place it can easily be removed, but sin committed in a Tirlha cannot be removed. This is the gist of all worship, to be pure and to do good to others. He who sees Siva in the poor, in the weak, and in the diseased, really worships Siva; and if he sees Siva only in the image, his worship is but preliminary. He, who.has served H LATTr/^^:S—F/WM COLOMBO TO ALMORA anH helped one poor man seeing Siva in him, without thinking of his caste, or creed, or race, or anything, with him Siva is moie pleased than with the man who sees Him only in temples.
A rich man had a garden arid two gardencis. One of these gardeners ws>® very la/y and did not work; but when the owner came to the garden, the la. in would get up and fold his aims and say, “ How beautiful is the face of my ma,” and dance before him. The other gaidener would not talk much, but would nk haid, and pioduce all sorts of fiuits and vegetables which he w'ould carry on his head, to his master who lived a lung vv.iy off Of these two gardeners, who would be tlie moie beloved by his maslei } Siva is that ma.ster, and this woild ia His garden, and there arc two sorts of gardeners here: the one who is laziy, hypocritical, and does nothing, only talking about Siva'y beautiful eyes and nose and other features; and the other, who is taking care of Siva’s children, all those that are pooi and weak, all animals, and all Hia creation. Which of these would be the more beloved of Siva? Certainly, he that serves His children. He who wants to serve the father must serve the children fir.st. He who wants to serve Siva must serve His childien — must serve all creatures in this world first. It is said in the Shaslra that those who serve the servants of God are Mis greatest servants. So you will bear this in mind.
Let me tell you again, that you must be pure and help any one who comes to you as much as lies in your power. And this is good Karma. By the power of this, the heart becomes pure {Chitta Suddht), and then Siva who is residing in every one, will become manifest. He is aKvays in the heart of every one. If there is dirt and dust on a minor, we cannot see our image. So ignorance and wickedness are the dirt and dust that are on the mirror of our hearts. Selfishness is the chief sin, thinking of ourselves first. He who thinks * I will eat first, I will have more money than otheis, and 1 will possess everything he who thinks ‘1 will get to heaven before otheis, I will get Mukti before others,’ is the selfish man. The unselfish man says T will be last, 1 do not care to go to heaven, ‘I will even go to hell, if by doing so I can help my brothers.' This unselfishness is the test of religion. He who has more of this unselfishness is more spiritual and nearer ^o Siva. Whether he is learned or ignorant, he is nearer to Siva than anybody else, whether he knows it or not. And if a man is selfish, even though he has visited all the temples, seen all the places of pilgrimage, and painted himself like a leopard, he is still further off from Siva.
REPLY TO THE ADDRESS OF WELCOME AT RAMNAD.
At Ramnad the following address was presented to Swami Vivekananda by the Rajah His Mosi Holiness Sn Paramahamsa, V athi-Rdja^ Digvijava-KohVuila Sarvamata^Sanipratipanna^ Parama-Yogteswara, Srimat Bhagavdn Stee Rama Krishna Paramahamsa Kara- kamala-Sanpuha^ Rajadhiraja-Sevilha^ SREE VIVEKANANDA SWAMI.
Mav it Please Your Holiness.
