Swami Vivekananda

15Laws Of Life

The Laws that will guide you to live your life to the fullest

“In a day, when you don’t come across any problems, you can be sure that you are traveling in a wrong path.”

Swami Vivekananda’s inspiring personality was well known both in India and in America during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth. The unknown monk of India suddenly leapt into fame at the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893, at which he represented Hinduism. His vast knowledge of Eastern and Western culture as well as his deep spiritual insight, fervid eloquence, brilliant conversation, broad human sympathy, colorful personality, and handsome figure made an irresistible appeal to the many types of Americans who came in contact with him. People who saw or heard Vivekananda even once still cherish his memory after a lapse of more than half a century.

Swami Vivekananda once spoke of himself as a "condensed India." His life and teachings are of inestimable value to the West for an understanding of the mind of Asia. William James, the Harvard philosopher, called the Swami the "paragon of Vedantists.” Here are his 15 irrefutable laws of life that will guide you to live your life to the fullest :

Law # 1 : Love Is The Law Of LifeAll love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore, love for love's sake, because it is law of life, just as you breathe to live.

Law # 2 : It's Your Outlook That MattersIt is our own mental attitude, which makes the world what it is for us. Our thoughts make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light.

Lesson # 3 : Life is BeautifulFirst, believe in this world - that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you do not understand it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!

Law # 4 : It's The Way You FeelFeel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.

Law # 5 : Set Yourself FreeThe moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him - that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.

Law # 6 : Don't Play The Blame GameCondemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.

Law # 7 : Help OthersIf money helps a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.

Law # 8 : Uphold Your IdealsOur duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.

Law # 9 : Listen To Your SoulYou have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.

Law # 10 : Be YourselfThe greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves! 

Law # 11 : Nothing Is ImpossibleNever think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin - to say that you are weak, or others are weak.

Law # 12 : You Have The PowerAll the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.

Law # 13 : Learn EverydayThe goal of mankind is knowledge... now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man 'knows', should, in strict psychological language, be what he 'discovers' or 'unveils'; what man 'learns' is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.

Law # 14 : Be TruthfulEverything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.

Law # 15 : Think DifferentAll differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.

"His words are great music, phrases in the style of Beethoven, stirring rhythms like the march of Handel choruses. I cannot touch these sayings of his, scattered as they are through the pages of books, at thirty years' distance, without receiving a thrill through my body like an electric shock. And what shocks, what transports, must have been produced when in burning words they issued from the lips of the hero!” – Romain Rolland

"Life ends when U stop dreaming, Hope ends when U stop believing, Love ends when U stop caring, Friendship ends when U stop sharing. So share all your feelings with whomever, you consider a friend ..."

Thank You Very MuchSompong Yusoontorn