The Relevance Of Swami Vivekananda's Teachings

Despite living over a hundred years ago, Swami Vivekanand’s message is still as vibrant and relevant as it was back than.

He found that spirituality could solve the problems confronting humanity. He preached that the best and sincerest way of worshiping God was to love fellow beings, especially the poor and the weak and alleviate their suffering and distress. For a combination of reasons, I will not indulge in them; poverty and suffering is still rife throughout the world. We live in a society where we are encouraged to care only for ourselves, buy the nicest and latest products and ignore the shortcomings and problems in our world. How many of us switch the channel when reports of widespread suffering are on? How many of us desensitise ourselves so that we do not feel guilty at not helping another man’s suffering?

In order to live a purposeful life, we must decide our goals and then find a way of achieving them – Swami Vivekananda showed us the most beautiful way to achieve this goal, serving humanity with the sincerest of love and devotion. He always used to spread the message: to live for others, to conquer egoism.

Swamiji harmonized east and west, religion and science, past and present. That is why he is so great. Terrorism is a major issue today and it arises due to a misunderstanding of other people’s views and beliefs. Vivekananda promoted ideas from our scriptures and emphatically stated that, ‘people born in different religions finally reach the same God, as rivers born in different places finally reach the sea. No religion is superior and none is inferior.’ If we applied this philosophy today, it would surely lead to greater harmony between different religions of the world.

Swamiji put great emphasis on character building. He taught us to ignore the negatives of our culture and go back to the Upanishads, Bhagvad Gita and find in them the truth of our culture. I, like many others are second generation born outside Bharat. Many of us face an identity crisis. Are we British or Indian? This is a question that we must all ponder and the answer to this may lie in our scriptures – these will give us our Hindu identity and with this, it does not matter which country we are from; Hindu Dharma is universal and applicable to all.

After the inauguration of Barack Obama, the world thought that we have finally found a true leader who can bring change and lead us into a new era of peace and co-existence. However, what tools does he have to achieve this? Yes, he may have charisma but I firmly believe that it is the message of Vivekananda that can truly achieve peace in our time. He has taught us to live for others. To serve mankind, is to serve God.