Faith And Strength

 

Faith And Strength

1. “I am the spirit living in this body; I am not the body; it will fall but I shall go on living.” So a man in our country believes that he is a spirit, him the sword cannot pierce – him the fire cannot burn – him the water cannot melt – him the air cannot dry. He is the heir of immortal bliss; the substance of God Himself.

2. The real man never dies, it is the body which dies. The real man is unborn, eternal, everlasting and does not get destroyed with the body. He can neither slay nor be slain.

3. Man stands in the glory of his own soul, infinite, eternal, deathless, birthless; the soul which no instrument can pierce, no air can dry, no fire can burn, no water can melt, without beginning and end, before whose magnitude the suns and moons with all their systems appear like drops in the ocean, before whose glory, space melts away into nothingness and time vanishes into non-existence.

4. Neither you nor I or anyone of us has come out of zero nor will go back to zero. Every evolution presupposes an involution. Nothing can be evolved which is not there already. We have been existent eternally and will exist, and there is no power under the sun or above which can undo your or my existence.

5. A little awareness of the truth, that death belongs to the body and not to the spirit, will make the whole nation heroic and fearless. During the past few centuries, we all thought that we were living, but it was not really living, it was a living death.

6. Practice that boldness which dares to know the truth, which dares to show the truth in life, which does not quake before death, nay, welcomes death and makes a man know that he is the spirit, that in the whole universe nothing can kill him.

7. The soul is desireless, immortal, potent, full of bliss and free of need. The knower of this ageless ever-young soul is never afraid of death.

8. If there is any unpleasant thing in life it is not death but the fear of death.

9. Bear always the fact of inevitability of death in your mind, and then the spirit within will wake up, all meanness will vanish, practicality in work will come and you will feel new vigour in your mind and body, and those who come in contact with you will also feel going up. At first, the heart will breakdown and despondency and gloomy thoughts will overwhelm your mind, but persist for sometime; then you will find that a new strength has come into your heart and the constant thought of death is giving you a new life and new thoughts and making you aware of the truth that, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity?” Wait! With the passage of time the spirit within will wake up with the strength of a lion and will transform you into a giant.

10. One who knows the art of dying (even while living) what can death do to him; he is immortal.

11. One who doesn’t fear death, death fears him. He keeps death in his grip and dies a self-conscious death.

12. Fear of death can only be conquered when one realizes that so long as there is one life in the universe, he is living; when he feels that he is in everything and everybody and is the life of all lives, then he becomes fearless.

13. Falling of life is like falling of a leaf. Does the whole tree dies by the falling of a leaf? The universe is my body. See how it continues. All minds are mine, with all feet I walk, through all mouths I speak, in everybody I reside.

14. The unity of all existence – we all have it already within ourselves. None was ever born without it.

15. But to gain this infinite universal individuality, this miserable little personality 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 errors cease when I am one with knowledge itself.

16. The entire universe is pervaded by you. You have infinite forms.

17. Each mind is connected with every other mind and all the minds in turn are connected with the cosmic mind (God). In fact each mind is in communion with the whole world.

18. The power has not to be added, it is already there in the reservoir, every being has in his background the reservoir of infinite strength, power, purity and bliss.

19. We are zeros but very powerful, if suffix add strength, if prefix take it away.

20. Power, purity and perfection are your birth rights, your nature. The real “you” is already perfect, already strong. The only difference is in knowing it or not knowing it.

21. The divine spark is the nature of all of us. It is hidden like a spark in the ashes. Remove the ashes, place a few faggots and it will blaze up into a fire.

22. ‘The lion roared and the bleating gone.’ You are lions, you are souls, pure infinite and perfect. The might of the universe is within you. That is the truth.

23. Do you not know that you are God’s temple and the God’s spirit dwells in you? As the God’s temple is holy, so you are.

24. A needle covered with clay will not be attracted by a magnet but as soon as the clay is removed it will be attracted. God is the magnet and our evil deeds are the dirt and dust that cover our soul. As soon as it becomes pure it attains Godhood; it becomes almost almighty.

25. We have infinite power available with us in our own soul, only waiting to be tapped, for behind each of us is the ocean of infinite power and blessedness.

26. Man has infinite power and strength. He himself is by his own nature omnipotent and omniscient. And this he must know. And the more he becomes conscious of his own Self, the more he manifests this power.

27. If an atom can have so much of energy, what to say about man? What to say about the small flame of consciousness in him? If some day this small flame bursts forth, it is bound to become an infinite source of energy and light; that’s how it has happened to Buddha or to Jesus. Christ and Buddha were the names of the state to be attained; Jesus and Gautama were the persons to manifest it.

