Face the Brutes!!

 It was a bright morning in Kashi, the Spiritual capital of India was abuzz with life and vibrancy. From the early morning ablutions in Ma Ganga to the ringing of temple bells , the numerous sadhus roaming around its streets , Kashi was teeming with all sorts of activity. At the famed Annapurna temple of Kashi, a spectacle was going on. A young monk of robust build, and with eyes flashing like the sun had come out after Darshan of the Divine Mother, and was going out of the temple premises.  Suddenly out of nowhere a group of monkeys  started chasing him. These monkeys had made the Annapurna temple and its surrounding areas their fiefdom , people moving in and and out of it had to pay them taxes in the form of food items . They would chase the people and bully them till the taxes were extracted. Many people had suffered at their hands, and the Young monk was their prey today.

The monk was perplexed, his natural instinct was to run, and he did so. But then the monkeys started running after him, he started running even faster , and the monkeys were unrelenting. The Monk was thinking of various options , when suddenly he heard a Loud voice from behind shouting out to him, "Face the Brutes, Face them, donot run away!!". The Young monk turned around and saw an aged Monk shouting out to him. Evidently the monk had been there and seen a lot to know how these monkeys behave. "Quick, stand your ground with your staff held firm", the aged monk continued. The young monk did exactly so. He was no longer running away, he had decided to take the fight back to the adversaries. With eyes luminescent as the sun, he stood with his Staff, the symbol of Dharma that the Sanyasin carries. It was now the turn of the monkeys to twist their tails and start running. And run they did , like there was no tomorrow.

The Young unknown monk of that day would soon be the usherer of a new age of Hinduism and India. As Swami Vivekananda, He would be known as the cyclonic monk who carried the Great message of Indian Religion and Culture to the shores of the Western World, the First Hindu Missionary  to the West, who would fly the Saffron flag of Hinduism High and wide. His was not an easy task, He would be persecuted, maligned , opposed at every step by people and groups frightened by the inevitable rise of an enslaved India again. He had to face dirty rumors about His character, intentionally spread by American Christian Missionaries as well as their Indian partners, who were jealous of His immense success and popularity at the World Parliament of religions held in Chicago, US during 1893 . His coffee would be poisoned, He would be denied entry in decent hotels because of His skin color, but through all this He labored on, unrelenting and undaunted. His Love for India was far far deep than any fear of persecution. He would often quote this story to His listeners , to make them understand that no matter how tough and adverse be the situations, dont run away, "Face the brutes boldly" and they will take flight. These are his own electrifying words, that oh dear reader, we would all do good to remember.

"Face the brutes. That is a lesson for all life-face the terrible, face it boldly. Like the monkeys, the hardships of life fall back when we cease to flee before them."

~ Swami Vivekananda