In this article we’ll make a collection of Swami Vivekananda‘s quotes and comments on Enjoyment. Related articles are listed at the bottom of the page.
- Alas, alas, the desire for enjoyment does not leave a man.[Source]
- All enjoyment will make us thirst for more, and that brings pain as its result. There is no limit to man’s desires; he goes on desiring, and when he comes to a point where desire cannot be fulfilled, the result is pain.[Source]
- Darkness and light, enjoyment of the world and enjoyment of God will never go together.[Source]
- Enjoyment can never be the goal, because enjoyment can only be in nature.[Source]
- Enjoyment comes from the non-discrimination of the soul and Sattva which are totally different because the latter’s actions are for another.[Source]
- Enjoyment is the million-headed serpent that we must tread under foot. We renounce and go on, then find nothing and despair; but hold on, hold on. The world is a demon. It is a kingdom of which the puny ego is king. Put it away and stand firm. Give up lust and gold and fame and hold fast to the Lord, and at last we shall reach a state of perfect indifference. The idea that the gratification of the senses constitutes enjoyment is purely materialistic. There is not one spark of real enjoyment there; all the joy there is, is a mere reflection of the true bliss.[Source]
- Enjoyment, misery, luxury, wealth, power, and poverty, even life itself, are all evanescent.[Source]
- Enjoyment should not be the goal.[Source]
- Everything that has selfishness for its basis, competition as its right hand, and enjoyment as its goal, must die sooner or later.[Source]
- Give up all desire for enjoyment in earth or heaven.[Source]
- Give up all ideas of enjoyment in this world and the next, care only for God and Truth. We are here to know truth, not for enjoyment.[Source]
- How can one expect Yoga or union with God, unless one has previously finished with his thirst for Bhoga or enjoyment?[Source]
- Plunder and fight as you may, the enjoyment that you are seeking is only in peace; and peace, in the renunciation of physical pleasures. Enjoyment lies not in physical development, but in the culture of the mind and the intellect.[Source]
- So long as enjoyment is sought, bondage remains.[Source]
- The Jiva lives there, having enjoyment after enjoyment, and so forgets all about its real nature.[Source]
- The lower the animal, the more is its enjoyment in the senses, the more it lives in the senses.[Source]
- The pig body is hard to give up; we are sorry to lose the enjoyment of our one little pig body![Source]
- The progress of the world means more enjoyment and more misery too.[Source]
- The secret of life is not enjoyment, but education through experience.[Source]
- The wealthy are either immersed in the enjoyment of health or grubbing for more.[Source]
- The world is our fish basket, we must not depend upon it for enjoyment.[Source]
- There never was a person who found happiness in the senses or in enjoyment of the senses.[Source]
- This is a place for action, not enjoyment.[Source]
- Through Bhoga (enjoyment) Yoga will come in time. But alas, such is the lot of my countrymen that, not to speak of possessing yoga, they cannot even have a little Bhoga! Suffering all sorts of indignities they can with the utmost difficulty only meet the barest needs of the body—and even that everyone cannot do! It is strange that such a state of affairs does not disturb our sleep and rouse us to our immediate duties.[Source]
- To the vast majority of mankind, the body is everything; the body is all the universe to them; bodily enjoyment is their all in all.[Source]
- We give the first place to desires for enjoyment, either in this or another life.[Source]
- We may go on accumulating things for our physical enjoyment, but only what we earn is really ours. A fool may buy all the books in the world, and they will be in his library; but he will be able to read only those that he deserves to; and this deserving is produced by Karma.[Source]
- Where is there any enjoyment but in Him? What enjoyment can there be in little clods of earth?[Source]
- Without dispassion for the world, without renunciation, without giving up the desire for enjoyment, absolutely nothing can be accomplished in the spiritual life. “It is not like a sweetmeat in the hands of a child which you can snatch by a trick.”[Source]
Is enjoyment the goal of life?
From a lecture delivered at Alameda, California on 18 April 1900—[Source]
Is enjoyment the goal of life? Were it so, it would be a tremendous mistake to become a man at all. What man can enjoy a meal with more gusto than the dog or the cat ? Go to a menagerie and see the [wild animals] tearing the flesh from the bone. Go back and become a bird! . . . What a mistake then to become a man! Vain have been my years — hundreds of years — of struggle only to become the man of sense-enjoyments.
. . . . . .
What is the goal of it all? Can senses ever be the goal? Can enjoyment of pleasure ever be the goal? Can this life ever be the goal of the soul? If it is, better die this moment; do not want this life! If that is the fate of man, that he is going to be only the perfected machine, it would just mean that we go back to being trees and stones and things like that. Did you ever hear a cow tell a lie or see a tree steal? They are perfect machines. They do not make mistakes. They live in a world where everything is finished. .