Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda

Whenever we cut corners for expediency, or whenever the ends seem to justify the means, we may not always reap obvious external consequences, but we create inner turbulence that we can’t escape no matter where we go. Others of us who tend toward tunnel

To the question of Janaka as to how freedom can be achieved, the answer given by Aştävakra is simple. 'Know the Self as Pure Consciousness, the unaffected witness of the phenomenal world, and you will be free' (I. 3). In reality the Self is always free; freedom is not attained, but simply realized and discovered. The impediment to selfrealization a

You would think that a training whose intention was to prepare us to benefit others would focus exclusively on other people’s needs. But the majority of Shantideva’s instructions entail working skillfully with our own blind spots. Until we do this, we are in the dark about how other people feel and what might soothe them. It only dawns on us slowly

It ill behooves the man who is not forced to live in a ghetto to tell those who must how to transcend its limitations. The awareness that a man is a child of the God of religion, who is at one and the same time the God of life, creates a profound faith in life that nothing can destroy.