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Showing posts from May 31, 2007

#33, In ninety cases out of a hundred, fanatics must have bad livers

WORLD ANTI-SMOKING DAY (WORLD TOBACCO DAY) GREETINGS! Swami Vivekananda classified the fanatics he knew into wine fanatics, cigar fanatics. marriage fanatics etc. In volume 5 of his Complete Works ubiquitous on the Internet, in the Section of Notes from Lectures and Discourses, we can find a severe criticism "On fanatism". This lecture seems to have been delivered at Chicago, during the first visit. Some teetotallers may try to campaign against wine drinking. Now, Swamiji finds them cheating people and no woman being safe with him. Swamiji calls this person scoundrel. Those who campaign against wine are "wine fanatics". A woman who campaigns against smoking, Swamiji finds to be stealing. He calls those who campaign against smoking as "cigar fanatics." In India for some time, a few social reformers tried to popularise widow remarriages. Their idea was to improve the condition of widows, particularly the victims of child marriages. Swamiji calls the