In this article we’ll make a collection of Swami Vivekananda‘s quotes and comments on discipline.
- A sapling must be hedged about for protection, but when it becomes a tree, a hedge would be a hindrance. So there is no need to criticise and condemn the old forms.[Source]
- All these disciplines are for the purification of the heart. And as soon as it is pure, all truths flash upon it in a minute; all truth in the universe will manifest in your heart, if you are sufficiently pure.[Source]
- Even the lowest of the Hindus, the Pariah, has less of the brute in him than a Briton in a similar social status. This is the result of an old and excellent religious civilization. This evolution to a higher spiritual state is possible only through discipline and education.[Source]
- If you intend to study the mind, you must have systematic training; you must practice to bring the mind under your control, to attain to that consciousness from which you will be able to study the mind and remain unmoved by any of its wild gyrations. Otherwise the facts observed will not be reliable; they will not apply to all people and therefore will not be truly facts or data at all.[Source]
- It is a good discipline to be forced to work for work’s sake, even to the length of not being allowed to enjoy the fruits of one’s labour….[Source]
- Know this also to be one of the spiritual practices, a discipline for God – realisation. Its aim also is Self – realisation.[Source]
- Mind you, there is no value in learning. You are all mistaken in learning. The only value of knowledge is in the strengthening, the disciplining, of the mind.[Source]
- No doubt it is an evil to be bound by laws, but it is necessary at the immature stage to be guided by rules; in other words, as the Master used to say that the sapling must be hedged round, and so on.[Source]
- Some men, who begin by saying that the world is a hell, often end by saying that it is a heaven when they succeed in the practice of self-control.[Source]
- The hard discipline, with the exception of one great good point, is fraught with evil. The good point is that men can do one or two things well with very little effort, having practiced them every day through generations.[Source]
- The mind has to be gradually and systematically brought under control.[Source]
- The whole point is to discipline the mind.[Source]