TRUE HOLIDAY MAKING
If I had my way, I should have people, during Divaalee holidays, to do house-cleaning and heart cleaning and provide innocent and instructive amusements for children during these days. Fireworks, I know, are the delight of children, but they are so because, we the elders have habituated them to fireworks. I have not known the untutored African children wanting or appreciating fireworks. They have dances instead. What can be better or healthier for children than sports or picnics to which they will take, not bazaar made sweets of doubtful value but fresh and dried fruits. Children, both rich and poor, may also be trained to do house cleaning and white-washing by themselves. It will be something if they are coaxed to recognize the dignity of labour, if only during holidays to begin with. But the point I wish to emphasise, is that at least a part, if not whole of the money saved by doing away with fireworks etc., should be used for any other cause in which the poorest are served. There cannot be greater joy to men and women, young and old, than that they think of, and associate the poorest of the land with them in their holidays.
THE GOOD AND THE PLEASANT
The choice is yours.
The good is one thing, the pleasant is another. These two having different purposes tempt a man. Of these two, it is well for him who has taken hold of the good; he who chooses the pleasant misses the end.
The good and pleasant approach a man; the wise man considers and distinguishes the two. Wisely does he prefer the good to the pleasant, but a fool chooses the pleasant for its worldly good.
You : O Nachiketas you have after examining rejected the pleasures that are delightful or seem to be so. You have not taken the road that leads to wealth in which many men perish.
Kathopanishad
KINDNESS
“What is the real good?”
I asked in musing mood,
“Order”, said the law court,
“Knowledge” said the school;
“Truth” said the Wise man,
“Pleasure” said the fool,
“Love” said the maiden,
“Beauty” said the page;
“Freedom” said the dreamer,
“Home” said the sage,
“Fame” said the soldier
“Equity” said the seer,
Spoke my heart fully sad;
“The answer is not here”
Then within my bosom
Softly this I heard:
“Each heart holds the secret,
“KINDNESS” is the word
John Boyle O’ Reilly
MENTAL STRENGTH
Everyone should realize the full measure of his inherited mental capacities, be these great or small. This obligation is universal. All are equally capable, if they are really determined of realizing the hidden spiritual energy in their own depths. Though consciousness develops side by side with the body, it does not stop developing when the body has finished growing. Intellect, aesthetic activity, moral strength and religious sense continue to develop even in old age.
Alexis Carrel
CULTURE – SPIRIT OF BEAUTY
The urge to perceive and feel beauty is not merely an urge; it is the very breath of life.
I have seen many successful men, many men rolling in riches, man flushed with the triumph of victory; but I have not found in them the power to capture the Spirit of Beauty. Music has no meaning for them, poetry does not thrill them; they do not feel the harmony in the world, nor are they aware of the wonderful visions which surround them.
If the spirit of the beauty is not awakened in us it only shows that we have been unable to outgrow our lower mind, or we are slaves to that ruthless tyrant, the thinking mind, which only reasons, calculates, manoeuvres, or seeks ends.
You call tell a man he is wrong by a look or an intonation or a gesture just as eloquently as you can in words and if you tell him, he is wrong, do you make him want to agree with you? Never; For you have struck a direct blow at his intelligence, his judgment, his pride, his self-respect.
There is only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument and that is to avoid it.
We all understand that desires are wrong, but what is meant by giving up desires? How can life go on? Not that you should not have property, not that you should not have things which are necessary and things which are even luxuries. Have all that you want, and more, only know the truth and realize it. Wealth does not belong to anybody. Have no idea of proprietorship, possessorship. All belongs to the Lord.
Vivekananda
Fill the mind with the highest thoughts, hear them day after day, think them month after month. Never mind failures, they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life, these failures. What would life be without them? It could not be worth having if it were not for struggle. Where would be the poetry of Life?
What we really want is head and heart combined. There is room for an infinite amount of feeling and so also for an infinite amount of culture and reason. Let them come together without limit.
Vivekananda
“Four things a man must learn to do
If he would make his calling true
To think without confusion, clearly,
To love his fellow men sincerely,
To act from honest motives purely,
To Trust in God and Heaven securely.”
Vandyke
“The world for me, not I for the world. Good and evil are our slaves, not we theirs. It is the nature of the brute to remain where he is and not progress; it is the nature of the man to seek good and avoid evil; it is the nature of God to seek neither, but just to be eternally blissful. Let us be “GODS”. Make the heart like an ocean, go beyond all the trifles of the world, be mad with joy even at evil, see the world as a picture and then enjoy its beauty, knowing that nothing affects you. Look at it with calm complacency, see good and evil as the same, both are merely God’ play enjoy all.