28. If a thing can happen once, it can happen again; if any human being has ever attained perfection, we too can do it.

29. Man is the greatest being in the universe and this world is the best work place because only here is the greatest and the best chance to become perfect. Angels or gods have all to become men if they want to be perfect. It is the greatest of all lies to say that we are mere men; we are verily the God of the universe.

30. What you want is character, a strong will. Build up your character and manifest your real nature, the effulgent, the resplendent, the ever-pure, and call it up in every one you see. “Rise then the effulgent one, the pure one, the birthless and deathless one, rise Almighty and manifest your true nature!”

31. He is an atheist who does not believe in himself. The old religion said that he is an atheist who does not believe in God; the new religion says he, who does not believe in himself. We must have faith in ourselves first and then in God as he, who has no faith in himself, can never have faith in God.

32. Believe in yourselves first and then believe in anything else. In the history of the world only those nations, that have believed in themselves, have become great and strong.

33. The man who cannot believe in himself, how he can be expected to believe in anything else!

34. The difficulty with us is that we are losing faith in ourselves day by day, forgetting that as soon as a man or nation loses faith, death comes.

35. Our degeneration is due to our people losing their faith in themselves as constant self-depreciation saps the vitality of a nation by destroying its faith in itself.

36. The faith and strength of a nation is the faith and strength of its people. I don’t understand how a great country like ours can become so impotent and diffident.

37. How can the posterity of an omnipotent father be so weak if we believe in the theory of genetics? If the father is so powerful, can the children inherit weakness!

38. He, who loses money, loses much; one, who loses a friend, loses more; he, who loses faith, loses all.

39. Faith makes all things possible and love makes all things easy.

40. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubts; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope and as old as your despair.

41. If you have no self-confidence, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.

42. Our greatest problems in life come not so much from the situations we confront but from our doubts about our ability to handle them.

43. The fear of failure is more dangerous than failure itself.

44. To maintain enthusiasm and self-confidence at all times is the key to success. It is the fear of failure, which is the main cause, that mops up all our enthusiasm. Moreover, our apprehensions, as to the cold reactions our ideas or actions might invoke from others, could also act as a formidable block.

45. Enthusiasm and self-confidence are those positive energies which surge through our being. They are the very nucleus, the protoplasm of all achievements. They improve our performance. Like the needle of a compass which persistently points to the north, no matter which way you turn it, an enthused and confident person will always persevere and work towards the goal.

46. “If you have faith in all the three hundred and thirty million of your mythological gods and in all the gods which foreigners have now and again introduced in your midst and still have no faith in yourselves, there is no salvation for you. Have faith in yourselves and stand up on that faith and be strong; that is what we need. Why it is that we three hundred and thirty million of people have been ruled for the last one thousand years by any and every handful of foreigners who chose to walk over our prostrated bodies? Because they had faith and we had not.” – says Swami Vivekananda.

47. Our nation needs to learn it much more than any other nation because we have faith in everything except the primary faith in ourselves. We have faith in 33 Crores of gods and goddesses but they never came to our assistance. Swami Vivekananda said, “first comes faith in oneself, then faith in others, and then faith in gods and goddesses”. In the absence of the primary faith in oneself, the other faiths cannot function at all. This want of Sraddha, this loss of serious attitude, is our bane. At everything of value we just scoff. Such a cynicism is worse than death. “A man who is ignorant, without faith and full of disbelief destroys himself and also others in the process”.

48. We would do nothing ourselves and would scoff at others who try to do something – this is the bane that has brought about our downfall as a nation. Want of faith and lack of energy are at the root of all our miseries and we must give them up.

49. Disbelieving everything has become a disease with us and we have become cynical by attitude. One must have a certain capacity to believe until a thing is proved wrong.

50. Believe that there is a way and positive thoughts will rush into your mind to find the solution.

51. Positivism is the elixir of life.

52. By remaining positive, we create an aura of positive vibrations around us which not only benefits us but also all others coming in contact with us. This aura also protects us from any negativity released by others.

53. He who believes not, believes not even after seeing and thinks that it is all hallucination or dream.

54. Those who have no faith in themselves, can have no faith in others; they are cynics who can never succeed in any field. A cynic is one ‘who knows the price of everything but value of nothing’.

55. It is the faith reposed which brings the best out of the person. If you don’t allow one to become a lion, he will become a fox.

56. Give him responsibility and the weakest man will become strong and the ignorant man, sagacious.

57. “You are weak, weak, weak; your bodies are weak, your minds are weak, you have no faith in yourselves! Centuries of crushing tyranny of castes, kings, foreigners and your own people have taken out all your strength, my brethren! Your backbone is broken, you are like downtrodden worms. Who will give you strength? Let me tell you, strength, strength what you want. And the first step in getting that strength is to uphold the Upanishads and believe, “I am the soul, Me the sword cannot cut; nor weapons pierce; Me the fire cannot burn; Me the air can not dry; I am omnipotent, I am omniscient”. Do not say you are weak; you can do anything and everything. What can you not do? I wish that the faith of Nachiketa would come to each of you and everyone of you would stand up a giant, a world mover with a gigantic intellect – an infinite God in every respect”.