We, the inhabitants of this ancient and historic Samasihanam of Selhu Bandha Ritnieswar, otheiwise known as Ramanathapuum or Ramnad, beg, most cordially, to welcome you to this, our mothei land. Wc deem it a very larc piivilege to be the fust to pay your Holiness our heart *fclt homage on y<nir landing in India, and that, on the shores sanctified by the footsteps of that great Hero.and our rcvcrcil Lord — Sree BhagavAn Raniachandra. * We have watched with feelings of genuine pride and pleasure the unprecedented success which has crowned your laudable elToits in bringing home to the master- minds of the West, the intrinsic merits and excellence of our time-honoured and noble religion. You have, with an eloipience that is unsurpassed and in language plain and unmistakable, proclaimed to and convinced the cultured audiences in Europe and America, that Hinduism fulfils all the reqiiiiements of the ideal of a univcisal leligion, and adapts itself to the temperament and needs of men and women of all races and creeds. Animated puiely by a disinleicsted impulse, influenced by the best of motives and at considerable self-sacrifice, } our Holiness has crossed boundless seas and oceans to convey the message of truth and peace, and to plant the flag of India’s spiritual triumph and glory, m the rich soil of Eiuope and Ameiica. Your Holiness has, both by precept and practice, shown the feasibility and importance of universal biotheihood. Above all, your labours in the West have indirectly and toagieat extent tended to awaken the apathetic sons and d.Lughicrs of India to a sense of the gieatness and gloiy of their ancestral f.iith, and to cicate in them a genuine interest in the study and observance of their dcai and priceless leligion.
We. feel we cannot adequaiely convey in w^ouls out feelings of gratitude and thankfulness to your Holiness for youi pbilanlhiopic labours towards the spiiitual regeneration of the East and the West. We cannot close this address without refer- ring to the gre.at kindness which your Holiness has always extended to our Rajah, who is one of your devoted disciples, and the honour and piide he feels by this gracious act of your Holiness in landing first on his ternloiy, is nulesciibablc.
In conclusion, we pray to the Almighty to bless your Holiness wil+i long life, and health and strength to enable you to carry on the good woik that has been so ably inaugurated by you.
With respects and love, We beg to subscribe out selves, Your Holiness’s most devoted and obedient disciples and servants, Ramnad, ') acth January 1897, j D *6 LECTVnKS—FROM COLOMBO TO ALMORA The Swami’s reply follows in extenso: — The lon,:?cst night seems to be passing away, the sorest trouble seems to be com- ing to an end at last, the seeming corpse appears to be awaking, and a voice is coming to us, —away back where history and e\en tradition fails to peep into ih#' gloom of the past, coming down from there, reflected as it were, fiom peak to pe. ^ the infinite Himalaya of knowledge, and of love, and of work, India, this mothe^ d of ours, —a voice is coming unto us, gentle, firm, and yet unmistakable in its utte%ces, and is gaining volume as days pass by, and behold, the sleeper is awakening! Like a breeze from the Himalayas, it is bringing life into the almost dead bones and muscles, the lethargy is passing away, and only the blind cannot see, or the perverted will not see, that she is awakening, this motherland of ours, from her deep long sleep. None can resist her any more; never is she going to sleep any more; no outward powers can hold her back any more; for the infinite giant is rising to her feet.
Yom Highness and gentlemen of Ramnad, accept my heart-felt thanks for the cortlialily and kindness with which you have received me. I feel that you are cordial and kind, for, heart speaks unto heart better than any language of the mouth; spirit speaks unto spirit in silence, and yet in most unmistakable language, and I feel it in my heart of hearts. Your Highness of Ramnad, if there has been any work done by my humble self in the cause of our religion and our motherland, in the Western 'countries, if any little work has been done in rousing llie sympathie.s of our own people, by drawing their attention to the inestimable jewels that they know not are lying deep buiifed, about their own home, — if, instead of dying of thiist and drinking duly ditch water elsewhere, out of the blindness of ignorance, tliey arc being called to go and drink from the eternal fountain, which i.s flowing perennially by their own homes — if anything has been done to rouse our people towards action, to make them undeistand that in everything, religion and religion alone is the life of India, and when that goes India will die, in spite of politics, in spite of social reforms, in spite of Kubera’s wealth poured upon the head of every one oi her children, — if anything has been done towards this end, India and every country where any woik has been done, owe much of it to you, Rajah of Ramnad. For it was you who gave me the idea first, and it was you who persistently urged me on towards the work. You, as it were, intuitively understood what was going to be, and took me by the hand, helped me all along, and have never ceased to encourage me. Well is it therefore, that you should be the first to rejoice at ray success, and meet it is that I should first land in your territory on my return to Ind a. Great works are to be done, w'onderful powders have to be worked out, we