Epistles of Strength: Swam Vivekananda's Wisdom Through Letters

This is a collection of letters Swamiji wrote to his disciples in India and his peers in the United States. These letters reveal his struggles, frustrations, and unshakable determination as he tried to spread his teachings in a foreign land. While this volume focuses on his letters rather than direct teachings, the core ideas shine through in every line.

"Be moral. Be brave. Be a heart-whole man. Cowards only sin, brave men never, no, not even in mind. Try to love anybody and everybody. No cowardice, no sin, no crime, no weakness — the rest will come of itself. 

Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die

"Be of good cheer and believe that we are selected by the Lord to do great things, and we will do them. Hold yourself in readiness, be pure and holy, and love for love's sake. 

Great things can be done by great sacrifices only. 

No selfishness, no name, no fame, Work, work the idea, the plan, my boys, my brave, noble, good souls — to the wheel, to the wheel put your shoulders! "

"Stop not to look back for name, or fame, or any such nonsense. Throw self overboard and work. The spirit, my boys, the spirit; the love, my children, the love; the faith, the belief; and fear not! 

The greatest sin is fear. 

Be not inflated with success. Great works are to be done. Do not be afraid of a small beginning, great things come afterwards. Be courageous. Do not try to lead your brethren, but serve them"

"Work hard. Be holy and pure and the fire will come. Are you sincere? unselfish even unto death? and loving? Then fear not, not even death. The whole world requires Light. India alone has that Light, not in magic, mummery, and charlatanism, but in the teaching of the glories of the spirit of real religion — of the highest spiritual truth. That is why the Lord has preserved the race through all its vicissitudes unto the present day"

"Have faith that you are all, my brave lads, born to do great things! Let not the barks of puppies frighten you — no, not even the thunderbolts of heaven — but stand up and work! 

I do not believe in a God or religion which cannot wipe the widow's tears or bring a piece of bread to the orphan's mouth

"Have you love? — You are omnipotent. Are you perfectly unselfish? If so, you are irresistible. It is character that pays everywhere. It is the Lord who protects His children in the depths of the sea. Your country requires heroes; be heroes! God bless you! Even idiots may stand up to hear themselves praised, and cowards assume the attitude of the brave when everything is sure to turn out well. How many Buddhas die before one finds expression!"

The true hero works in silence. 

"Whosoever not trusting in anything else but Me, rests on Me, I supply him with everything he needs" (Gitâ, IX. 22). 

Have patience, perseverance, and purity. The elephant passing through the market-place is always beset by curs, but he cares not. He goes straight on his own way. So it is always, when a great soul appears there will be numbers to bark after him."

"Be cheerful. . . . Hold on to your own ideal. . . . Above all, never attempt to guide or rule others, or, as the Yankees say, "boss" others. 

Be the servant of all. Worldliness and realization of God cannot go together

"All of religion is contained in the Vedanta, that is, in the three stages of the Vedanta philosophy, the Dvaita, Vishishtâdvaita and Advaita; one comes after the other. These are the three stages of spiritual growth in man. Each one is necessary. The first stage, i.e. Dvaita, applied to the ideas of the ethnic groups of Europe, is Christianity; as applied to the Semitic groups, Mohammedanism. The Advaita, as applied in its Yoga-perception form, is Buddhism etc."

"Be perfectly unselfish, be steady and work on. We will do great things; do not fear. . One thing more. Be the servant of all, and do not try in the least to govern others. That will excite jealousy and destroy everything. . . . Go on. Nobody will come to help you if you put yourself forward as a leader. . . . "This Âtman (Self) is not to be reached by cowards"

Kill self first if you want to succeed.

"Each work has to pass through these stages — ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Each man who thinks ahead of his time is sure to be misunderstood. So opposition and persecution are welcome, only I have to be steady and pure and must have immense faith in God, and all these will vanish"

"I have a truth to teach, I, the child of God And He that gave me the truth will send me fellow workers from the earth's bravest and best. Hold on. The Lord bless you"

I want iron wills and hearts that do not know how to quake.

