Swami Vivekananda's lesson – effective searching

Swami Vivekananda’s lesson – effective searching

- Abhinav Kadambi

On the 11th of September 1893, an audience had gathered at Chicago. Little did the audience know what to expect for it was the first ever organized interfaith gathering of its time. With dozens of speakers assembled on stage to deliver their address, one could notice a peculiar Asian man wearing a head piece. The saffron clad mendicant from India began his address with the words "Sisters and Brothers of America" and the rest is history. The thunderous applause he received was the sound of drums signaling victory and hope that Swami Vivekananda stood for. The lectures of

Swami Vivekananda are still heard loud and clear even a century after they were first delivered! But are the words of Swami Vivekananda, a 155 year old monk of the Ramakrishna monastic order, even relevant today? Swami Vivekananda endured great pain and struggled hard before the blessings of his teacher bore fruit. Does his life have any meaning in today's high speed technology and space travel? Does the man make any sense to the modern educated generation? To answer these questions, one must delve into the life of Swami Vivekananda.

The youth of today was born almost half a century after independence from the cursed British Raj. This is approximately the time when personal televisions in every household replaced public radios in the parks and beaches of India. Following this was the emergence of the cordless telephones and later mobile phones that gave birth to the now ubiquitous hand-held smart phones. The rise of the Internet and other technologies transformed modern life. But most of today's youth is busy with knowing who "liked", "shared", or "retweeted" their "posts" rather than refining their communication skills. They want to know what their "friend" meant by the "emoji" rather than discovering the seer, the unaffected internal observer of their