Addresses at the Parliament of Religions - 2


Why We Disagree

I will tell you a little story. You have heard the eloquent speaker who has just finished say, "Let us cease from abusing each other," and he was very sorry that there should be always so much variance.

But I think I should tell you a story that would illustrate the cause of this variance. A frog lived in a well. It had lived there for a long time. It was born there and brought up there, and yet was a little, small frog. Of course the evolutionists were not there then to tell us whether the frog lost its eyes or not but, for our story's sake, we must take it for granted that it had its eyes, and that it every day cleansed the water of all the worms and bacilli that lived in it with an energy that would do credit to our modern bacteriologists. In this way it went on and became a little sleek and fat. Well, one day another frog that lived in the sea came and fell into the well.

"Where are you from?"

"I am from the sea."

"The sea! How big is that? Is it as big as my well?" and he took a leap from one side of the well to the other.

"My friend," said the frog of the sea, "how do you compare the sea with your little well?"

Then the frog took another leap and asked, "Is your sea so big?"


"What nonsense you speak, to compare the sea with your well!"

"Well, then," said the frog of the well, "nothing can be bigger than my well. There can be nothing bigger than this. This fellow is a liar, so turn him out."

That has been the difficulty all the while.

I am a Hindu. I am sitting in my own little well and thinking that the whole world is my little well. The Christians sit in their little well and think the whole world is their well. The Muslims sit in their little well and think that is the whole world. I have to thank you of America for the great attempt you are making to break down the barriers of this little world of ours, and hope that, in the future, the Lord will help you to accomplish your purpose.

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.