"Please everybody without becoming a hypocrite and without being a coward. Hold on to your own ideas with strength and purity, and whatever obstructions may now be in your way, the world is bound to listen to you in the long run"

"Be bold and fearless, and the road will be clear. Hold on with faith and strength; be true, be honest, be pure, and don't quarrel among yourselves. Jealousy is the bane of our race"

It is faith that makes a lion of a man. 

"The only hope of India is from the masses. The upper classes are physically and morally dead". Always hold on to the highest. Be steady. Avoid jealousy and selfishness. Be obedient and eternally faithful to the cause of truth, humanity, and your country, and you will move the world. Remember it is the person, the life, which is the secret of power — nothing else"

"With the horse will come the reins". This life comes and goes — wealth, fame, enjoyments are only of a few days. It is better, far better to die on the field of duty, preaching the truth, than to die like a worldly worm"

Work unto death — I am with you, and when I am gone, my spirit will work with you. 

"My child, what I want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel, inside which dwells a mind of the same material as that of which the thunderbolt is made. "

Strength, manhood, Kshatra-Virya + Brahma-Teja.

"Renunciation — non-resistance — non-destructiveness — are the ideals to be attained through less and less worldliness, less and less resistance, less and less destructiveness. Keep the ideal in view and work towards it. None can live in the world without resistance, without destruction, without desire. The world has not come to that state yet when the ideal can be realized in society "

"Doing the duty of the time is the best way, and if it is done only as a duty, it does not make us attached. We must try our best to destroy ignorance and evil. Only we have to learn that evil is destroyed by the growth of good"

"When you serve a Jiva with the idea that he is a Jiva, it is Dayâ (compassion) and not Prema (love); but when you serve him with the idea that he is the Self, that is Prema. That the Atman is the one objective of love is known from Shruti, Smriti, and direct perception."

"This notion of Jiva as distinct from God is the cause of bondage. Our principle, therefore, should be love, and not compassion. The application of the word compassion even to Jiva seems to me to be rash and vain. For us, it is not to pity but to serve. Ours is not the feeling of compassion but of love, and the feeling of Self in all"

"Vairagya, the feeling of which is love, which unifies all inequalities, cures the disease of Samsâra, removes the threefold misery, inevitable in this phenomenal world, reveals the true nature of all things, destroys the darkness of Mâyâ, and which brings out the Selfhood of everything from Brahma to the blade of grass!"

"I will sleep, without caring what will be next; and may I be born again and again, and suffer thousands of miseries so that I may worship the only God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum total of all souls — and above all, my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, of all species, is the special object of my worship"

"The one great lesson I was taught is that life is misery, nothing but misery. Mother knows what is best. Each one of us is in the hands of Karma; it works itself out — and no nay. There is only one element in life which is worth having at any cost, and it is love. Love immense and infinite, broad as the sky and deep as the ocean — this is the one great gain in life. Blessed is he who gets it"

"Liberty does not certainly mean the absence of obstacles in the path of misappropriation of wealth etc. by you and me, but it is our natural right to be allowed to use our own body, intelligence, or wealth according to our will, without doing any harm to others; and all the members of a society ought to have the same opportunity for obtaining wealth, education, or knowledge"

"One should raise the self by the self."

"Desirelessness means the disappearance of the inferior modification in the form of will and the appearance of that superior state That state is beyond the range of mind and intellect.It is very difficult to superimpose divinity on man, but one is sure to succeed by repeated efforts. God is in every man, whether man knows it or not; your loving devotion is bound to call up the divinity in him"

"I have suffered mentally and physically all my life, but Mother's kindness has been immense. The joy and blessings I had infinitely more than I deserve. And I am struggling not to fail Mother, but that she will always find me fighting, end my last breath will be on the battlefield"

"Life is a series of fights and disillusionments. . . . The secret of life is not enjoyment, but education through experience"

In my opinion, a race must first cultivate a great respect for motherhood, through the sanctification and inviolability of marriage, before it can attain to the ideal of perfect chastity.

-Om Tat Sat