Swami Vivekananda Quotes
So we find that in almost every religion these are the three primary things which we have in the worship of God - forms or symbols, names, God-men. All religions have these, but you find that they want to fight with each other...These are the external forms of devotion, through which man has to pass; but if he is sincere, if he really wants to reach the truth, he goes higher than these, to a plane where forms are as nothing.
Vivekananda, Swami. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Advaita Ashrama, 1958.
The major religions differ when it comes to conversion. Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and some Christian Religions do not aggressively seek converts but will accept converts who come themselves. Other Christian religions and Islam aggressively try and convert others and see it as their religious duty to do so.
“Africa” then meant Northern Africa or what we today call the Middle East. Even in the 4th century it was a hotbed of internecine religious strife. He was not the first to try and cope with the religious strife of Palestine and the rest of the Middle East, and he was certainly not the last.
Swami Vivekananda, born Narendranath Datta (Bengali: [nɔrendronatʰ dɔto]), was an Indian Hindu monk. He was a chief disciple of the 19th-century Indian mystic Ramakrishna. He was a key figure in the introduction of the Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world, and is credited with raising interfaith awareness, bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion during the late 19th century. He was a major force in the contemporary Hindu reform movements in India, and contributed to the concept of nationalism in colonial India. Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission. He is perhaps best known for his speech which began with the words "Sisters and brothers of America ...," in which he introduced Hinduism at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago in 1893.
