Download - Good Health Comes First
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8/8/2019 Good Health Comes First
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8/8/2019 Good Health Comes First
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Exercise is the key to achieve higher and finer objectives. Vivekananda
was giving precedence to the individual's right to quality health which can provide
access to many other wonderful realms. He said that Indians remained lazy
because they were deprived of strength and energy. He explained our inability to
work in terms of our physical weakness. He even painfully noted that the root
cause of selfishness and disunity among Indians was our weakness manifested
in fragile body and spirit. He earnestly pleaded for measures to strengthen our
physical and mental health.
A scholar saint of worldwide fame, he advocated that health considerations must
precede the quest for religion. "Our young men must be strong, religion will come
afterwards. You will understand the Upanishads better and the glory of the
Atman when your body stands firm upon your feet, and you feel yourselves as
men," he said.
Passion for football must promote good health and purity of mind. The pursuit of
sports and games will truly help us realise the essence of life which often gets
overwhelmed by existential compulsions and loses its meaning and significance.
Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das, a close associate of M K Gandhi, had said that
mere excellence in the field of football and cricket will not make a nation. He
meant that nation-building involves building of character and cultivation of values.
When Swami Vivekananda linked spirituality with football he was stressing as
much on the ability to play that game as the capacity to realise divinity, a far
more exalted goal than that of mere nation building.
What is required is the balanced blending of physical and spiritual dimensions.