IIT Kanpur: If you want to be like them, pay the price they paid

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner: I am very inspired by Swami Vivekananda. How can I challenge my conditioning, reject distractions, and maintain continuity with the scriptures?

Acharya Prashant (AP): You have a giant no less than Swami Vivekananda to get your answers from. See what he did: he lived by his conviction. Merely being impressed by somebody or impressed with something is not sufficient. It might be alright just as a beginning, but only as a beginning. It does not take one far on its own.

If something impresses you as being true and valuable, then the onus is upon you to now bring that thing into your life. Otherwise, it is a strange situation. How can you call something true and still live in a way quite opposite to it? If Swami Vivekananda felt that the great teachings of Vedanta need to reach the masses, then he very vigorously went about propagating the message of Vedanta, so much so that his zeal carried him beyond the borders of not merely this country but actually this continent. It was not very easy to sail to America those days, and if you read the description of how he managed it and what all he had to go through before that famous and historical address in Chicago, you will learn something.