HINTS ON PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY

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HINTS ON PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY

Posted by: " Uttishthata " uttishthata

Wed Jun 6, 2007 8:15 pm (PST)

HINTS ON PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY - Swami Vivekananda

(Delivered at the Home of Truth, Los Angeles, California)

 

Everyone without exception, everyone of us, can attain to this

culmination of Yoga. But it is a terrible task. If a person wants to

attain to this truth, he will have to do something more than to

listen to lectures and take a few breathing exercises. Everything

lies in the preparation. How long does it take to strike a light?

Only a second; but how long it takes to make the candle! How long

does it take to eat a dinner? Perhaps half an hour. But hours to

prepare the food! We want to strike the light in a second, but we

forget that the making of the candle is the chief thing.

 

But though it is so hard to reach the goal, yet even our smallest

attempts are not in vain. We know that nothing is lost. In the Gita,

Arjuna asks Krishna, " Those who fail in attaining perfection in Yoga

in this life, are they destroyed like the clouds of summer? " Krishna

replies, " Nothing, my friend, is lost in this world. Whatever one

does, that remains as one's own, and if the fruition of Yoga does not

come in this life, one takes it up again in the next birth. "

Otherwise, how do you explain the marvellous childhood of Jesus,

Buddha, Shankara?

 

Breathing, posturing, etc. are no doubt helps in Yoga; but they are

merely physical. The great preparations are mental. The first thing

necessary is a quiet and peaceable life.

 

If you want to be a Yogi, you must be free, and place yourself in

circumstances where you are alone and free from all anxiety. He who

desires a comfortable and nice life and at the same time wants to

realise the Self is like the fool who, wanting to cross the river,

caught hold of a crocodile, mistaking it for a log of wood.

[Vivekachudama ni, 84] " Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and

everything shall be added unto you. " This is the one great duty, this

is renunciation. Live for an ideal, and leave no place in the mind

for anything else. Let us put forth all our energies to acquire that

which never fails -- our spiritual perfection. If we have true

yearning for realisation, we must struggle, and through struggle

growth will come. We shall make mistakes, but they may be angels

unawares.

 

The greatest help to spiritual life is meditation (Dhyana). In

meditation we divest ourselves of all material conditions and feel

our divine nature. We do not depend upon any external help in

meditation. The touch of the soul can paint the brightest colour even

in the dingiest places; it can cast a fragrance over the vilest

thing; it can make the wicked divine -- and all enmity, all

selfishness is effaced. The less the thought of the body, the better.

For it is the body that drags us down. It is attachment,

identification, which makes us miserable. That is the secret: To

think that I am the spirit and not the body, and that the whole of

this universe with all its relations, with all its good and all its

evil, is but as a series of paintings -- scenes on a canvas -- of

which I am the witness.

 

The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda Volume 2 [ Page : 36 ] The

End.

 

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QUOTE OF THE DAY:

We came to enjoy; we are being enjoyed. We came to rule; we are being

ruled. We came to work; we are being worked. All the time, we find

that. And this comes into every detail of our life.

- Swami Vivekananda