Teachings and Philosophy of Swami Vivekananda

Teachings and philosophy of Swami Vivekananda stressed on different aspects of religion, education, character building as well as social issues pertaining to India. Vivekananda was a Hindu monk from India who played significant role in introducing Vedanta to the Western world and also reviving and redefining certain aspect of the religion within India. Rabindranath Tagore commented about Swami Vivekananda and his teachings, "If you want to know India, study Vivekananda. In him everything is positive and nothing negative." Vivekananda realized a country's future depends on its people, so he mainly stressed on man, "man-making is my mission", that's how he described his teaching. Vivekananda put his real ideals in few words and that was: "to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life."
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Education
Essence of education
Swami Vivekananda believed education is the manifestation of perfection already in men. He thought it a pity that the existing system of education did not enable a person to stand on his own feet, nor did it teach him self-confidence and self-respect. To Vivekananda, education was not only collection of information, but something more meaningful; he felt education should be man-making, life giving and character-building. To him education was an assimilation of noble ideas. “ | Education is not the amount of information that we put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life building, man making, character making assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library... | ” |
Positive education
Swami Vivekananda stressed on giving the public only positive education, because negative thoughts weaken men. Swami Vivekananda told, if young boys and girls are encouraged and are not unnecessarily