58. I love you; I can not see you degraded and weakened anymore than what you are now, so as one of your blood who lives and dies with you, let me tell you that we want strength, strength and nothing but strength. And the Upanishads are the great mines of strength. Therein lies the strength enough to invigorate the whole world. The whole world can be vivified, made strong and energized by them. They will call with trumpet voice upon the weak, the miserable and the downtrodden of all races, all creeds, all sects, to stand upon their own feet and be free. ‘Freedom – physical freedom, mental freedom and spiritual freedom – are the watchwords of the Upanishads’, says Swami Vivekananda.

59. Strength, strength that is what we want in this life, for what we call sin and sorrow have all one cause, and that is our weakness. With weakness comes ignorance and with ignorance, misery. That soul is strong which has become one with the Lord. Everything that is strong, good and powerful in human nature is the outcome of that Divinity.

60. Many a times in our lives we want to interpret our weakness and cowardice as forgiveness and renunciation. There is no merit in the renunciation of a beggar or forbearance of a weakling. If a person, who has, gives up then there is merit in that. So often in our lives through laziness and cowardice we give up the battle and try to hypnotize our minds into the belief that we are brave.

61. To shine in the borrowed light of the great is the one desire of the weak.

62. We are forever trying to make our weakness look like strength, our sentiments like love, our cowardice like courage.

63. There is only one sin, that is weakness. The sign of life is strength and growth, the sign of death is weakness.

64. Today what the world wants most than ever, is strength. Weakness is the cause of all miseries, all sufferings. We lie, steal, kill and commit other crimes because we are weak. We die because we are weak. Where there is nothing to weaken us, there is no death or sorrow.

65. In food, in moods of life, in thoughts and language, energy has to be infused. With the infusion of vitality all around and the circulation of blood in all arteries and veins, one would feel the throbbing of new life everywhere – then only the people will be able to survive the present terrible struggle for existence; otherwise the country and its people will vanish in the enveloping shadows of destruction and death at no distant date.

66. The social, cultural and commercial activities which sap the energy of the people and vitiate and deprave the social atmosphere must be stopped now for sometime.

67. All enervating entertainments should be stopped for the time-being.

68. For every weakening thought you have put into anybody’s head, you will have to pay with compound interest.

69. Who is fearless and also gives courage to others, he is a sage.

70. If we ourselves are weak what we can do for others?

71. You give what you have, if weak – weakness, if strong – Strength.

72. Any one who weakens another human being indulges in blasphemy.

73. Do not try to disturb and destroy the faith of any man. If you can, give him something better, push him upward but never downward.

74. None will reach truth or reality till he is strong.

75. Strength is the medicine for the word’s diseases. Strength is the medicine which the poor must have when tyrannized over by the rich; ignorant must have when oppressed by the learned; sinners must have when repressed by other sinners. The microbes of misery have no power to get hold of us till our mind is weak; for strength is life, weakness is death.

76. The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness but thinking of strength. Teach men of the strength that is already within them.

77. “Strike the light; sit not in darkness and sorrow”!

78. Speaking and not doing has become a habit with us. What is the cause? Weakness. Therefore, be strong first.

79. We are more wise than what is good for us that is our difficulty! Simply because our blood is like water, our brains are sloughing, our bodies are weak.

80. Analyze yourself and you will find that every blow, you have received, came because you prepared yourself for it. You did the half and the external world did the other half; and this is how the blow came.

81. Does a man live a moment, if he loses all his strength? A nation is the sum total of so many individuals; will a nation live if it loses all its strength and activity?

82. It is only when the body is weak, that germs of disease take possession of it. Just so with the national life. To avoid it, we will have to make our national life vigorous and pure.

83. Lions are never used as sacrifice, only goats are. To be weak is a curse and cause of misery. Therefore, make your heart, mind and body strong.

84. Selfishness breeds fear and fear breeds weakness.

85. Fear never leaves those who earn their livelihood by unethical means or who cause harm to others.

86. He, who always thinks of himself as weak, will never become strong. But he, who knows himself to be a lion, rushes out from the meshes of the world as a lion from the cage.

87. Those, who are always weak-hearted and dispirited in this life, can do no work; from life to life they come and go wailing and moaning. The earth is enjoyed by the heroes. This is the unfailing truth. Be a hero. Always say, “I have no fear”. Tell this to everybody – “Have no fear”. Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life.

