The India Corner of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus, Thammasat University, contains books generously donated by the Embassy of India in the Kingdom of Thailand, located in Thawi Watthana, Bangkok. Among the books available for loan include some of particular interest to students of Indian studies, philosophy, religion, and development. They are by and about Swami Vivekananda, a Hindu monk of the 1800s. He helped make Indian philosophies better known in the West.

Swami Vivekananda was particularly interested in communication between people of different religious backgrounds. At a time when India was a British colony, Swami Vivekananda also promoted ideas about independent nationalism. Books in The India Corner describing his achievements include Swami Vivekananda, a contemporary reader; Harmony of religions from the standpoint of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda; Swami Vivekananda tells stories; The complete book of yoga by Swami Vivekananda; and The master: the life-story and philosophy of India’s great warrior-saint Swami Vivekananda.

Also in the TU Library collection is The Penguin Swami Vivekananda reader, shelved in the General Stacks of the Puey Ungphakorn Library, Rangsit campus.

Swami Vivekananda called upon his fellow Indians to arise, awakening from a feeling of helplessness. He stated that Hindu sacred scriptures contained inspirational material to transcend what he called the hypnotism of weakness. Swami Vivekananda believed that people were not innately weak and incapable of effecting change, but were sometimes persuaded or hypnotized to feel as if they were. Among Swami Vivekananda’s famous sayings are the following:

• To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion.
• This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.
• The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun; when they are concentrated; they illumine.
• To succeed, you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will. “I will drink the ocean”, says the persevering soul; “at my will mountains will crumble up”. Have that sort of energy, that sort of will; work hard, and you will reach the goal.

Vedânta philosophy : Lectures by the Swâmi Vivekânanda on Râja Yoga (1899), Ch. VI : Pratyâhâra and Dhâraṇâm

• A perfect life is a contradiction in terms.

Swâmi Vivekânanda on Râja Yoga (1899), Ch. VI : Pratyâhâra and Dhâraṇâ

• No one ever landed on English soil with more hatred in his heart for a race than I did for the English, and, on this platform, are present English friends who can bear witness to the fact, but the more I lived among them, saw how the machine is working, the English national life, mixed with them, found where the heart-beat of the nation was, the more I loved them. There is none among you here present, my brothers, who loves the English people more than I do. You have to see what is going on there, and you have to mix with them. As the philosophy, our national philosophy of the Vedanta, has summarised all misfortune, all misery from that one cause, ignorance, herein also we must understand that the difficulties that arise between us and the English people are mostly due to that ignorance; we do not know them, they do not know us.

Spoken on his return to India from England as recorded in From Colombo to Almora (1904), Calcutta, p. 221

• Learn to recognise the mother in Evil, Terror, Sorrow, Denial, as well as in Sweetness and in Joy.

Address to his English disciples, as quoted in The life of Vivekananda and the Universal Gospel, 5th edition (1960) by Romain Rolland, p. 53

• In spirituality the Americans are very inferior to us. But their society is very superior to ours.

As quoted in The life of Vivekananda and the Universal Gospel, 5th edition (1960) by Romain Rolland, p. 74

• India is immortal if she persists in her search for God. But if she goes in for politics and social conflict, she will die.

A few hours before his death, as quoted in Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Volume 14 (1963), p. 469

• It was India’s Karma, her fate, to be conquered, and in her turn, to conquer her conqueror. She has already done so with her Mohammedan victors: Educated Mohammedans are Sufis, scarcely to be distinguished from Hindus. Hindu thought has permeated their civilisation; they assumed the position of learners. And England will be conquered in her turn. Today she has the sword, but it is worse than useless in the world of ideas. You know what Schopenhauer said of Indian thought. He foretold that its influence would be as momentous in Europe, when it became well known, as the revival of Greek and Latin; culture after the Dark Ages.

Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. 5, p. 190

• He is an atheist who does not believe in himself. The old religions said that he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion says that he is an atheist who does not believe in himself.
• Faith, faith, faith in ourselves, faith, faith in God, this is the secret of greatness. If you have faith in all the three hundred and thirty millions of your mythological Gods, and in all the Gods which foreigners have now and again introduced into your midst, and still have no faith in yourselves, there is no salvation for you.
• The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength. Teach men of strength that is already within them.
• Death is better than a vegetating ignorant life; it is better to die on the battle-field than to live a life of defeat.
• This world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong…
• Buddha is the only prophet who said, I do not care to know your various theories about God. What is the use of discussing all the subtle doctrines about the soul? Do good and be good.

Address at the Rameswaram Temple on Real Worship

• This is the gist of all worship — to be pure and to do good to others. He who sees Shiva in the poor, in the weak, and in the diseased, really worships Shiva; and if he sees Shiva only in the image, his worship is but preliminary.
• The prayers of those that are pure in mind and body will be answered by Shiva, and those that are impure and yet try to teach religion to others will fail in the end.

Address at the Rameswaram Temple on Real Worship, in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. 3

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)