Swami Vivekananda quote: “Devotion to duty is the highest form of worship of God.”

“The tradition in Hinduism is that it is not open to any Hindu, whatever be the name and mental image of the Supreme Being he uses for his devotional exercises, to deny the existence of God that others worship. He can raise the name of his choice to that of the highest, but he can not deny the divinity or the truth of the God of other denominations. The fervor of his own piety just gives predominance to the name and form he gives for his own worship and contemplation, and he treats the other gods as deriving the divinity therefrom. This reduces all controversy to a devotional technique of concentration on a peculiar name and mental form or concrete symbol as representing the supreme being. It makes no difference in the contents of Vedanta to which all devotees equally subscribe… ‘just as all water raining from the skies goes to the ocean, worship of all gods go to Keshava.”

C. Rajagopalachari (1878–1972) Political leader

C. Rajagopalachari (1900) Hinduism, doctrine and way of life https://archive.org/stream/cu31924091600688#page/n37/mode/2up, p. 31; As quoted in [Rao, K.L. Seshagiri, Mahatma Gandhi And Comparative Religion, http://books.google.com/books?id=HSGWZ9mpNl4C&pg=PA110, 1 January 1990, Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 978-81-208-0767-9, 110–]

“After so much austerity I have known that the highest truth is this: He is present in every being! These are all in manifold forms of him. There is no other God to seek for! He alone is worshipping God, who serves all beings!”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Source: As quoted in Vivekananda : The Yogas and Other Works (1953), p. 173; also at "The Story Of Swami Vivekananda: Mission Impossible" at MyLifeYoga (10 December 2011) http://mylifeyoga.com/2011/12/10/the-story-of-swami-vivekananda-mission-impossibl/

“If you do not worship God, you worship something, and nine times out of ten it will be yourself. You have a duty to worship God, not because He will be imperfect and unhappy if you do not, but because you will be imperfect and unhappy.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

“Without devotion, knowledge is tasteless. Without knowledge, devotion is mere empty idol worship.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

“Serving humanity and striving to alleviate the sufferings of other people goes hand in hand with our duties to worship God Almighty.”

Mirza Masroor Ahmad (1950) spiritual leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community

Addresses
Source: Opening of Southall Mosque https://www.alislam.org/press-release/new-ahmadiyya-mosque-opened-in-southall/, 23rd February 2020.

“In the course of the article I described the 'god' worshiped by terrorists as 'a monkey god.' I was wrong and that was offensive. I owe an apology to millions of Hindus who worship Lord Hanuman, an actual Monkey God… Hanuman is worshiped as a symbol of perseverance, strength and devotion. He is known as a destroyer of evil and to inspire and liberate. Those are hardly the traits of whatever the Hell (literally) it is that terrorists worship and worthy of my respect and admiration not ridicule.”

Mark Williams American conservative activist, radio talk show host and author

Williams's "correction" to the previous statement.

“Reverence is the highest quality of man’s nature; and that individual, or nation, which has it slightly developed, is so far unfortunate. It is a strong spiritual instinct, and seeks to form channels for itself where none exists; thus Americans, in the dearth of other objects to worship, fall to worshipping themselves.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

1840s, Letters from New York (1843)
Source: Letters from New York http://www.bartleby.com/66/63/12263.html, vol. 1, letter 18

“Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius; selection between them is the highest science; their mass is the highest educator. Man always made, and still makes, grotesque blunders in selecting and measuring forces, taken at random from the heap, but he never made a mistake in the value he set on the whole, which he symbolized as unity and worshipped as God.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

“The highest truth is this: God is present in all beings. They are His multiple forms. There is no other God to seek.... It is a man-making religion that we want.... Give up these weakening mysticisms, and be strong.... For the next fifty years. … let all other gods disappear from our minds. This is the only God that is awake, our own race, everywhere His hands, everywhere His feet, everywhere His ears; He covers everything.... The first of all worships is the worship of those all around us. … He alone serves God who serves all other beings.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Quoted from Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage.

“He is present in every being! These are all in manifold forms of him. There is no other God to seek for! He alone is worshipping God, who serves all beings!”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

As quoted in Vivekananda : The Yogas and Other Works (1953), p. 173; also at "The Story Of Swami Vivekananda: Mission Impossible" at MyLifeYoga (10 December 2011) http://mylifeyoga.com/2011/12/10/the-story-of-swami-vivekananda-mission-impossibl/
Context: After so much austerity I have known that the highest truth is this: He is present in every being! These are all in manifold forms of him. There is no other God to seek for! He alone is worshipping God, who serves all beings!

“Devotion to duty is the highest form of worship of God.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Swami Vivekananda 261

Related quotes

Related topics