| Sri Ramakrishna was a 19th century mystic and yogi from India. He practiced several religious traditions, including Tantra and Bhankti yoga, as well as Advaita Vedanta. His most famous student was Swami Vivekananda, an influential spiritual leader of modern Hinduism. The entire life of Sri Ramakrishna was considered an uninterrupted contemplation of God. To Ramakrishna every religion was the revelation of God in His diverse aspects, satisfying that way the manifold spiritual urges of human minds. He considered different religions as pictures of the One truth taken from different standpoints. Thus, all religions should not be considered contradictory but complementary. Sri Ramakrishna’s message of harmony gives us hope and shows the way. |
Ramakrishna Quotes:
If you must be mad, be it not for the things of the world. Be mad with the love of God.
God can be realized through all paths. All religions are true. The important thing is to reach the roof. You can reach it by stone stairs or by wooden stairs or by bamboo steps or by a rope. You can also climb up by a bamboo pole.
It is easy to talk on religion, but difficult to practice it.
To work without attachment is to work without the expectation of reward or fear of any punishment in this world or the next. Work so done is a means to the end, and God is the end.
The world is indeed a mixture of truth and make-believe. Discard the make-believe and take the truth.
Travel in all the four quarters of the earth, yet you will find nothing anywhere. Whatever there is, is only here.
God is everywhere but He is most manifest in man. So serve man as God. That is as good as worshipping God.
Bondage is of the mind; freedom too is of the mind. If you say ‘I am a free soul. I am a son of God who can bind me’ free you shall be.
When one has love for God, one doesn’t feel any physical attraction to wife, children, relatives and friends. One retains only compassion for them.
A man is truly free, even here in this embodied state, if he knows that God is the true agent and he by himself is powerless to do anything.
Unless one always speaks the truth, one cannot find God Who is the soul of truth.
Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious.
Disease is the tax which the soul pays for the body, as the tenant pays house-rent for the use of the house.
If you want to go east, don’t go west.
If you first fortify yourself with the true knowledge of the Universal Self, and then live in the midst of wealth and worldliness, surely they will in no way affect you.
When the flower blooms, the bees come uninvited.
One must be very particular about telling the truth. Through truth one can realize God.
Many are the names of God and infinite the forms through which He may be approached.
Longing is like the rosy dawn. After the dawn out comes the sun. Longing is followed by the vision of God.
God is in all men, but all men are not in God; that is why we suffer.
Through selfless work, love of God grows in the heart. Then through his grace one realize him in course of time. God can be seen. One can talk to him as I am talking to you.
When the divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good and bad, or of high and low.
If you desire to be pure, have firm faith, and slowly go on with your devotional practices without wasting your energy in useless scriptural discussions and arguments. Your little brain will otherwise be muddled.