88. “I am the birthless the deathless Atman, whose nature is intelligence” – implanting this idea firmly in your heart, you should pass the days of your life. “I have no birth, no death, I am the Atman untouched by anything”, lose yourself completely to this idea. If you can once become one with this idea, then in the hour of trouble and tribulation, it will rise of itself in your mind.

89. Like the monkeys, the hardships of life will fall back when we cease to flee before them. We have to fight fear, troubles and ignorance boldly if we want them to flee before us.

90. Fly from evil, terror and misery and they will follow you, face them and they will flee.

91. We try to avoid a problem rather than confront it boldly. Our weakness lies in our lack of courage and incapacity to face it though our Gita tells us, “yield not to unmanliness, O Partha; it does not befit you; forsaking this mean faint-heartedness, stand up, O hero! Vivekananda exhorts us to face our problems manfully and overcome them instead of running away from them, as by running away from them they will not cease to exist.

92. Do not fly away from the wheels of the world-machine, but stand inside it and learn the secret of work.

93. Don’t be afraid to confront difficulties. It is by doing that, that we learn how to be brave.

94. If we can learn to welcome problems, they will eventually lose their hold on us and we will become their masters instead of slaves.

95. The causes of your fear leap on you again and again until you overcome fear. It is natural that more you fear a thing, the more it frightens you. However, if you don’t fear and stand before it unaffected and indifferent, the opposite happens i.e. the fear will go away from you. You should always bear in mind that actual mishappenings are never as fearful and painful as our apprehensions make them to be.

96. Adversity is the test of your manliness.

97. The hammer shatters the glass but forges the steel.

98. The tests of life are to make and not to break us. Troubles may demolish a man’s present but will build his future. The blow to the outer-man may be the greatest blessing to the inner-man.

99. In fact, pains and discomforts are the very things we need to strengthen and grow wherever we are lacking.

100. Though we fervently wish that no misery ever comes near us; yet it is that alone which gives us an insight into the depths of our lives! In our moments of anguish, gates barred forever seem to open and let in a flood of light.

101. When there comes affliction in the heart, when the storm of sorrow blows all around and it seems that light will be seen no more, when hope and courage are almost gone, it is then, in the midst of this great spiritual tempest that the light of soul within gleams.

102. You can derive some benefit and lesson from every problem or difficulty of life and exploit it to your advantage. In every adversity and difficulty ask yourself, what message this problem has brought for you and what benefit you can derive from it? You must come out wiser and more mature after going through a problem.

103. Remember that everything which happens to us in life is only for our good. In the apparently cruel and adverse looking circumstances is hidden the infinite mercy of God.

104. There is no problem in the world which is greater than the strength of your mind and heart and which can’t be solved. It is a general experience that when problems come to us, their solutions also come along with. We are never given to bear more than our capacity and resources. Furthermore, if we also open ourselves to God for guidance, a reasonable solution is bound to come for every problem.

105. God has not promised, skies always blue, flowers strewn pathways all life through, God has not promised sun without rain, joy without sorrow, peace without pain. But God has promised strength for the day, rest for the night and light for the way.

106. The whole world may leave you but He will never leave you, so just face the problems as they come and don’t brood over them too much.

107. Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them; not beg for the stilling of our pain, but for the heart to conquer it; not look for allies in the battlefield of life but for our own strength; not crave in anxious fear to be saved but hope for the patience to win our freedom. Grant us that we may not be cowards, feeling your mercy in our success alone; but let us find the grasp of your hand in our failure too!

108. In many cases it is our hardships that give us better experience than enjoyments.

109. Disease and misfortune come to do us good in the long run, although at times we feel submerged forever.

110. To a man of wisdom what can misery do.

111. There is no better teacher than pain and poverty.

112. We die like dogs – no help. Everywhere beastliness, famine, disease, misery, evil! All are crying for help; but no help. And yet hoping against hope, we are still screaming for help!

113. God helps them who help themselves.

114. There is no help for man. None ever was, none is and none will be. Why there should be? Are the Lords of the earth to be helped by others? Pull yourself out of difficulties by yourself! Save yourself by yourself!

115. All this running after help is foolishness.

116. It is a tremendous error to feel helpless. Do not seek help from anyone. We are our own help. If we cannot help ourselves, then there is none to help us. The Gita says, “you are your only friend and you are your only enemy”. This is the last great lesson. We realize it and forget it. We weaken again and aspire for that superstition of help and get miserable in bargain.

117. Hope for nothing from anyone. If you look back in your life you will find that help never came from others, it came from within yourself. You only had the fruits of what you yourself worked for and yet strangely you yearn for help from others!

118. You don’t deserve to live if you cannot help yourselves.