A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

iUNITY IN DIVERSITY. 239A man must keep up a high standard*desires are so kef 71.The amount of money you spend in one year would be afortune to a man in India, and you cannot preach to himbecause the surroundings are such, that that man must haveso much money or he is crushed. The wheel of society isrolling on it ; stops not for widows tears or orphans wails.You must move on, or you will be crushed under it. Thatis the state of things everywhere. Your sense of enjoyment is developed, your society is very much more beautifulthan some others. You have so many more things to enjoy.But those who have fewer have much less misery than youhave in this country. So on, you can argue throughout,the higher the ideal you have in the brain the greater isyour enjoyment, a*yH the more profound your misery. Oneis like the shadow of the other, so to say that the evils;arebeing eliminated may be true, but if so, the good also mustbe dying out. But are not evils multiplying fast, and diminishing on the other side, if I may so put it ? If good increases in arithmetical proportion, evil increases in geometrical proportion. And this isMaya. It means that it isneither optimism nor pessimism. It is not the position of"Vedanta that this world is a miserable world.be a lie.That wouldAt the same time we say it is not true, it is tryingto deceive, to say this world is full of happiness and blessings. So it is useless to tell children that this world is allgood, and flowers, and milk and honey. That is what wehave all dreamt. At the same time it is erroneous to thinkbecause one man has suffered more than another that all isevil. It is this duality, this play of good and evil, and atthe same time the Yedanta steps in and says one moreword. Do not think that good and evil are two, or, in theabstract, do not believe that good and evil are two separateessences, for they are one and the same thing appearing in