The Essential Gandhi (46 page)

 … Let good news as well as bad pass over you like water over a duck’s back. When we hear any, our duty is merely to find out whether any action is necessary, and if it is, to do as an instrument in the hands of Nature without being affected by or attached to the result.…
¹⁹

 … If you work with detachment, you will refuse to be rushed and you will refuse to let anything get on your nerves.… You know the story of King Janak [of Hindu scripture]. He was Duty personified. His capital was in flames. He knew it. But some busybody reported it to him. His answer was, “What care I whether my capital is reduced to ashes or remains intact!” He had done all he could to save it. His going to the scene of operations and fussing would have distracted the attention of the fire-brigade and others, and made matters worse. [He] had done his part and was therefore quiet and at ease. So may—must—we be, if we have done our best, whether our work flourishes or perishes.
²⁰

 … Time and again in my life, contrary to all wise counsels, I have allowed myself to be guided by the inner voice—often with spectacular success. But success and failure are of no account. [They] are God’s concern, not mine.
²¹

 … On the lonesome way of God on which I have set out I need no earthly companions. Let those who will, therefore, denounce me if I am the impostor they imagine me to be though they may not
say so in so many words. It might disillusion the millions who persist in regarding me as a Mahatma. I must confess the prospect of being so debunked greatly pleases me.
²²

 … There is a state in life when a man does not need … to proclaim his thoughts, much less to show them by outward action. Mere thoughts act. They attain that power. Then it can be said of him that his seeming inaction constitutes his action.… My striving is in that direction.
²³

 … I regard it as self-delusion, if not worse, when a person says he is wearing himself away in service.… The body is like a machine requiring to be well-kept for full service.… I have not felt ashamed to take the required rest.… Rest properly and in due time taken is like the proverbial timely stitch.
²⁴

You need not worry about my health.… I am taking the rest that is possible. B.P. [blood-pressure] is under control. Jumpy, I fear, it will remain unless I lead the forest life and cease all outward activity. But this would be wrong. I must discover the art of living long though full of activity to the end.…
²⁵

 … In my pursuit after Truth I have discarded many ideas and learnt many new things. Old as I am in age I have no feeling that I have ceased to grow inwardly or that my growth will stop with the dissolution of the flesh.…
²⁶

 … I am not a perfect being. Why should you see eye to eye with me in my errors? That would be blind faith. Your faith in me should enable you to detect my true error much quicker than a fault-finder.… Therefore, you should not paralyze your thought by suppressing your doubts and torturing yourself that you do not agree with my view in particular things. You should … pursue the discussion … till you have the clearest possible grasp of all my ideals about it.
²⁷

I have never made a fetish of consistency. I am a votary of Truth and I must say what I feel and think at a given moment on the question without regard to what I may have said before on it.… As my vision get clearer my views must grow clearer with daily practice.…
²⁸

[When] doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face, and when I see not one ray of light on the horizon, I turn to the Bhagavad Gita and find a verse to comfort me, and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. My life has been full of external tragedies, and if they have not left any visible and indelible effect on me, I owe it to the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita.
²⁹

[A new arrival at Gandhi’s Ashram in Sevagram was a widow with her nine-year-old son. The boy agreed to attend the Ashram school, but only if Gandhi would visit his hostel first. Gandhi came on a surprise visit, planning to stay only five minutes but remaining forty-five, examining everything.]

The torn bed-sheets should have been patched up or doubled and turned into a quilt, I did much blanket quilting whilst I was in prison in the Transvaal. Such blankets are warm and lasting.… Torn rags … should be washed and tidily kept. They can be used for patching torn clothes.… And, why should not those who have more than their requirement in winter clothing be taught to part with their superfluous clothing to those who are insufficiently provided?…

All these may appear to you to be trifles but all big things are made up of trifles. My entire life has been built on trifles. To the extent to which we have neglected to inculcate the importance of little things on our boys, we have failed, or rather … I have failed.…

If you tell me that in this way you cannot do justice to more than one or two boys, I will say, “Then have one or two only and no more.” By undertaking more than we can properly manage, we introduce into our soul the taint of untruth.
³⁰

I teach the children under my care not by being angry with
them, but I teach them, if at all, by loving them, by allowing for their ignorance, and by playing with them.…
³¹

I can truthfully say I am slow to see the blemishes of fellow beings, being myself full of them and therefore being in need of their charity. I have learnt not to judge any one harshly and to make allowances for defects that I may detect.
³²

Somehow I am able to draw the noblest in mankind and that is what enables me to maintain my faith in God and human nature.
³³

When I was a little child there used to be two blind performers in Rajkot. One of them was a musician. When he played on his instrument, his fingers swept the strings with an unerring instinct and everybody listened spellbound to his playing. Similarly there are chords in every human heart. If we only knew how to strike the right chord, we would bring out the music.
³⁴

 … My work will be finished if I succeed in carrying conviction to the human family that every man or woman, however weak in body, is the guardian of his or her self-respect and liberty. This defence avails though the whole world may be against the individual resister.
³⁵

 … I am an irrepressible optimist, because I believe in myself. That sounds very arrogant, doesn’t it? But I say it from the depths of my humility.… I am an optimist because I expect many things from myself. I have not got them, I know, as I am not yet a perfect being.… I want to attain that perfection by service.
³⁶

Whenever I see an erring man, I say to myself I have also erred, when I see a lustful man I say to myself so was I once, and in this way I feel kinship with everyone in the world and feel that I cannot be happy without the humblest of us being happy.
³⁷

