Ganappa is one-year old today! In celebration of the first anniversary, we wish to present a series of articles providing interesting episodes from the lives of Sri Ramakrishna’s disciples.
Humility is the hallmark of nobility. It is the greatest of all the noble virtues. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa practiced humility in his life and also instilled this noble quality in the lives of his disciples. When Keshab Chandra Sen asked him how he looked upon himself, he told, “I am the dust of the dust of your feet.” Every one of his monastic disciples without exception had imbibed this quality of their master.
Swami Vivekananda, the foremost disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, stated about the uniqueness of his guru: “The man at whose feet I sat all my life – and it was only a few ideas of his I try to teach – could [hardly] write his name at all. All my life I have not seen another man like that, and I have travelled all over the world. When I think of that man, I feel like a fool, because I wanted to read books and he never did… He was his own book.”
Swami Vivekananda once paid a touching tribute to Sri Ramakrishna as follows: “my teacher, my master, my hero, my ideal, my God in life.” “If there has been anything achieved by me,” he said with deep feeling, “by thoughts, or words or deeds, if from my lips has ever fallen one word that has ever helped anyone in this world, I lay no claim to it; it was his. But if there have been curses falling from my lips, if there has been hatred coming out of me, it is all mine, and not his. All that has been weak has been mine; all that has been life-giving, strengthening, pure and holy has been his inspiration, his words, and he himself. Yes, my friends, the world has yet to know that man.”
There may be many students who think highly of their teachers. But for a world-renowned saint as Swami Vivekananda (about whom John Wright, a professor of Harvard University, wrote “Here is a man more learned than all our learned professors put together.”) to think and say such words, it shows his extraordinary humility.
Humility is the hallmark of nobility. It is the greatest of all the noble virtues. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa practiced humility in his life and also instilled this noble quality in the lives of his disciples. When Keshab Chandra Sen asked him how he looked upon himself, he told, “I am the dust of the dust of your feet.” Every one of his monastic disciples without exception had imbibed this quality of their master.
Swami Vivekananda, the foremost disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, stated about the uniqueness of his guru: “The man at whose feet I sat all my life – and it was only a few ideas of his I try to teach – could [hardly] write his name at all. All my life I have not seen another man like that, and I have travelled all over the world. When I think of that man, I feel like a fool, because I wanted to read books and he never did… He was his own book.”
Swami Vivekananda once paid a touching tribute to Sri Ramakrishna as follows: “my teacher, my master, my hero, my ideal, my God in life.” “If there has been anything achieved by me,” he said with deep feeling, “by thoughts, or words or deeds, if from my lips has ever fallen one word that has ever helped anyone in this world, I lay no claim to it; it was his. But if there have been curses falling from my lips, if there has been hatred coming out of me, it is all mine, and not his. All that has been weak has been mine; all that has been life-giving, strengthening, pure and holy has been his inspiration, his words, and he himself. Yes, my friends, the world has yet to know that man.”
There may be many students who think highly of their teachers. But for a world-renowned saint as Swami Vivekananda (about whom John Wright, a professor of Harvard University, wrote “Here is a man more learned than all our learned professors put together.”) to think and say such words, it shows his extraordinary humility.
