I Carry It Still: What I Left Unfinished at Belur.

Belur Math
4 July 1902

My dear Alasinga,

You sat with me through the Madras days, when we had nothing but a plan and a few rupees, and you wrote the letter that sent me to Chicago. So to you I can say plainly what I see now, sitting here under the mango tree with the Ganga running past, and the evening coming on.

I came back to India in 1897 with fire. From Colombo to Almora the people came out to hear me, and I told them: wake up, feed the poor, teach every child, stop fighting over my God or your God. I believed then that in ten years we would have it done. The plan I had made at Cape Comorin—monks carrying maps and globes and magic lanterns from village to village, going to the very poorest—seemed so close I could touch it.

Ten years. I have been ill half that time. Asthma in Deoghar that kept me suffocating for eight nights. My kidneys failing, or so I thought. The doctors tell me to rest. But I look at what stands: the monastery here at Belur, a handful of young monks learning Sanskrit and the Upanishads, some work in the plague camps, a girls' school in Calcutta that Holy Mother blesses. And what I wanted? A college in Madras—not just for Brahmins, not just for the rich—where a man could study Vedanta beside Plato, and where a woman could read the Upanishads beside Mill. A press to print good books cheap. A temple where no one asks your caste before they let you in. Education for every village girl. Young men going abroad to learn and coming home to serve.

All of it still waiting. I have written no book. I promised one in 1895—a Vedanta book—and again in 1896, and again. I have sent a trunk of notes and half-pages across the world, and they sit where they sit. My last poem I wrote to a friend in California. I said I was done with the platform in January 1900, and then I went and lectured again. Because the fire doesn't go out.

I never make plans, I told Margaret Noble once. "Plans grow and work themselves. I only say, awake, awake!" And I believe that. But a man who says awake must also show the way in the dark. I have not done enough of that.

You know what I carry. It is the same I wrote you from Massachusetts in 1893: "I have travelled twelve years with this load in my heart and this idea in my head. I have gone from door to door of the so-called rich and great. With a bleeding heart I have crossed half the world to this strange land, seeking for help." That was nine years ago. The load is still there, and the heart still bleeds. Only now I am thirty-nine and my body wants to stop.

I do not say this to complain. A monk has no business complaining. I say it because I want you to know: the work is yours as much as mine. What I began, others will finish. That has always been the way. My master did not finish everything; he gave it to me. I give it to you, and to whoever comes after with a strong heart and no fear. "Do not wait for anybody or anything. Do whatever you can. Build your hope on none." I wrote that to you in 1894. I mean it still.

Look at what you can do today. One boy taught, one girl in school, one hungry man fed—that is a brick laid. The college may come after us. The books may be written by another hand. But the idea does not die because one man's lungs give out.

As for me: I am here. I keep the goats and the ducks and the dog. I teach the boys what I can. I write letters. I think about Japan, about America, about all the places I still want to go. Whether I will see them is another matter. But what I wanted once, I want still: every poor child in India should have food and a school and a reason to stand up straight.

Give my love to all the Madras boys. Tell them: awake, awake. The sun has not set.

Your brother,
Vivekananda