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It is humanism when we are able to understand and experience the pains and pleasures of others as though they are ours.
Swami Vivekananda is basically a humanist. While wandering as a parivrajaka, he was able to understand the anguish of an untouchable. He accepted food from his hands and elevated him to a position of self esteem and confidence. Sitting on the rock at Kanyakumari, he was meditating not on the God in the heaven but the God in the poor, the down trodden and the illiterate people of his country. When he was a guest in a royal house at Chicago, he was unable to rest on the luxurious bed remembering the hungry people in India. A Mahatma, according to him, is one whose heart bleeds for the poor.
Even he, the humanist Swami, once felt the barriers of caste and profession. He was not willing to see a dance performance by a girl. But soon, he was moved with humanism when she sang about the fragrance of a fallen flower. Is not the fallen flower worthy of being offered to the deity? God is the origin and abode of all. He is the father of all, mother of all. Does not the parent rush to rescue the child, fallen into the ditch water? All are but the children of God. Swamiji realised his folly and returned to witness the dance performance.
When Girish described graphically the sufferings of the people in India, Swamiji wept, wept and wept rolling on the floor. He wanted to be born again and again to be of help to the suffering multitudes.
"May I be born again and again, and suffer thousands of miseries, so that I may worship the only God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum total of all souls - and above all, my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, of all species, is the special object of my worship."--- Swami Vivekananda
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