Among all young generation monks in world, the name of Swami Vivekananda flashes bright and clear. He was one of the most influential monks of all times.
Hailing from India, Swami Vivekananda’s life was not a smooth ride at all. As a matter of fact, he had to sail through tremendous difficulties in life.
In this article titled 10 interesting Swami Vivekananda facts, we are going to explore some of the most interesting facts about this inspiring monk who inspired millions of men and women across the world.
* Swami Vivekananda’s pre-monastic name was Narendra Nath Datta. He was born with a temperament of yogis and used to meditate at a very early age.
* Swami Vivekananda’s father died suddenly when he was young. This broke the financial backbone of his family and the whole family was pushed into poverty.
* Because of financial instability and scarcity of food, Narendra Nath Datta would often lie to his mother about lunch invitation from his friends. In reality there were no such invitations and he would simple get out of house so that the other members of his family could eat his share of food. He used to literally starve himself.
* Swami Vivekananda and his family were thrown out of the ancestral house by Gyandasundari – wife of Vivekananda’s parental uncle – Taraknath.
* Jogendrabala – sister of Swami Vivekananda committed suicide. That’s when Vivekananda commented to Yogen Maharaj that the Datta’s (he was speaking about his own family) are really good at thinking because they are whimsical and that his family has this history of suicidal deaths.
* He said that Datta’s don’t think before acting and they are least worried about the consequences that will follow after their actions.
* After meeting with Shri Ramkrishna, Swami Vivekananda literally worshiped women but weirdly enough, no woman was ever allowed inside his monastery. He even became furious on his own disciples once when they allowed his mother to enter after he fell ill.
* Swami Vivekananda has amazing concentration power. He was a voracious reader and would borrow many books from library and return them on the very next day.
* This continued for some time when the librarian eventually decided find out whether he actually read those books or not. So, the librarian asked him a question from one of the pages of a random book. Vivekananda did not only answer the question but also managed to even quote several lines from the book.
* His amazing concentration power was also displayed in America. In America, he was sitting near a water body when he saw two young American guys attempting to shoot egg shells floating on water. The boys failed in every attempt and they noticed Vivekananda smirking.