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.