From Epistles-Second Series of Volume 6 of The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
CLV
SAN FRANCISCO,
4th March, 1900.
DEAR NIVEDITA,
I don’t want to work. I want to be quiet and rest. I know the time and the place; but the fate or Karma, I think, drives me on — work, work. We are like cattle driven to the slaughter-house — hastily nibbling a bite of grass on the roadside as they are driven along under the whip. And all this is our work, our fear — fear, the beginning of misery, of disease, etc. By being nervous and fearful we injure others, by being so fearful to hurt we hurt more. By trying so much to avoid evil we fall into its jaws.
What a mass of namby-pamby nonsense we create round ourselves!! It does us no good, it leads us on to the very thing we try to avoid — misery. …
Oh, to become fearless, to be daring, to be careless of everything! . . .
Yours etc.,
VIVEKANANDA.