Home > Work > Lectures on Bhagavad Gita
1 " Do good because it is good to do good. Ask no more. "
― Vivekananda , Lectures on Bhagavad Gita
2 " The mind is in its own nature when it is calm. The moment you can calm it, that [very] moment you will know the truth. "
3 " Where the whole world is awake, the sage sleeps. "
4 " If you [can realise Brahman] by standing on your head, or on one foot, or by worshipping five thousand gods with three heads each — welcome to it! ... Do it any way you can! Nobody has any right to say anything. Therefore, Krishna says, if your method is better and higher, you have no business to say that another man’s method is bad, however wicked you may think it. "
5 " It is better not to love, if loving only means hating others. That is no love. That is hell! If loving your own people means hating everybody else, it is the quintessence of selfishness and brutality, and the effect is that it will make you brutes. Therefore, better die working out your own natural religion than following another’s natural religion, however great it may appear to you "
6 " But where the ignorant are asleep, there the sage keeps awake "
7 " As all the rivers of the world constantly pour their waters into the ocean, but the ocean’s grand, majestic nature remains undisturbed and unchanged, "
8 " Later on we read what Krishna says, “Even those who worship other deities are really worshipping me” (note 31). It is God incarnate whom man is worshipping. Would God be angry if you called Him by the wrong name? He would be no God at all! Can’t you understand that whatever a man has in his own heart is God — even if he worships a stone? What of that! We will understand more clearly if we once get rid of the idea that religion consists in doctrines. One idea of religion has been that the whole world was born because Adam ate the apple, and there is no way of escape. Believe in Jesus Christ — in a certain man’s death! But in India there is quite a different idea. [There] religion means realisation, nothing else. It does not matter whether one approaches the destination in a carriage with four horses, in an electric car, or rolling on the ground. The goal is the same. For the [Christians] the problem is how to escape the wrath of the terrible God. For the Indians it is how to become what they really are, to regain their lost Selfhood. ... "
9 " The great men think, and you and I [also] think. But there is a difference. We think and our bodies do not follow. Our actions do not harmonise with our thoughts. Our words have not the power of the words that become Vedas. ... Whatever they think must be accomplished. If they say, “I do this,” the body does it. Perfect obedience. This is the end. You can think yourself God in one minute, but you cannot be [God]. "
10 " Stand alone! See the glory of your own soul, and see that you will have to work. "
11 " The Gita is a commentary on the Upanishads. The Upanishads are the Bible of India. "
12 " There was never a time when we did not exist. "
13 " There will never be a time when we shall not exist. "
14 " Awake! Stand up and fight! Die if you must. "
15 " Who can work without any attachment? That is the real question. "
16 " We are like the caterpillar which takes the thread out of his own body and of that makes the cocoon, and behold, he is caught. "
17 " take Buddha. The central idea [is] sacrifice. "
18 " He works for work’s sake. “Work for work’s sake. Worship for worship’s sake. "
19 " He is trying to justify himself, but he cannot fool Krishna. "
20 " Let miseries come in millions of rivers and happiness in hundreds! I am no slave to misery! I am no slave to happiness! "
