I was having a conversation with a young Polish at Davos earlier this year. Our conversations shifted to Gandhi and I enthusiastically shared Gandhi’s philosophy that had resonated deeply with me. He instantly said, “Of course being an Indian, he is a local hero with a massive global recognition. I am not surprised you love him.” I just smiled.
I didn’t share that Gandhi is revered more outside India than in his land of birth, just like the Buddha. Very few of us have read him and there are fewer who can understand him. Why is it difficult to understand Gandhi? Well, Gandhi was difficult to understand back during his heyday as well. However, at that time, he was alive to live as he preached, and aggressively share his message.
I wasn’t born a Gandhi lover, on the contrary, I followed the common narrative in the country as any child would have. I grew up watching Richard Attenborough’s movie on Gandhi every year on October 2nd on the state television channel and read a few chapters in school books. It wasn’t until I picked Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins out of sheer curiosity from the library as a nineteen-year-old. That was my first tryst with Gandhi. And thus, began a lifelong journey of reading every book on Gandhi I could lay my hands upon including Manohar Malgonkar‘s Men Who Killed Gandhi.
The more I read Gandhi, the more the voice inside me connected with him. I found him funny, shrewd, extremely intelligent, visionary, brave, stubborn, and idealistic. His thoughts moved me. I have to accept, I haven’t had a chance to read any other historical figure with as much rigor, and if you ask me, I do not know the reason.
The only explanation that comes to my mind is that inherently we are drawn to people, books, and circumstances that correlate with our core. It is coming to my awareness, as I am writing this blog, that Gandhi had a big role to play in shaping my thoughts so much so that I ended up doing a doctorate in inclusive education and being passionate about inclusion and diversity.
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” – Lao Tzu
Quoting Gandhi in conversations had been my favorite thing. But, lately, and strangely, maybe as I am becoming older, the same quotes that I knew for the last twenty years, somehow, I am understanding them at a much deeper level. His thoughts are deeply spiritual if anyone has the eye to look at them.
“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.” – Gandhi
I never understood it as a twenty-year-old. Now, that I am more than forty and I am extremely conscious of conserving my energy, suddenly I understand the above quote in a very different light.
“Speak no evil, think no evil, hear no evil.” – Gandhi
This phrase has been reverberating in my mind for years, as we all know the famous three monkeys of Gandhi representing his message. Yet, it was only during Vipassana that I truly began to understand what he meant. Strangely enough, it’s the simple things in life that we often fail to grasp. And even stranger, it’s these simple things that are the hardest to live by. Trust me, I’m struggling here myself. I have created an analogy to simplify it in my head.
First, how do we define evil? To do so, we must become the Shiva in our own lives. As Shiva, we have to identify the poison and weed it out constantly.
“What is Poison? Anything which is more than our necessity is Poison. It may be Power, Wealth, Hunger, Ego, Greed, Laziness, Love, Ambition, Hate or anything…” – Rumi
I’ve concluded that it’s nearly impossible for any living mortal to Speak no evil, think no evil, hear no evil with 100% accuracy. We can certainly try, but there will always be some margin of error. As I reflected on ways to minimize the presence of evil in my life, Lincoln bailed me out. It’s a quote very close to my heart. I can confidently say, I live by it.
“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.” – Abraham Lincoln
Simple and profound, I would say a genius way to navigate through life. I am using Lincoln’s quote to develop an awareness of the evil in me. I am aware, that I do not need to fight the evil, I just have to observe it, just be aware of its presence. And it will melt away into divinity.
I began my journey of knowing Gandhi as a political leader, as I read him more, I considered him a social reformer, and slowly, I am discovering Gandhi as spiritual. I am amused writing this but slowly Gandhi is turning into a mystic in my eyes. This makes me curious what new role Gandhi will have in my life in the coming years. I am excited to decode!
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