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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Date: Mon Jul 28, 2003 12:21 am
Subject: A Smooth Sea om_namah_shi...

http://www.sulekha.com/chpost.asp...ilosophy&show=0&cid=67578

A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner. -English proverb

"With great peril comes great opportunity." - Lao-Tzu

No man, if he is pure, has anything more precious to give than his
life.
- Gandhi

There's the whole matter of having a meaningful attitude toward the
problems that life may set before you. If only you could see the
whole picture, if you knew the whole story, you would realize that no
problem ever comes to you that does not have a purpose in your life,
that cannot contribute to your inner growth. Then you perceive this,
you will recognize that the problems are opportunities in disguise.

- Peace Pilgrim

http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/gandhi.html

I found Gandhi to be the saddest man that one could picture when I
rejoined him in the middle of December, 1947. In the midst of the
pomp and pageantry of the capitol, surrounded by loving friends, and
with his name on everybody's lips, he was spiritually isolated from
his surroundings and from almost every one of his colleagues.

Once, Gandhi told Nirmal Kumar Bose, "I find that I have not the
patience of the technique needed in these tragic circumstances.
Suffering and evil often overwhelm me and I stew in my own juice."8
Gandhi frequently described himself as being surrounded by darkness,
as though the mental and spiritual had become tangible and physical.
He once explained to a reporter why he had stopped talking of
aspiring to the age of 125: "I have lost the hope because of the
terrible happenings in the world. I don't want to live in
darkness...."

I find myself in the midst of exaggeration and falsity, I am unable
to discover the truth. There is terrible mutual distrust .... Truth
and Ahimsa, by which I swear and which have, to my knowledge,
sustained me for sixty years, seem to fail to show the attributes I
have ascribed to them

The most significant cause of Gandhi's depression was within himself.
Here we find the most convincing evidence of Gandhi's acceptance of
his role as Mahatma. Gandhi accepted the responsibility for India's
communal problem in a manner roughly similar to Christ taking on the
sins of mankind. Although this is a loose analogy, it does offer
perhaps the best explanation for Gandhi's depression during this
period. Once he had accepted this responsibility, he had to be
successful in saving India. To understand Gandhi's feelings, one need
only imagine the desolation of Christ if he had failed to provide any
salvation for Mankind. It was this type of desolation which Gandhi
was experiencing. In his diary he wrote that "God's grace alone is
sustaining me. I can see that there is some grave defect in me
somewhere which is the cause of all this."26 Pyarelal, explaining
this particular passage, remarks that he heard Gandhi
muttering, "Where could I have missed my way? There must be something
terribly lacking in my Ahimsa and faith which is responsible for
this."27 At another moment, speaking of the communal violence in
Noakhali, Gandhi admits that "I am responsible for all this. I have
made a mistake somewhere in weighing the pros and cons of non-
violence .... It is well that I have awakened to my mistake at the
fag end of my life and can see it now."

However deep Gandhi's sense of failure and depression, and however
hopeless and helpless Gandhi felt, the overwhelming conviction of his
beliefs remains impressive. Despite his anguish, he was never so
desolate as to abandon his path, his beliefs, or his God. Gandhi
continued to defend his own idiosyncratic path. "I ask nobody to
follow me. Everyone should follow his or her own inner voice . . .
Millions like me may fail to prove the truth in their own lives-that
would be their failure-never [the failure] of the eternal law."33
Though his own path might fail, he would not give up hope for India.
When asked by a reporter whether he had despaired of saving India,
Gandhi replied, "I cannot, so long as I have faith in that living
Power which is more with us than we know."

