“ This world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.
– Swami Vivekananda (CW, Volume 5, Sayings and Utterances)
What is real strength? The capacity to grow ceaselessly towards the final end of man. And what is the final end of man ? Those who have realized it say that is the state of Universality. The single point where man becomes one with all existence and thereby achieves the infinity of expansion, the infinity of expression, the infinity of experience that can truly be called God. In other words, the final end of man is when he breaks free from every restrictive bond and achieves the end of all Ambition; which is becoming existence itself.
How then does one grow to that state of Infinitude from one’s current state, and that too through the medium of life which to us seems fragmented, insecure and temporal.
The answer lies in a great idea – Service: service to man, service to the God in man, nay, service to God himself – through every temporal, fragmented act of living.
By serving the Infinite, existent in every man, one’s own life becomes a continuous flow of meditation on the Supreme, and what we meditate on, we become, so say the Sastras.
By serving Narayana, embodied as man, one learns to love. Love not in any narrow self interested sense, but love in the sense of continuous giving. An unbroken flow of generosity that empties us of all narrowness, all restrictive words, all the feelings of I and mine. This Giving – in a profound sense – enables us to strike decisively at our “will to life” and install in its place the “will to Life”.
By learning to grasp the Narayana behind the fickle actions and transient loyalties that man often displays, one learns to break continuously, the crippling hold of ‘Form’ on the expansion of our consciousness. No longer can ‘Form’ hold us in its tyrannical hold, and we are free not only to see harmony but also diversity with the eye of the Divine.
Thus, we are ready to absorb within us the infinitude of forms, by simply, powerfully, serving the Unity behind each form.
This then is the gymnasium. The world. A place of tremendous freedom. A hell-hole of human tyranny and broken ambition. It all depends upon the magic idea “Service to the Divine”.
The World Gymnasium – Exploring how we can strengthen ourselves by seeing both harmony AND diversity with the eye of the Divine
– Swami Vivekananda (CW, Volume 5, Sayings and Utterances)
What is real strength? The capacity to grow ceaselessly towards the final end of man. And what is the final end of man ? Those who have realized it say that is the state of Universality. The single point where man becomes one with all existence and thereby achieves the infinity of expansion, the infinity of expression, the infinity of experience that can truly be called God. In other words, the final end of man is when he breaks free from every restrictive bond and achieves the end of all Ambition; which is becoming existence itself.
How then does one grow to that state of Infinitude from one’s current state, and that too through the medium of life which to us seems fragmented, insecure and temporal.
The answer lies in a great idea – Service: service to man, service to the God in man, nay, service to God himself – through every temporal, fragmented act of living.
By serving the Infinite, existent in every man, one’s own life becomes a continuous flow of meditation on the Supreme, and what we meditate on, we become, so say the Sastras.
By serving Narayana, embodied as man, one learns to love. Love not in any narrow self interested sense, but love in the sense of continuous giving. An unbroken flow of generosity that empties us of all narrowness, all restrictive words, all the feelings of I and mine. This Giving – in a profound sense – enables us to strike decisively at our “will to life” and install in its place the “will to Life”.
By learning to grasp the Narayana behind the fickle actions and transient loyalties that man often displays, one learns to break continuously, the crippling hold of ‘Form’ on the expansion of our consciousness. No longer can ‘Form’ hold us in its tyrannical hold, and we are free not only to see harmony but also diversity with the eye of the Divine.
Thus, we are ready to absorb within us the infinitude of forms, by simply, powerfully, serving the Unity behind each form.
This then is the gymnasium. The world. A place of tremendous freedom. A hell-hole of human tyranny and broken ambition. It all depends upon the magic idea “Service to the Divine”.
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