have to teach other nations many things, as has been said already by your Highness. This is the motherland of philos- ophy, of spiiituality, and of ethics, of sweetness, gentleness, and love. These still €xi.st, and my expeiience of the world leads me to stand on firm ground, and make the bold statement, that India is still the first and foremost of all the nations of the w'orld in these respects. Look at this little phenomenon. There have been immense political changes within the last four or five yeais. Gigantic organisations underta- king to subvert the whole of existing institutions in different countries and meeting w'ith a certain amount of success, have been working all over the Western world. Ask our people if they haVe heard anything about them? They have heard not a word about them. But that there was a Parliament of Religions in Chicago, and that there was a Sannyfisin sent over from India to that Parliament, and that he was very well received, and since that time has been working in the West, the poorest REPLY TO THE ADDRESS OF WELCOME AT RAMNAD ^7 beggar has known. I have heard that our masses are dense, that they do not want any education, and that they do not care for any information. I had at one time a foolish leaning towards that opinion myself, but I find experience is a far more glorious teacher than any amount of speculation, or any amount of books written by globe- trotters and hasty observers. This experience teaches me that they are not dense, that they are not slow, that they are as eager and thirsty for information as any race under the sun; but then each nation has its own part to play, and naturally, each nation has its own peculiarity and individuality, with which it is born. Each represents, as it were, one peculiar note in this harmony of nations, and this is its very life, its vitality. In it, is the backbone, the foundation, and the bedrock of the national life, and here in this blessed land, the foundation, tlie backbone, the life- centre is religion and religion alone. Let others talk of politics, of the glory of acquisition of immense wealth poured in by trade, of the power and spread of com- mercialism, of the glorious fountain of physical liberty, but these the Hindu mind does not understand and does not want to understand. Touch him on spirituality, on religion, on God, on the soul, on the Infinite, on spiritual freedom, and I assure you, the lowe.st peasant in India is belter informed on these subjects than many a so-called philosopher in other lands. I have said, gentlemen, that we have yet something to teach to the world. This is the very reason, the raison d'Sire, that this nation should live on, in spite of hundreds of years of persecution, in spite of nearly a thousand years of foreign rule and foreign oppression. This nation still lives; X\\t raison d'itre is, because it still holds to God, to the treasure-house of religioh and spirituality.
In this land, religion and spirituality are still the fountains which will have to over- flow and flood the world, to bring in new life and new vitality to the Western and other nations, which are now almost borne down, half-killed and degraded by political ambitions and social scheming. From out of the many voices, consonant and dis- sentient, f 10m out of the medley of sounds filling the Indian atmosphere, rises up supieme, striking, and full, one note, and that is renunciation. Give up! That is the watchword of the Indian religions. This world is a delusion of two days. The present life is of five minutes. IIcyon<l is the Infinite, beyond this world of delu.sion; let us seek that. This continent is illumined with brave and gigantic minds and intelligences who even think of this so-called infinite universe as only a mudpuddle; beyond and still beyond they go. Time, even infinite time is to them but non- existence. Beyond and beyond time they go. Space is nothing to them; beyond that they want to go, and this going beyond the phenomenal is the very soul of religion. The characteristic of my nation is this transcendentalism, the struggle lo- go beyond, this daring to teai the veil off the face of nature and have at any risk, at any price, a glimpse of the beyond. That is our ideal, but of course all the people in a country cannot give up entirely. Do you want to enthuse them, then here ia the way to do so-. Your talks of politics, of social regeneration, your talks, of money- making, and commercialism- -all these will rolloff like water fromjt, duck’s back. This spirituality, then, is what you have to teach the worldt. Have we to learn anything else, Irave we to learn anything from the world? We have, perhaps to gain a little in material knowledge, in the power of organ! satiem, in the ability to handle powers, organising powers, in bringing the best results out of the smallest of causes. This perhaps to a certain extent we may learn from the West. But if any one preaches in India the ideal of eating and drinking and making merry, if any one wants to apotheosise the material world into a God, that maa is a liar; he has no place ag LECTURES--FROM COLOMBO TO AIMORA In this holy land, the Indian mind does not want to listen to him. Aye, in spite o( the sparkle and glitter of Western civilisation, in spite of all its polish and its vellous manifestation of power, standing upon this platform, I tell them to their face^ that It is all vain. It is vanity of vanities. God alone lives. The soul alo'* ' lives. Spirituality alone lives. Hold on to that.