Gandhi was not so bold as to declare himself the sole possessor of
the truth. He maintained his humility; without it he could not have
aspired to such heights. He told his followers, "if an imperfect man
like me can try to practice Ahimsa, all of you can also do so." To
this he added a more ambitious footnote, "I have come here with the
determination to put my Ahimsa to the test and in that process either
succeed or perish."43 He was careful to explain the personal
implications of failure. "Even if my mission here should fail, it
will not be the failure of Ahimsa itself. It will be the failure of
my Ahimsa."44 Gandhi firmly believed that he was following God's
[++Page 16] Divine Will, and that therefore he was the proper person
to test the principle of Ahimsa. But he admitted that a failure in
Noakhali would have to mean that he was wrong; it would be Man, not
God, who erred.

Perhaps his greatest strivings in his last years were the Calcutta
and Delhi fasts which began on September 1, 1947 and January 13,
1948, respectively. Gandhi set his goal in Calcutta as follows: "I
have to find peace in the midst of turmoil, light in the midst of
darkness, hope in despair."47 A man could not possess a higher
aspiration. Fasting would help attain this goal. It was Gandhi's
response to tension in New Delhi. He explained his decision in the
following manner:

In reading about Gandhi's last years, one experiences a sense of
urgency and of impending doom; one is aware that the end is
approaching. Yet Gandhi also felt this sense of urgency, and at times
it seems he had premonitions of his death. Gandhi had always believed
that death was not to be feared, because ultimately all would die. He
did fear, however, the manner of his death. He once wrote to a friend
in 1946, "There is an art in dying also. As it is, all die, but one
has to learn by practice how to die a beautiful death."51 One must be
ready for death, to look towards it every moment with a sense of joy
and faith in God, to prepare for dying a beautiful death. Gandhi's
life of Ahimsa had been his practice to this end. He had prepared
himself from his years in South Africa to be willing to die for his
cause. He admitted to Manubehn that if he were to die a violent death
at the hands of an assassin, he would be a true Mahatma.52 He was
prepared not only to die, but to die the beautiful martyrdom of a
Mahatma.

He told Manu, shortly before his death, that

If I die of illness, you should declare me a false or hypocritical
Mahatma. And if an explosion took place, as it did last week, or
somebody shot at me and 1 received his bullet on my bare chest,
without a sigh and with Rama's name on my lips, only then you should
say that I was a true Mahatma."

http://bahai-library.org/books/gandhi/node27.html

Gandhi explains that prayer is a means of freeing us form excessive
attachment to the material world:

I agree that, if man could practice the presence of God all the
twenty-four hours, there would be no need for a separate time for
prayer. But most people find this impossible. The sordid everyday
world is too much with them. For them the practice of complete
withdrawal of the mind from all outward things, even though it might
be only for a few minutes everyday, will be found to be of infinite
use. Silent communion will help them to experience an undisturbed
peace in the midst of turmoil, to curb anger and cultivate patience

http://wahiduddin.net/dance/living_the_dance.htm

The deep, profound inner Peace that can arise, is not simply the
absence of strife, much the same as true Love is not simply the
absence of hatred. It is far greater than that. In fact, true Peace
and true Love are essential qualities of the Divine.

http://www.profoundharvest.com/seeds_wisdom.html

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth
and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and
for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall--
Think of it, ALWAYS." - Mahatma Gandhi

http://inlet.org/esp/chapxi.htm

As I wish to live in peace in the midst of a bellowing storm howling
round me, I have been experimenting with myself and my friends by
introducing religion into politics ... the religion which transcends
Hinduism, which changes one's very nature, which binds one
indissolubly to the truth within and which ever purifies. It is the
permanent element in human nature which counts no cost too great to
find full expression and which leaves the soul utterly restless until
it has found itself, known its Maker and appreciated the true
correspondence between the Maker and itself. - Gandhi

"In the midst of darkness, light persists." - Gandhi

http://www.divinelifesociety.org/ebooks/swami_chidananda/download/eter
nal_message.html

Herein is peace in the midst of turmoil. Herein is balance in the
midst of distractions, joy in seeming sorrow, eternal life even in
the midst of death, fullness in the midst of imperfection

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