Swamiji on Strength !

Strength, strength, it is that we want so much in this life, for what we call sin and sorrow have all one cause, and that is our weakness. with weakness come ignorance, and with ignorance comes misery.

Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin – to say that you are weak.

Know that all sins and all evils can be summed up in that one word, weakness. It is weakness that is the motive power in all evil doing; it is weakness that is the source of all selfishness; it is weakness that makes men injure others; it is weakness that makes them manifest what they are not in reality.

This is the great fact: Strength is life, weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal; weakness is constant strain and misery; weakness is death.

Strength is the medicine for the world’s disease. Strength is the medicine which the poor must have when tyrannized over by the rick. Strength is the medicine that the ignorance must have when oppressed by the learned.

Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal; you are not matter, you are not bodies; matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter.

Strength, strength is what the Upanishads speak to me from every page. This is the one great thing to remember, it has been the one great lesson I have been taught in my life. Strength, it says, strength, O man, be not weak. Are there no human weaknesses? – says man. There are, say the Upanishads, but will more weakness heal them? Would you try to wash dirt with dirt? Will sin cure sin? Will weakness cure weakness? Strength, O man, strength, say the Upanishads, stand up and be strong.