Yet, perhaps, some sort of materialism, toned down to our own requiri -mts, would be a blessing to many of our brothers who are not yet ripe for the h ghest truths. Thi.s is the one mistake made in every country and in every society, and it is a greatly regrettable thing that in India, where it was always understood, the same mistake of forcing the highest tiulhs on to people who are not ready for them, has been made of late. My method need not be yours. The Sannyasin, as you all know, is the ideal of the Hindu's life, and evciy one by our Shastras is compelled to give up. Eveiy Hindu who has tasted the fruits of ihis woild must give up in the latter part of bis life, and he who does inH is not a Hindu, and has no more right to call himself a Hindu. We know that ihis is the ideal— to give up after seeing and experiencing the vanity of things. Having found out that the heart of the material world is a mere hollow, containing only ashes, give it up and go back. The mind is circling forward, as it were, lowaids the senses, and that mind has to circle back- wards; the Pravrltii has to stop and the NivtUti has to begin. That is the ideal. But that ideal can only be realised after a certain amount of experience. We cannot teach the child the truth of lenunciation; the child is a born optimist; his whole life is in his senses; his whole life is one mass of sense-enjoyment. So there are child-likc men in every society, who require a certain amount of experience, of enjoy- ment, to see through the vanity of it, and then renuncration will come to them. There have been ample provision made for them in our Books; but unfortunately, in later times, there is a tendency to bind every one down by the same laws as those by whicli the Sannyasin is bound, and that is a great mistake. But for that a good deal of the poverty and the misery that you see in India need not have been. A poor man’s life is hemmed in and bound down by tremendous spiritual and ethical laws foi which he has no use. Hands off! Let the poor fellow enjoy himself a little, and then he will raise himself up and renunciation will come to him of itself. Perhaps in this line, we can be taught something by the western people, but we must be very cautious in learning these things. I am sorry to say that most of the examples one meets nowadays, of men who have imbibed the western ideas, are more or less failuies. There are two gieat obstacles on our path in India, the Scylla of old orthodoxy, and the Charybdis of modern European civilisation. Of these two, I vote for the old orthodoxy, and not for the Europeanised system; for the old orthodox man may be ignorant, he may be crude, but he is a man, he has a faith, he has strength, be stands on his own feet; while the Europeanised man has no backbone, he is a mass of heterogeneous ideas picked up at random from every source— and these ideas are unassimilated, undigested, unharmonised. He does not stand on his own feet, and his head is turning round and rouqd. Where is the motive power of his work? — in a few patronising pats from the English people. His schemes of reforms, his vehement vitiinentions against the evils of certain social customs have, as the main'>pting, some European patronage.
