Competition

Swami Vivekananda has said, “First of all, our young men must be strong; religion will come afterwards. Be strong, my young friends; that is my advice to you. You will be nearer to heaven through football than through the study of the Gita.”

Swami Vivekananda was no soccer evangelist. His…

To love is to see that the other is in trouble. To love is to extend a helping hand. Love is not about admiring somebody’s physicality or using someone for some means. Love has to be an exercise in compassion.

Only two kinds of associations are right in this world.…

Both the genders have become even more anchored to their physical identity. The more you do that, the more you are in misery because, really, the body is not who you are.

There are places better and higher than the place of your gender specific hormones. Why do you want…

What is it that Shri Rama stands for? He stands for detachment. He stands for fearlessness. He stands for compassion. He stands for Dharma.

Is there Dharma really in your life? And by Dharma I do not mean a creed or a cult, or observation of certain rituals, or the…

If your goals are small, they are no goals. You will be frustrated if you don’t achieve them, and you will be doubly frustrated if you achieve them. Having achieved them, you will find that the next goal is waiting for you, and that is deep frustration. You will feel…

When you are serious about victory, you do not strike at the enemy without being fully prepared. Those who just plunge themselves into battles without having checked their preparedness are the ones who don’t love victory too much. Because this battle is important, and because this battle must be won,…

Every young person who is about to choose a career, decide on work in life, must keep this in mind, my humble advice: See what is it that really, really troubles you, and then work should be the medicine for your trouble. That’s the way you must choose work.

Therefore,…

Man wants progress, and progress means an ascension, an elevation. It is as if man wants to be elevated to some high sky. That’s what you say, right? “I am rising up, I am progressing.” What is the intention of this tendency to keep progressing? The intention is to progress…

As long as the goal is not tremendously big, life has no real purpose. If your goals are small they are no goals. You will be frustrated if you don’t achieve them, and you will be doubly frustrated if you achieve them. Having achieved them, you will find that the…

As long as the goal is not tremendously big, life has no real purpose. If your goals are small, they are no goals. You will be frustrated if you don’t achieve them, and you will be doubly frustrated if you achieve them. Having achieved them, you will find that the…

If the two of you could together shout and scratch and bite and tear and break—if all those things could be done together, why not meditate and be loving and compassionate together? Or is companionship only for biting into each other?

So, having been companions, now it is your responsibility…

If you have to invest your hours, your months, your years, invest them on a cause. The cause could be your own development, or general development, social welfare, whatever. But let it be a cause, not a person. Let the cause occupy you fully.

This applies to both men and…

There is something honorable about dying against a major enemy. But what honor is there in being consumed by the little?

Set a great goal. Even if you lose, it will at least be a great defeat. And if you set a timid, scared, conventional, narrow goal, then even if…

You have been entrusted with time not so that you while it away.

Somebody once asked the Satan, “How do you corrupt a being?”

He says, “It’s easy. I just whisper into his ears: your time is your time.”

And that’s the assumption we all have bought into: “I have…

Success does not lie in doing any random thing. Do you know why you are doing a certain thing? Are you sure what is worthy enough to be done? That’s the moot question.

Choose the right option. Make the right decision. Fight the right battle. And now it doesn’t matter…

We really do not know how to spend a Sunday, but we want to live two hundred years. If you are given one free day, you do not know what to do with it. You start looking here and there, wondering, “What to do? Some free time is there. How…

Before you excel, ask yourself, “What must I excel in? What is worth it?” Before you speed down a road, ask yourself, “Which road to take?” Speed comes later; choice of the right road comes first.

It is far better to be slow on the right road than to be…

All the economic theories, all the economic systems are predicated on this premise, based on this assumption that the goal of man’s action is to have more money. This they call as welfare, or even luxury. In some theories, they say that maximization of luxury is the objective of man’s…

One of the things in the Japanese manufacturing philosophy is JIT, ‘Just in Time’. They say that inventory hides mistakes, so we will not carry any inventory. Everything has to be just in time. The process has to be lean enough, smart enough, and efficient enough.

For example, a video…

What is the nature of a gymnasium? The gymnasium only gives you obstacles. Have you ever noticed? You want to raise something—what is the gymnasium giving you? Weights, and weights are obstacles against the rise. The gymnasium really does not support you, it actually obstructs you.

The world is anyway…

Keep fighting. Keep fighting till your victory, and keep fighting in your defeat. The second part is more important. Keep fighting even when you have been beaten down. Keep fighting even when yours looks like a hopeless cause, a lost battle. Don’t just start wallowing in self-pity and self-abuse. “Oh!…

Cooking, cooking, cooking, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, washing, washing, washing—is this what you are born for? Three kids are there, somebody needs footwear, somebody needs underwear—that is all there is to your life? Footwear for the younger one, underwear for the elder one, thermal wear for the husband—is this what you…

Love is not about admiring somebody’s physicality, or using someone for some means. Love has to be an exercise in compassion. So, I often say, when you relate to the other, relate either to uplift or to be uplifted.

Only two kinds of associations are right in this world. If…

One day has infinite time, you know. You are able to say it has twenty-four hours only because you have defined the hour in a particular way.

A day has just twenty-four hours, but how many minutes does a day have? See how time has increased.

Oh, you want even…

All the expanse of discipline is built upon the foundation of the goal. The goal comes first.

I might be a very violent man, and my goal is to blast a building off. To learn how to do it, I will have to live through stern discipline. I will have…

When thoughts of your personal success stop mattering to you, when you say, “There is something more important than my personal success,” then you have really succeeded.

It has to be so big that you forget about your failures, your happiness, your sadness.

Somebody comes and tells you, “But you…

Luck means that you are getting something unexpected and big, right? That’s what you call as being lucky.

Keep working hard. Do not wait for luck. You can force luck. You can tell him, “I am working so hard that you will have to come to me.”

Force luck. Don’t…

There is a lot that is broken on this Earth today. We need young people who come out, who set out and fix those things. Those are the kind of entrepreneurial ventures that are needed today. What we need is a very clear and precise type of entrepreneurial activity—activity that…

People talk of personal time as opposed to professional time, right? They forget that the profession that they have chosen has also been chosen by the person. So, even that which they are mistakenly calling as professional time is only personal time.

Our lives have only personal time. To be…

Worrying is nothing but an unauthorized concern for results. First of all, it is a concern for results. Secondly, it is an unauthorized concern for results. You are trying to speculate about something you are not authorized to think about. You have no authorization, no locus standi to think about…

Don’t you see you are bound to have a midlife crisis after forty? Why? Because of the ways you have gone through your youth. The most wasteful period of one’s life is often the time between twenty and thirty-five.

You are at the peak of your powers between, let’s say,…

If we want to know whether we are successful or not, then we have to ask ourselves: Am I really getting better off compared to my previous stage, not compared to somebody else? Am I now better off compared to what I used to be? After all, my restlessness is…

Do not call joy as freedom from pleasure. Just call joy as higher pleasure. If you call joy as higher pleasure, then it becomes possible to sacrifice lower pleasures for the sake of the higher pleasure called joy.

Otherwise, spirituality remains very scary to people who have been spoken to…