For the Indian people and a Message to the world
Whoever walks a furlong without sympathy, walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.
Wisdom and learning are not identical. They are not always on speaking terms. Learning looks backward to the past. Wisdom looks forward to the future.
Wisdom has been defined as knowing what one
ought to do next. Virtue is doing it.
Wisdom without virtue is a weariness of the flesh.
But as volition passes over into action, and Science
into Art, knowledge into power, so does wisdom
into virtue, and where thought does not go over
into action, there results mental dyspepsia or moral
constipation. Men of mere ideas and no legs are no
more than intellectual centipedes.Says an American humorous writer:
I’ve thought and thought on men and things,
As my uncle used to say,
‘If the folks don’t work as they pray,
Why, there ain’t no use to pray.’
If you want something and just dead set,
A pleading for it with both eyes wet,
And tears won’t bring it; why, you try sweat,
As my uncle used to say.The power of safe and accurate response to
external conditions is the essential feature of
sanity. The inability to adapt action to need is a
character of insanity. “Change or perish” is the
grim watchword of Nature. Keep pace with the advancing times and you can survive in the Struggle of Life. (India, take note.)
The spirit of all practical wisdom is summed up concisely in the simple and saving advice of Krishna; “Thy business is with the action only; never with the reward or merit accruing from it; let not the fruit of action entangle thee; nor be thou the slave of inaction.”
And live in action! Labour! Make thine acts Thy piety, casting all self aside, Contemning gain and merit; equable In good or evil; equability Is Yoga, is piety;”
Be in the struggle; that is your duty. A true hero loves engagement (action) as never a lover wooed his sweetheart. In case of death in the field, you bring glory to heaven or truth (i.e. advance the cause of evolution and Cosmic Progress by letting the fittest survive) and in case of victory also you let the real Power, Truth (Sat) shine through you. In reality you are the Truth that conquers and not this body or that which is consumed in the strife.
You are ever victorious. As Truth’s self shine out as energy of Life.
“Either-being killed Thou wilt win heaven’s safety, or -alive And victor -thou wilt reign earthly king. Therefore, arise thou, Son of Truth! brace Thine arm for conflict, nerve thy heart to meet-As things alike to these -pleasure or pain, Profit or ruin, victory or defeat. So minded, gird thee to the fight, for so Thou shalt not sin “
The true gauge of success being of spiritual growth
and not outward gain or loss, defeat is as glorious
as victory.“Shah swar-i-khush ba maidAn goye bizan”
O happy knight, you happen to be on the
playground (world, hit on, hit on).A man’s strength of character bears a direct
proportion to the extent of trials he has undergone.“Then welcome each rebuff
That turns Earth’s smoothness rough.
Each sting that bids not sit, nor stand, but go!
Be our joys three parts pain.
Strive and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare,
Never grudge the throe.
For thence a paradox
Which comforts, while it mocks,
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail.”