Swami Vivekananda's Views about Lord Buddha

Swami Vivekananda's Views about Lord Buddha

  Every year, 12^th January is celebrated as National Youth Day in India commemorating birth anniversary of Revered Swami Vivekananda. The greatness of Swami Vivekananda could be understood what he thought about others, especially regards to others. This article presents a tribute to Great Swami with Swami Ji’s views about Lord Buddha.

 Swami Vivekananda says in his lectures------When Buddha was born, India was in great need of spiritual leader like him. I have been very fond of Buddha and great reverence to him due to his boldness, fearlessness and tremendous love. Great Buddha was born for seeking truth only for welfare of common masses. He never had thought of himself in his spiritual life journey. Swami Vivekananda always saw Buddha as reformer of Hinduism and Vedantist also because he started new sect and ideas known as Buddhism. He was great Indian philosopher and never recognized caste.

    Swami Vivekananda delivered several lectures in Madras during 1892-1893, there also; he talked about Buddha. In San Francisco, Swami Vivekananda delivered a lecture on Gautam Buddha that was later published as Buddha’s message to the world in Swami Vivekananda’s Complete Works. According to Swami Ji, Buddha had brain, the power and above all the heart as infinite as the sky. He tried to learn the reasons behind sufferings of men and worked for bringing out of the sufferings. Buddha was great preacher of equality and always believed that both men and women have equal right to attain spirituality, abolishing the difference between priests and other castes. Selfishness was considered as main cause of misery in our life, was the thought of Buddha.  

 In fact, Lord Buddha was one of the great spiritual ideals of Swamiji whom he always regarded with lot of love and devotion just as his Guru, Sri Ramakrishna.