ghandi

I just recently finished "Ghandi, an Autobiography: the Story of my Experiments with Truth". Rather than tell you what I thought of it, I will both empty myself and allow you to experience it directly through Ghandi's own words. Plus, it's a thick, slow read, and I know you're a very busy person.

“I worship God as Truth only. I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him.”

“The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should humble himself that even the dust could crush him.”

“in friendship there is very little scope for reform. I am of opinion that all exclusive intimacies are to be avoided; for man takes in vice far more readily than virtue. And he who would be friends with God must remain alone, or make the whole world his friend.”

“Prayer needs no speech. It is in itself independent of any sensuous effort. I have not the slightest doubt that prayer is an unfailing means of cleansing the heart of passions. But it must be combined with the utmost humility.”

“Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal.”

“My experience has shown me that we win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.”

“I think it is wrong to expect certainties in this world, where all else but God that is Truth is an uncertainty. All that appears and happens about and around us is uncertain, transient. But there I s a Supreme Being hidden therein as a Certainty, and one would be blessed if one could catch a glimpse of that Certainty and hitch one’s waggon to it. The quest for that Truth is the summum bonum of life.”

“I understood the Gita teaching of non-possession to mean that those who desired salvation should act like the trustee who, though having control over great possessions, regards not an iota of them as his own.”

“I know it is argued that the soul has nothing to do with what one eats or drinks, as the soul neither eats nor drinks’ that it is not what you put inside from without, but what you express outwardly from within, that matters. There is no doubt some force in this. But rather than examine this reasoning, I shall content myself with merely declaring my firm conviction that, for the seeker who would live in fear of God and who would see Him face to face, restraint in diet both as to quantity and quality is as essential as restraint in thought and speech.”

“Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked, always deserves respect or pity as the case may be. ‘Hate the sin and not the sinner’ is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world. This ahimsa is the basis of the search for truth. I am realizing every day that the search is vain unless it is founded on ahimsa as the basis. It is quite proper to resist and attack the system, but to resist and attack its author is tantamount to resisting and attacking oneself. For we are all tarred with the same brush, and are children of one and the same Creator, and as such the divine powers within us are infinite. To slight a single human being is to slight those divine powers and thus to harm not only that being but with him the whole world.”

“I have not seen Him, neither have I known Him. I have made the world’s faith in God my own, and as my faith is ineffaceable, I regard that faith as amounting to experience. However, as it may be said that to describe faith as experience is to tamper with truth, it may perhaps be more correct to say that I have no word for characterizing my belief in God.”

“the sole aim of journalism should be service. The newspaper press is a great power but just as an unchained torrent of water submerges whole countrysides and devastates crops, even so an uncontrolled pen serves but to destroy. If the control is from without, it proves more poisonous than want of control. It can be profitable only when exercised from within. If this line of reasoning is correct, how many of the journals of the world would stand the test? But who would stop those that are useless? And who should be the judge? The useful and useless must, like good and evil generally, go on together, and man must make his choice.”

“Man is man because he is capable of, and only in so far as he exercises, self-restraint.”

“For perfection or freedom from error comes only from grace, and so seekers after God have left us mantras, such as Ramanama, hallowed by their own austerities and charged with their purity. Without an unreserved surrender to His grace, complete mastery over thought is impossible.”

“When each organ of sense subserves the body and through the body the soul, its special relish disappears, and then alone does it begin to function in the way nature intended it to. Any number of experiments is too small and no sacrifice is too great for attaining this symphony with nature. But unfortunately the current is now-a-days flowing strongly in the opposite direction. We are not ashamed to sacrifice a multitude of other lives in decorating the perishable body and trying to prolong its existence for a few fleeting moments, with the result that we kill ourselves, both body and soul. In trying to cure one old disease, we give rise to a hundred new ones; in trying to enjoy the pleasures of sense, we lose in the end even our capacity for enjoyment. All this is passing before our very eyes, but there are none so blind as those who will not see.”

“The concupiscence of the mind cannot be rooted out except by intense self-examination, surrender to God and, lastly, grace.”

“Those who make light of dietetic restrictions and fasting are as much in error as those who stake their all on it.”

“A devotee of Truth may not do anything in deference to convention. He must always hold himself open to correction, and whenever he discovers himself to be wrong he must confess it at all costs and atone for it.”
“It is my rule… to understand the viewpoint of the party I propose to deal with, and to try to agree with him as far as may be possible.”

“Service without humility is selfishness and egotism.”

“Human language can but imperfectly describe God’s ways. I am sensible of the fact that they are indescribable and inscrutable. But if mortal man will dare to describe them, he has no better medium than his own inarticulate speech.”

“If I could popularize the use of soul-force, which is but another name for love-force, in place of brute force, I know that I could present you with an India that could defy the whole world to do its worst.”

“A Satyagrahi obeys the laws of society intelligently and of his own free will because he considers it his sacred duty to do so. It is only when a person has thus obeyed the laws of society scrupulously that he is thus in a position to judge as to which particular rules are good and just and which unjust and iniquitous.”

“The little fleeting glimpses, therefore, that I have been able to have of Truth can hardly convey an idea of the indescribeable luster of Truth, a million times more intense than that of the sun we daily see with our eyes.”

“God can never be realized by one who is not pure of heart… But the path of self-purification is hard and steep. To attain to perfect purity one has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and action; to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion. I know that I have not in me as yet that triple purity, in spite of constant ceaseless striving for it.”

“I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures there is no salvation for him.”