
WRITTEN BY LONDON SWAMINATHAN
Post No. 13,644
Date uploaded in London – 8 September 2024
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Swami Ranganathananda (15 December 1908 – 25 April 2005) was a speaker, writer and author of many famous books; he was the president of Sri Ramakrishna Mission. He travelled around the world giving lectures on philosophy.
In his talk on Kena Upanishad he said,
Man in spite of his obvious limitations, thinks too much of the strength and glory, but all this ends in death. If only he knew the One, the source of all strength, glory and excellence in man and nature, how blessed his life would be, and how fearless of death he would become! Life is trivial if it doesn’t overcome death in the knowledge of the deathless Self, the one Self in all.

This echoed in Shakespeare in his Measure for Measure (II.ii.119-24)
But man, proud man,
Dressed in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape
150 Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep,
In moments of deep thoughtfulness, man feels within himself the presence of a power greater than his given self. He then learns to feel humility and to experience an elevation of spirit in that humility.
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In his talk on Isa Upanishad he said,
Here is another beautiful epithet of the Atman (aatman): Kavih, the poet, the seer. He is the great poet, and the world is his poem, coming out in rhymes and verses. The word Kavih, poet, means not only one who composes verses, but one who is far seeing-kraanta darsi- as Sankaracharya puts it, one who has insight and can see and grasp the inner significance of things. The great poets of the world share this virtue with the Atman. Poetry brings a message from the heart of nature. What to the prosaic and humdrum mind may seem ordinary and insignificant, to the poet will be charged with meaning and significance. This thought has been neatly expressed in an English verse depicting the poetic vision of Shakespeare:
The poem hangs on the berry bush
When comes the poet’s eye;
The street begins to masquerade
When Shakespeare passes by.
Every act, every experience, every situation is full of poetic suggestion to a poet; his sensitive mind sees meaning and significance in them. There is no event or thing in nature which does not ensoul the Soul of the universe; the poet catches the divine pulsations of nature by momentary elevations to kinship with the divine Poet. The ordinary individual, on the contrary, sees only prosaic, discrete facts and events.
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Fear of death, fear of life, and fear of being reborn, must give way to an all-round fearlessness. Weakness and cowardice are worse deaths than physical deaths. In the words of Shakespeare (Julius Caesar, II. ii. 32-33)
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Is there a philosophy which can generate and sustain such a spirit of valour, of heroism, capable of releasing vast stores of human energy? Yes, say the Upanishads; yes says the Gita and yes says Swami Vivekananda. It is the knowledge of the truth of the Atman, the immortal Self of man.
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In his talk on Katha Upanishad he said,

The mood oof questioning comes to all people at some time or other in their lives. But the mood doesn’t stay; the pressures of external life drive it away and man continues his humdrum existence shut from the knowledge of the mystery which alone readers life meaningful and worthwhile. But if the mood stays, man becomes philosophical; he achieves spiritual depth. If it is not properly handled, however, the mood will make man pessimistic and apathetic and rob him of all zest in life. He will become in the words of Shakespeare ‘sicklied over with the pale cast of thought; from the thoughtless and shallow of optimism of worldliness, he will swing to the opposite extreme of the sickly pessimism of otherworldliness.
–subham—
Tags- Shakespeare ,the Upanishads, Swami Ranganathananda, talks, Kena, Katha, Isa, Julius Caesar, , Measure for Measure