 … We must feel one with all. And I have discovered that we never give without receiving consciously or unconsciously. There is
a reserve which I want us all to have. But that reserve must be a fruit of self-denial, not sensitiveness.…
³⁸

Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to
him
. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him?… Then you will find your doubts and … self melting away.
³⁹

Q. [Gandhi] Do you want compliments?

A. [Louis Fischer: Don’t we all?]

[Gandhi] Yes, but sometimes we have to pay too dearly for them.
⁴⁰

The purpose of life is undoubtedly to know oneself. We cannot do it unless we learn to identify ourselves with all that lives. The sum-total of that life is God.… The instrument of this knowledge is boundless, selfless service.
⁴¹

This is enough for the man who is true to himself: Do not undertake anything beyond your capacity and at the same time do not harbor the wish to do less than you can. One who takes up tasks beyond his powers is proud and attached, on the other hand one who does less than he can is a thief. If we keep a time-table we can save ourselves from this last-mentioned sin indulged in even unconsciously.…
⁴²

[Learning Bengali, Gandhi drew squares on his notebook for the writing exercises.]

That is how my teacher used to teach us to draw characters of the alphabet. It is an excellent method. People think one ceases to be a student when his school days are over. With me it is the other way about. I hold that so long as I live, I must have a student’s inquiring mind and thirst for learning.
⁴³

[Sometimes] Art lies in not interfering with Nature’s unevenness and irregular curves and lines. Fancy hammering the earth into a perfect sphere! Perhaps then we should cease to be.…
⁴⁴

 … My room may have blank walls and I may even dispense with the roof so I may gaze out upon the starry heavens overhead that stretch in an unending expanse of beauty. What conscious art of man can give me the panoramic scenes that open out before me when I look up to the sky above with all its shining stars? This, however, does not mean I refuse to accept the value of productions of Art … but only that I personally feel how inadequate these are compared with the eternal symbols of beauty in Nature.…
⁴⁵

 … When we look at the sky we have a conception of infinity, cleanliness, orderliness and grandeur which is purifying for us. Man may land on planets and stars and find life there is much the same as on earth But their beauty radiates ineffable peace from a distance.…
⁴⁶

If I had no sense of humor I should long ago have committed suicide.
⁴⁷

It is not that I am incapable of anger, for instance, but I succeed on almost all occasions to keep my feelings under control.… Such a struggle leaves one stronger.… The more I work at this law the more I feel the delight in my life, the delight in the scheme of the universe. It gives me a peace and a meaning of the mysteries of Nature that I have no power to describe.

It takes a fairly strenuous course of training to attain to a mental state of non-violence. In daily life it has to be a course of discipline, though one may not like it, for instance, the life of a soldier. But … unless there is hearty coöperation of the mind, a mere outward observance will be simply a mask, harmful both to the man himself and others. The perfect state is reached only when mind and body and speech are in proper coördination. But it is always a case of intense mental struggle.
⁴⁸

 … The sexual sense is the hardest to overcome in my case. It has been an incessant struggle. It is for me a miracle how I have survived it. The one I am engaged in may be, ought to be, the final struggle.
⁴⁹

My darkest hour was when I was in Bombay a few months ago. It was the hour of my temptation. Whilst I was asleep I suddenly felt as though I wanted to see a woman. Well a man who had tried to rise superior to the instinct for nearly forty years was bound to be intensely pained when he had this frightful experience. I ultimately conquered the feeling, but I was face to face with the blackest moment of my life and if I had succumbed to it, it would have meant my absolute undoing.…
⁵⁰

[In a letter of encouragement to Dr. P. C. Roy, Gandhi describes himself.]

It is nonsense for you to talk of old age so long as you outrun young men in the race for service and in the midst of anxious times fill rooms with your laughter and inspire youth with hope when they are on the brink of despair.
⁵¹

[To another friend, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, he offered caution.]

I don’t like this persistent sadness about you. It is so inconsistent with faith in God, faith in human nature, faith in unbreakable friendship. However, enough of argument. The sadness will go in time.…
⁵²

 … There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever. It is a difficult rule, no doubt, for the simple reason that faith in God with the majority of mankind is either an intellectual belief or a blind belief, a kind of superstitious fear of something indefinable.…
⁵³

…
What is the value of “working for our own schemes” when they might be reduced to naught in the twinkling of an eye, or
when we may be equally swiftly and unawares taken away from them? But we may feel strong as a rock if we could truthfully say, “We work for God and His schemes.” Then all is as clear as daylight. Then nothing perishes.… Death and destruction have
then
 … no reality about them. For death or destruction is then but a change. An artist destroys his picture for creating a better one. A watchmaker throws away a bad spring to put in a new and useful one.
⁵⁴

My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents.… Why should He have chosen me, an imperfect instrument, for such a mighty experiment? I think He deliberately did so. He had to serve the poor dumb ignorant millions. A perfect man might have been their despair. When they found that one with their failings was marching on towards Ahimsa [the practice of love] they too had confidence in their own capacity.…
⁵⁵

Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I
cannot
do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I
can
do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it, even if I may not have it at the beginning.
⁵⁶

There is no such thing as “Gandhism” and I do not want to leave any sect after me. I do not claim to have originated any new principle or doctrine. I have simply tried in my own way to apply the eternal truths to our daily life and problems.… The opinions I have formed and the conclusions I have arrived at are not final, I may change them tomorrow.… All I have done is to try experiments in [Truth and Non-violence] on as vast a scale as I could.… I have sometimes erred and learnt by my errors.… By instinct I have been truthful but not non-violent.… [It] was in the course of my pursuit of truth that I discovered non-violence.…