazhaadhE saarnga mudhaiththa sara mazhai pOl
vaazha ulaginil peydhidaay naangaLum
maargazhi neeraada magizhndhElOr embaavaay"
Meaning :
Oh Lord VaruNA, you the presiding deity of ocean-like burst of rains! you please do not make your gift small. We request you (in the form of clouds) to pour plenty of rains in the world; first you should get into the womb of the deep seas and take excessive water make thunder and go higher up (in the sky); your body should become as dark as that of the primordial cause of world (Oozhi Mudalvan= Jagath Kaarana BhUthan); you should become resplendent with lightning, just as the dazzling discus (Aazhi=Chakram) held on the hand of Lord PadmanAbha with broad shoulders; you should make a thunderous roar like the conch (Paanchajanyam) held by Lord; you should bring forth rains in abundance without any cessation, --the rains just like the shower of arrows coming forth in succession from the bow (Saarangam) of the Lord; your rains should be for the good of the world, to flourish; and, through your rains, we will have plenty of water and also happily take the ceremonial bath during Maarghazhi month. Lord VishNu's important weapons -- discus, conch and bow are cited here, in a form of invocation as it were; and Lord PadmanAbha is indicated as the agathkAraNan-- the primordial cause).th. Lord VishNu's important weapons -- discus, conch and bow are cited here, in a form of invocation as it were; and Lord PadmanAbha is indicated as the agathkAraNan-- the primordial cause).


Division of Atoms :

Again scientists for a long time said the atom could not be split, until it was proved otherwise. But centuries ago, the Tamil poet Kambar wrote of the splitting of the atom in his Kamba Ramayanam. He writes about Lord Narayana’s Narasimha avatara and recounts how Prahlada is taunted by his father Hiranyakasipu. The asura, Hiranyakasipu, asks his son Prahlada where Lord Narayana resides. Prahlada replies that He resides not only in an atom, but if an atom were to be split into a hundred parts, He would still be in every one of those parts. Thus an ancient Tamil treatise talks of the splitting of the atom, thereby showing that the ancient Tamils were aware of the possibility that an atom could be split. 

Thirunchanasambhandar Palindrome

திருஞானசம்பந்தர் - திருக்கடைக்காப்பு 
தலம்  :  சீர்காழி 
பண்  :  கௌசிகம் 
மூன்றாம் திருமுறை. 

திருச்சிற்றம்பலம் 

யாமாமாநீ யாமாமா யாழீகாமா காணாகா
காணாகாமா காழீயா மாமாயாநீ மாமாயா.  3.117.1 

திருச்சிற்றம்பலம் 

Meaning:

(To correlate with the meaning below read the words as below.

yaam aam maa n^iiyaam aa maa yaazii kaamaa kaaN naagaa
kaaNa kaamaa kaaziiyaa maamaayaa n^ii maamaayaa )

We are pashus (maa); You are pashupati (aa maa); The One Who plays yAz 
(string music instrument), Desirable, Wearing attractive snake, One Who 
made kaama (cupid) invisible, Lord of chiirkaazi remove (n^ii - n^iikku) 
the powerful maaya (that surrounds us), Oh the Lord Who makes the act 
of concealment (thirodhAnam - one of the five deeds of God) !

Notes:

1. One of the works of sambandhar that shows his scholarliness in thamiz.

2. Whether read from start to end or end to start the hymn reads the 
same way (palindrome style - but for the whole hymn). The whole 
padhikam is this way. Hence the padhikam is called thiru mAlai maRRu.

3. Notice that all the letters used are nedil (long vowels). Except 
songs eight and eleven.

63 Nayanmars

The people who worshipped Lord Shiva and get boon from Him are called Nayanmars or Nayanars.

Nayanars were from varied backgrounds, ranging from kings and soldiers to untouchables.

They were 63 in number.Their stories are said in Periya puranam.

They are : 

1. Anaya
2. Adipaththa
3. Aiyadigal Kaadavarkon , Pallava king Aiyadigal Perumaanaar
4. Amaraneedi Nayanar
5. Appudhi Adigal
6. Arivattaya
7. Chandeshvara Nayanar
8. DhandiyadigaL
9. Enatinatha
10. Eripaththa
11. Eyarkon Kalikkaama
12. Gananatha
13. Idankazhi
14. Ilayankudi maranar
15. Isaignaniyaar - Female Nayanar
16. Iyarpagaiar
17. Kaari
18. Kalikkamba
19. Kaliya
20. Kanampulla
21. Kannappa Nayanar
22. Karaikkal Ammeiyar, Female Nayanar
23. Kazharchinga
24. Kazharir-rarivaar, Chera King, also Cheraman Perumal
25. Kochengat Cholan, A Chola King
26. Kootruva
27. Kotpuli
28. Kulachchirai
29. Kungiliyak Kalaya
30. Manakkanychaara Nayanar
31. Mangayarkkarachiyar, Female Nayanar
32. Meiporul Nayanar
33. Murkha
34. Murti
35. Munayaduvaar
36. Muruga
37. Nami Nandi Adigal
38. Narasingha Munayaraya
39. Nesa Nayanar
40. Ninra Seer Nedumaara
41. Perumizhalaik Kurumba
42. Pusalar
43. Pugal Chola, A Chola King
44. Pugazh Thunai Nayanar
45. Saakkiya
46. Sadaiya Nayanar
47. Saththi
48. Seruthtunai
49. Sirappuli
50. Siruttonda
51. Somaachi
52. Sundarar
53. TirugnaanaSambandar
54. Tirukkuripput Tonda
55. Tirumular
56. Thirunalai Povar Nayanar, popularly known as Nandanar
57. Tirunavukkarasar, popularly known as Appar
58. Thiruneelakandar
59. Tirunilakanda Yaazpaana
60. Tirunilanakka
61. Uruttira Pasupati
62. Vaayilaar
63. Viralminda nayanar