Swami Vivekananda once said:
“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life — think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, that is way great spiritual giants are produced.”
This quote has always appealed to me — in fact, I decided to put a copy of it up on the wall of my room. However, I only recently started to really think about what it means — Swamiji seems to be advising us to be linear people in this quote. In fact, he even tells us to “just leave every other idea alone.” Is this really practical? As a college student, how can we just focus on one idea, on one thought, without everything else suffering as a result? Isn’t it better to focus on many things and develop all different aspects of ourselves? How can people survive in this world if they just focus on one idea? Such people are the ones whom many of us make fun of for having tunnel-vision, or being narrow-minded — why is Swamiji advising us to be like them?
Maybe what Swamiji means is not to choose an idea in the material form of the world (i.e. don’t make Life Sciences 1a the one idea that you base your life on); rather, maybe he means that we should each choose one ideal, one good quality, that we spend our lives trying to cultivate. For example, if I choose to make patience the governing idea in my life, then I must incorporate it into every one of my daily experiences — I must be patient while studying, and not get frustrated when I do not understand something at first; I must be patient when trying to help others with things, instead of becoming annoyed that they don’t understand what I am trying to say at first; I must be patient with my family and friends, regardless of what they do or say; I must be patient in every circumstance I encounter in life. And perhaps by actively trying to incorporate the value of patience into my life, I will cultivate enough self-control and willpower to become a “spiritual giant,” as Swamiji said.
So, to tie this into the stress many of us may come across during reading period — let us each choose an ideal, whether it be focus, strength, patience, courage, or anything else — and let it permeate our actions as we study, so that we develop the self-control to work our best and beast finals. 
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One thing in this quote confuses me — is Vivekananda referring only to spiritual development? The quote is embedded in a passage about how becoming a yogi means not nibbling at a bunch of different things, but rather completely focusing on one thing — namely, yoga.
Sonali – the way you reconcile his argument makes a lot of sense.
Here is another way of looking at it:
As I understand it, there are four stages in life. Right now, we are in our student/Brahmachari stage. Perhaps Vivekananda is referring to the final stage in which a person renounces all worldly things. At this point, most people have explored many things, and perhaps Vivekananda is saying that they should now focus on something specific?
I was having lunch with one of my classmates a couple of days ago when he mentioned that he had spent time studying Zen meditation techniques from monks. He said the most valuable thing he learnt was the idea of ichi-go ichi-e .
In effect,
In some ways this is the exact opposite of Swami Vivekananda’s message, which asks us to maintain a constancy of purpose, a single burning idea that stays foregrounded in our minds all the time and that fills absolutely everything we do.
And yet I cannot help but feel that there is something that binds these two ideas. (Wish I had some coffee right now to help me think this through!)
The difficulty I have with understanding that in application for my own personal life, Gokul, is where to draw the boundary between focusing on the moment, and stringing these moments together into coherent purposeful action.
Karma yoga seems to be consistent with purposeful action, so long as one is detached from the purpose. But philosophies of “living in the moment” seem to be inconsistent with purposeful action. I once heard a Taoist aphorism: “The unaimed arrow never misses.” Do these types of ideas, like ichi-go ichi-e, comment at all on purposeful action? It feels like a fundamental part of being human is executing a plan — is planned action something that “living in the moment” seeks to deny?
@ Saketh:
I know nothing whatsoever about Zen, so don’t take what I’m saying here to be any kind of “authentic” Zen position. Owing to my logorrhea, I just can’t get myself to shut up even when I’m utterly ignorant, and therefore I’m going to keep on prattling
First, in response to your question about stringing moments together into a life, my guess is some Zen thinkers would deny its very possibility. (And this idea that life is but a succession of moments has its roots in Indian Buddhism, I think.) As Yamamoto Tsunetomo says on my facebook profile:
That said, I still think “momentfulness” and a karma-yogin’s life of purpose are not incompatible. For one, it’s hard to imagine better karma-yogins than samurai—no wimpy Arjuna-esque questioning of battle on the battlefield for them! I think of it this way: you set your eyes on a remote mountain peak and decide to make it your goal. And then you embark upon your long, arduous trek through treacherous terrain. Climbing the mountain requires your fullest concentration at every moment, for even the smallest mental lapse will mean your death. But this succession of moment after moment of pure focus will eventually get you to the mountain peak—but even if it doesn’t, Kṛṣṇa tells you that what matters is following your dharma.
I see three different things here, and I see them all working together (but it’s entirely possible I’m missing something):
prayojana, or a sense of purpose; this is what gives us a goal to aim for
ichi-go, ichi-e, or “momentfulness”; this is what allows us to actually traverse the path that leads to our goal
niṣkāma karma, or detached action
The more I ponder, the more I sense in my gut that “momentfulness” as a practice will keep us from growing attached to the fruit of our actions.
I’m eager to know what you think about this.
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