"MEN APPEAR TO ME ONLY AS HOLLOW FORMS, MOVING
THEIR LIMBS, BUT WITHIN IS THE LORD HIMSELF."
Sri RamakrishnaParamahansa (1836?1886)
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How many yogis does it take to change a light bulb? None. Yogis find the light within. It takes a long time to do something truly worthy. And it can take even longer to know what is truly worth doing. Unknown Swami
Many think of God only after receiving blows from the world. But blessed indeed is he who can offer his mind, like a fresh flower, at the feet of the Lord from his very childhood. One should practice renunciation in youth.
Sri Sarada Devi (1853?1920)
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 of her children.
Swami Vivekananda (1863?1902)
Success or achievement is not the final goal. It is the "spirit" in which you act that puts the seal of beauty upon your life.
Swami Chinmayananda (1916?1992), founder, Chinmaya Mission, VHP
We owe a lot to Indians, who taught us to count, without which no worthwhile discovery could have been made.
Albert Einstein (1879?1955)
If you can walk, you can dance.If you can talk, you can sing.
–traditional African saying
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Aldous Huxley
An aspiring yogi wanted to find a guru. He went to an ashram and his guru told him, "You can stay here, but we have one important rule–all students observe mauna, a vow of silence. You will be allowed to speak two words every 12 years." After practicing yoga asanas, breath control, meditation and service for 12 long years, the day came when the student could speak to the guru. He said: "Bed hard." They fixed that, and he kept going for another 12 years of silence, hard sadhana and austere discipline and got the opportunity to speak once again. He said: "Food salty." Twelve more years passed, and he spoke again. "I quit," he said. His guru replied, "Good. All you've ever done since you got here is complain anyway."
As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in public schools.
Karma: How badly do you have to behave in an earlier life to come back as an England soccer manager? Philip Cakebread, on comments made by England's soccer coach, Glenn Hoddle, about karma, reincarnation and disabled people which got him fired [see Hinduism Today, May 1999]
The older I get, the more Hindu I become. V.S. Naipaul, expatriate Trinidadian novelist, now living in UK, widely regarded in English literary circles as the best living writer in the English language.
DID YOU KNOW?
Got the Time?
ACCORDING TO ASTROPHYSICIST Carl Sagan, the age of the universe is somewhere around 12-billion-years-old. The Hindu tradition has a day and night of Brahma in this range, somewhere in the region of 8.4 billion years. Dr. Sagan said, "As far as I know, India is the only ancient religious tradition on the Earth which talks about the right time scale. In the West, people have the sense that what is natural is for the universe to be a few thousand years old, and that it is billions of years is mind-reeling, and no one can understand it. The Hindu concept is very clear. Here is a great world culture which has always talked about billions of years."