WHAT ARE YOU ? SITTING DOWN THERE HUNDREDS OF YEARS

Only I want that numbers of our young men should pay a visit to Japan and China every year. Especially to the Japanese, India is still the dreamland of everything high and good. And you, what are you? . . . talking twaddle all your lives, vain talkers, what are you? Come, see these people, and then go and hide your faces in shame. A race of dotards, you lose your caste if you come out! Sitting down these hundreds of years with an ever-increasing load of crystallised superstition on your heads, for hundreds of years spending all your energy upon discussing the touchableness or untouchableness of this food or that, with all humanity crushed out of you by the continuous social tyranny of ages — what are you?

- Swami Vivekananda
Oriental Hotel, Yokohama. 10th July, 1893.

[ Photo : - Statue of Swami Vivekananda at the Hindu Temple of Greater Chicao in Lemont, Illinois ]