Swami Vivekananda

1. Death is better than a vegetating ignorant life; it is better to die on the battle-field than to live a life of defeat. - Swami Vivekananda



1863 - 1902

At the end of the last century, Vivekananda swept with amazing vitality and power through America and Europe, tirelessly expounding, through preaching and example, India's message of the Spirit. As the dynamic representative of Hinduism at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, he proclaimed the truth of all religions, the divinity of the soul and the oneness of all existence. He returned to his native land to awaken it to its own great heritage, and to bring to India the best which he had gathered from his visits to the West. He established the Ramakrishna Order of monks and founded the Ramakrishna Mission to embody his two-fold ideal of self-realization and the service of God in man.