Why are some of our customs called eviE? Because the Europeans say so; That is about the reason he gives, I would not submit to that. Stand and die in your own sticngih, if theie is any sin in the world, it is weakness; avoid all weakness, REPLY TO THE ADDRESS OF WELCOME AT RAMNAD 29 for w«akntts« is sin, weakness is death. These unbalanced creatures are not yet formed into distinct personalities; what are we to call them— men, women or animals? While those old 01 thodox people were staunch and weie men. There are still some excellent examples, and the one I want to present!ief ore you now, is your Rajah of Ramnad. Here, you have a man than whom' there is a no more mlous Hindu throughout the length and breadth of this land; here, you have a prince than whom there is no prince in this land better informed in all affairs, both oriental and occidental, who lakes from every nation whatever he can that is good. “ Learn good knowledge with all devotion from the lowest caste. Learn the way to freedom, even if it comes from a Pariah, by seiving him. If a woman is a jewel, take her in marriage even if she comes from a low family of the lowest caste.” Such is the law laid down by our great and peerless legislator, the divine Manu. This is true. Stand on your own feet, and assimilate what you can; but learn from every nation, take what is of use to you, but remember that as Hindus everything else must be subordinated to our own national ideals. Each man has a mission in life, which is the result of all his infinite past Karma. Each of you was born with a splendid heritage, which is the whole of the infinite past life of your glorious nation. Millions of your ancestors are watching, as it were, every action of yours, so be alert. And what is the mission with which every Hindu child is born? Have you not read the proud declaration of Manu regarding the Brahmana wheie he says, that the birth of the Biahmana is — “ for the protection of the treasury of religion.” I should say that lhat is the mission not only of the Brahmana, but of e\ery child, w'hether boy or girl, who is born in this blessed land,— “ for the protection of the treasure of religion.” And every other problem in life must be subordinated to that •ne principal theme. That is also the law of harmony in music. There may be a nation whose theme of life is political supremacy; religion and everything else must become subordinate to that one great theme of its life. But here i.s another nation whose great theme of life is spirituality and renunciation, whose one watchword is, that this world is all vanity and a delusion of three days; and everything else, whether science or knowledge, enjoyments or powers, wealth, name or fame, must be subor- dinated to that one theme. The secret of a true Hindu’s character lies in the subordi- nation of his knowledge of European sciences and learning, of his wealth, position, and name, to that one principal theme which is inborn in every Hindu child — the spirituality and purity of the race. Therefore, between these two, the case of the orthodox man who has the whole of that life-spring of the race, spirituality, and the other man, whose hands are full of western imitation-jewels but has no hold on the life- giving principle, spirituality, — of these, I do not doubt that every one here will agice that we should choose the first, the orthodox, because there is some hope in him. He has the national theme and something to hold to, so he will live, but the other will die.
Just as in the case of individuals, if the principle of life is undisturbed, if the principal function of that individual life is present, any injuries received as regards other func- tions are not serious — other functions never become constant. So long as this principal function of our life is not disturbed, nothing can destroy our nation. But mark you, if you give up that spiritiulity, leaving it aside to go.\fter the materialis- ing civilisation of the West, the result will be lhat in three generations you will be an extinct race; because, the backbone of the nation will be broken, the foundation upon which the national ediiicc has been built will be undermined, and the result will be annihilation all round.
30 LECrURES-FROM COLOMBO TO ALMORA Therefore, my friends, the way out is, that first and foremost we must keep a firm hold on spirituality — that inestimable gift handed down to us by our ancient foiefalhers. Did hear of a countiy, wheip the greatest kings tried to trace their descent, notJjrolnSB^^ n^ to robber-barons living in old castles, who \ “’dered poor tiavcllers, semi-naked sages who lived in the forest? Did ever hear of such a piid? This is the land. In other countries great priests to trace their descend to sotne king, but here, the greatest kings would trace \heiT descent to some ancient priest. Therefore, whether you believe in spirituality or not, for the sake of the national life, you have to get a hold on spirituality and keep to it. Then stretch the other hand out and gain all you can from other races, but everything must be subordinated to that one ideal of life; and out of that a wonder- ful, glorious, futuie India will come — I am sure it is coming --a greater India than ever was. Sages will spiing up greater than all the ancient sages, and your ancestors will not only be satisfied, but I am sure, they will be proud, from their positions in other woilds, to look down upon their descendants, so glorious, and so great. Let us all work hard, my brethren, this is no time for sleep. On our work depends the coming of the India of the future. She is theie ready waiting. She is only sleeping. Arise, and awake and see hei seated here, on her eteinal throne, rejuvenated, more gloiious than she ever was — this motheiland of ours. The idea of God was nowhere else ever so fully developed as in this motheiland of ours, for the.same idea of God