Gandhi 21
Here are some pithy little epithets that sound like something out of a Hallmark Greeting Card:
“God is Truth.”
“Truth is love and love is truth.”
“Truth cannot exist without love.”
“Where there is love there is life.”
“Truth is the substance of all morality.”
Gandhi 22
Education was a touchy subject with Gandhi.
He tried to teach his wife to read, but failed and she remained illiterate all her life and yet he would say, “If I had to choose a companion for myself life after life, I would choose only Ba”…his pet name for her.
Gandhi had four sons. Three of them turned out well, the fourth was a drug addict/alcoholic prostitute who hated him after age sixteen because Gandhi would not allow him to leave India to go to England and become a lawyer as he had done…It cost him. There is a book about his son, heartbreakingly called “Gandhi’s Lost Jewel”.
“A man's real teacher is himself.”
“Under ideal conditions, true education could be imparted only by the parents.”
“My ideal was never to entrust children to common place teachers. Their literary qualification was not so essential as their moral fiber.”
“There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent.”
Gandhi 23
Gandhi laughingly called himself a “quack“, when it came to medicine, but he was honest with himself about what he saw, in himself, regardless of how repugnant it might appear to others
"How foolish it is intentionally to dissipate vital energy in sensual enjoyment! It is a grave misuse to fritter away for physical gratification that which is given to man and woman for full development of their bodily and mental powers. Such misuse is the root cause of many a disease".
"Men and women who indulge in lascivious looks at one's own, or another's wife, or to touch her in the same manner deceive themselves and the world, and growing weaker day by day, making themselves easily susceptible to disease".
"A man dissipates his physical strength through ordinary incontinence".
Tough stuff…but no different from what is heard in 1st Corinthians in Protestant Churches around the world on Sundays.
Gandhi 24
Gandhi took a vow of poverty and died with only six small possessions, but, he was scrupulous with money.
“I...should have been driven to incur debt – a thing I have never done in my life and always abhorred.”
“Every little item would be entered and the balance struck every evening before going to bed. Make it a point to account for everything that comes into and goes out your pocket, and you will sure to be a gainer in the end.”
“Carefully kept accounts are the sine qua non for any organization. Without them it falls into disrepute.”
“I have no doubt that the ideal is for public institutions to live, like nature, from day to day. The institution that fails to win public support has no right to exist as such.”
“It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.”
Gandhi 25
What puts most people off of Gandhi was his vow of celibacy, but the Gospel of Matthew 19:11 talks about it and even the SLAA book, chapter 5 talks about a “Withdrawal period”.
There is something about chosen chastity that gives a person power…even Rocky Balboa talks about it in Rocky I.
“I took the vow of celibacy in 1906. I had not shared my thoughts with my wife until then, but only consulted her at the time of taking the vow. She had no objection.”(I always feel sad for his wife, here)
“Before the vow I had been open to being overcome by temptation at any moment. Now the vow was a sure shield against temptation. The great potentiality of celibacy daily became more and more apparent to me.”
But look at the magnitude of the gift he received from this sacrifice.
“Nonviolent noncooperation had not been a preconceived plan. It came on spontaneously, without my having willed it. But I could see that all my previous steps had led up to that goal.”
Gandhi 26
Gandhi was the first person I have ever read about who really understood the connection between food and sex. That’s pretty good information if you are a sex addict and having trouble getting sober. He never went to a meeting, had a sponsor or worked Steps….He just worked a very simple and rigorous food plan.
“Control of the palate is the first essential in the observation of the vow.”
“So, I now pursued my dietetic experiments not merely from the vegetarian's but also from the celibate's point of view.”
“I saw that the celibate's food should be limited, simple, spiceless, and, if possible, uncooked.”
“Six years of experiment showed me that the celibate's ideal food is fresh fruit and nuts.”
“I had deduced that a celibate benefited from a saltless diet.”
“Raw groundnuts, bananas, dates, lemons, and olive oil composed our usual diet.”
“The immunity from passion that I enjoyed when I lived off this food was unknown to me after I changed that diet.”
Gandhi 27
The Big Book says that the principal problem of the alcoholic “lies in his mind rather than in his body”. Gandhi agrees…
“The world will tell us that the senses cannot be controlled. We should reply they certainly can be.”
“Involuntary thought is an affectation of the mind, and curbing of thought, therefore, means curbing of the mind which is even more difficult to curb than the wind. Nevertheless the existence of God within makes even control of the mind possible. When the mind is conquered, what power has lust?”
“It is indeed a subtle enemy, but once the senses, the mind and the reason are under the control of the subtlemost Self, lust is extinguished.”
“Knowledge is obscured by the enemy of the wise man, in the form of lust, the insatiable fire.”
Gandhi 28
There were two guys whose work I really admire who were big walkers: Beethoven and Gandhi. While Mozart was the greater genius (he wrote an opera when he was 11) Beethoven, for my money, was the greater musician. Gandhi and Beethoven loved to walk all the time.
“I had formed the habit of taking long walks, which still remains with me.”
“This habit of long walks has kept me practically free of illness and has given me a fairly strong body.”
Gandhi 29
Gandhi slammed hypocrisy…hard. He was particularly harsh on the Christians who he saw as “arrogant”. He had a clear idea of what religion he believed was really supposed to do:
“The term 'religion' I am using in its broadest sense, meaning thereby self-realization or knowledge of Self.”
“Religion and art have the identical aims...moral and spiritual elevation.”
“I call him religious who understands the suffering of others.”
Gandhi 30
Gandhi was known in history as a man who cherished celibacy, but he was not completely alone. Here are some others who were famous for their chastity.
Mohammed Ali (for six weeks before a title fight)
Saint Augustine
Jesus
Pythagoras
Joan of Arc
Queen Elizabeth
Florence Nightingale
Leonardo da Vinci
Lewis Carroll
Isaac Newton
John Milton
Leo Tolstoy
Pythia...The Oracle of Delphi