A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

.veryiMY MASTER.J9, that everyoneis served before her turn comes. That iswhy the mother is regarded as God in India. This partiwasthe*cular woman, the Tnother of our present subject,type of a Hindu mother. The higher the caste, thegreater the restrictions. The lowest caste people can eatand drink anything they like, but as men rise in thesocial scale more and more restrictions come, and whenthey reach the highest caste, the Brahmin, thehereditarypriesthood of India, their lives, as I have said, are verymuch circumscribed. Compared to Western manners theirlives are of continuous asceticism. But they have greati-.tcailiness ;when they get hold of an idea they carry it outto its very conclusion, and they keep hold of it generationafter generation until they make something out of it.Once give them an idea and it is not easy to take it backa new idea.again, but it is hard to make them graspThe orthodox Hindus, therefore, are very exclusive,living entirely within their own horizon of thought andfeeling. Their lives are laid down in our old books inevery little detail, and the least detail isgrasped Withalmost adamantine firmness by them. They would starverather than eat a meal cooked by the hands of a man notbelonging to their own small section of caste. But withalthey -have intensity and tremendous earnestness. Thatforce of intense faith and religious life occurs often amongthe orthodox Hindus, because their very orthodoxy comesfrom the tremendous conviction that it is right. We maynot all think that that to which they hold on with suchbut to them it is. Now it is writtenperseverance is right, in pur bof)ks that a man should always be charitable evento the extreme.If a man starves himself to death to helpanother man, to save that man s life, it is all right; it is