It has been for the good of India that religious preaching in the West has been and will be done. It has ever been my conviction that we shall not be able to rise unless the Western people come to our help. In this country no appreciation of merit can yet be found, no financial strength, and what is most lamentable of all, there is not a bit of practicality.
There are many things to be done, but means are wanting in this country. We have brains, but no hands. We have the doctrine of Vedanta, but we have not the power to reduce it into practice. In our books there is the doctrine of universal equality, but in work we make great distinctions. It was in India that unselfish and disinterested work of the most exalted type was preached but in practice we are awfully cruel, awfully heartless — unable to think of anything besides our own mass-of-flesh bodies.
Everyone has the power to judge good and evil, but he is the hero who undaunted by the waves of Samsara – which is full of errors, delusions, and miseries – with one hand wipes the tears, and with the other, unshaken, shows the path of deliverance.
(p.127, C.W, Vol.5, Swamiji’s letter to Smt. Sarala Ghosal, Editor of Bharati from Darjeeling on 6 April, 1897.)