Autobiography of Ghandi

'i have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-voilence are as old as the hills'

- The book according to Sissela Bok is written in the likes of The Confessions of St. Augustine

- Married at the age of 13 and on the same day as his 2nd brother and cousin

"Marriage among Hindus is no simple matter. The parents of the bride and bridegroom often bring themselves to ruin over it. They waste their time. Months are taken up over the preparations - in making clothes and ornaments and in preparing budgets for dinners. Each tries to outdo the other in the number and variety of courses to be prepared. Women, whether they have a voice or no, sing themsevels hoarse, even get ill, and dsturb the peace of their neighbours. These in their turn quietly put up with all the turmoil and bustle, all the dirt and filth, representing the remains of the feasts, because they know that a time will come when they also will be behaving in the same manner."

- Note: lookup Sissela Bok
- He was born in 1869 ' Porbandar (aka sudamapuri)
- Extremely shy growing up at age 7, he subconsciously knew elders were wrong but we are ignorant to the faults of elders at a young age

"Numerous examples have convinced me that God ultimately saves him whose motives are pure"
- 13 to 18 years old - 50% of time was separated from wife because better to live with parents as adolescents
- Wept when scolded from teachers
- Came to conclusion that children if children learned to draw first then handwrite, then handwriting will be more gifted
- Was good at geometry starting with Euclid

p34 - "i have seen that i have calcuated wrongly. A reformer cannot afford to have close intimacy with him whom he seeks to reform. True friendship is an identity of souls rarely to be found in this world. Only between like natures can friendship be altogether worthy and enduring. Friends react on one another. Hence in friendship there is very little scope for reform. I am of the opinion that all exclusive intimacies are to be avoided; for man takes vice far more readily than virtue. And he who would be friends with God must remain alone or make the whole world his friend."

"But one thing took deep root in me - the conviction that morality is the basis of things and that truth is the substance of alll morality. Truth became my sole objective. It began to grow in magnitude every day, and my definition of it also has been ever widening. A Gujarati didactic stanza likewise gripped my mind and heart. Its precept - return good for evil - became my guiding principle. It became such a passion with me that i began numerous experiments in it. Here are those (for me) wonderful lines:
For a bowl of water give a goodly meal
For a kindly greeting bow thou down with zeal
For a simple penny pay thou back with gold
If thy life be rescued, life do not withhold
Thus the words and actions of the wise regard
Every little service tenfold they reward
But the truly noble know all men as one
And return with gladness good for evil done

p71 "I did not then know the essence of religion or of God, and how He works with in us. Only vaguely i understood that God had saved me on that occasion. On all occasions of trial He has saved me. I know that the phrase 'God saved me' has a deeper meaning for me today and still i feel that i have not yet grasped its entired meaning. Only richer exprerience can help me to a fuller understanding. But in all my trials - spiritual nature, as a lawyer, in conducting institutions, and in politics - i can say that God saved me. When every hope is gone, 'when helpers fail and comforts flee', i find that help arrives somehow, from i know not where. Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal."

p 77 - "I must say a word about the Eiffel Tower. I do not know what purpose it serves today. But i then heard it greatly disparaged as well as praised. I remember that Tolstoy was the chief among those who disparaged it. He said the Eiffel Tower was a monument of man's folly, not of his wisdom. Tobacco, he argued was the worst of all intoxicants, inasmuch as a man addicted to it was tempted to commit crimes which a drunkard never dared to do; liquor made a man mad, but tobacco clouded his intellect and made him build castles in the air. The Eiffel Tower was one of the creations of a man under such influence. There is no art about the Eiffel Tower."

pg 82 - "When i acquainted with him with my little stock of reading, he was as i could see rather disappointed. But it was only for a moment. Soon his face beamed with a pleasing smile and he said 'I understand your trouble. Your general reading is meagre. You have no knowledge of the world, a sine qua non for a vakil. You have not even read the history of India. A vakil should know human nature. He should be able to read a man's character from his face."

p 89 - i believe in the Hindu theory of Guru and his importance in spiritual realization. I think there is a great deal of truth in the doctrine that true knowledge is impossible without a Guru. An imperfect teacher may be tolerable in mundane matters, but not in spiritual matters. Only a perfect gnani (a knowing one, a seer) deserves to be enthroned as Guru. There must, therefore, be ceaseless striving after perfection. For one gets the Guru one deserves. Infinite striving after perfection is one's right. It is its own reward. The rest in the hands of God."


p 123 - "Mr Coates could not appreciate my argument as he had no regard for my religion. He was looking forward to delivering me from the abyss of ignorance. He wanted to convince me that, no matter whether there was some truth in other religinos, salvation was impossible for me unless i accepted Christianity which represented the truth and that my sins would not be washed away except by the intercession of Jesus and that all good works were useless.
Just as he introduced me to several books, he introduced me to several friends whom he regarded as staunch Christians. One of these introductions was a to a family which belonged to the Plymouth Brethren, a Christian sect.
Many of the contacts for which Mr. Coates was responsible were good. Most struck me as being God-fearing. But during my contact with this family, one of the Plymouth Brethren confronted me with an argument for which i was not prepared:
'You can not understand the beauty of our reiligion. From what you say it appears that you must be brooding over your transgressions every moment of your life, always mending them and atoning for them. How can this ceaseless cycle of action bring you redemption? You can never have peace. You admit that we are all sinners. Now look at the perfection of our belief. Our attempts at improvement and atonment are futile. And yet redemption we must have. How can we bear the burden of sin? We can but throw it on Jesus. He is the only sinless Son of God. It is His word that those who believe in Him shall have everlasting life. Therein lies God's infinite mercy. And as we believe in the atonment of Jesus, our own sins do not bind us. Sin we must. It is impossible to live in this world sinless. And therefore Jesus suffered and atoned for all the sins of mankind. Only he who accepts His great redmption can have eternal peace. Think what a life of restlessness is yours, and what a promise of peace we have.'
The argument utterly failed to convince me. I humply replied:
'If this be the Christianity acknowledged by all Christians, i cannot accept it. I do not seek redemption from the consequences of my sin. I seek to be redeemed from sin itself, or rather from the very thought of sin. Until i have attained that end, i shall be content to be restless'.
To which the Plymouth Brother rejoined: 'i assure you, your attempt is fruitless. THink again over what i have said.'
And the brother proved as good as his word. He knowingly committed transgressions and showed me that he was undisturbd by the thought of them.
But i already knew before meeting with these friends that all Christians did not believe in such a theory of atonement. Mr. Coates himself walked in the fear of God. His heart was pure, and he believed in the possibility of self-purification. The 2 ladies also shared this belief. Some of the books that came into my hand were full of devotion. So, although mr. Coates was very much disturbed by this latest experience of mine, i was able to reassure him and tell him that the distorted belief of a Plymouth Brother could not prejudice me against Christianity.
My difficulties lay elsewhere. They were with regard to the Bible and its accepted interpretation."



"Facts mean truth, and once we adhere to truth, the law comes to our aid naturally." p 133


"It was more difficult for me to secure this concession of payment by instalments than to get the parties to agree to arbitration. But both were happy over the result, and both rose in public estimation. My joy was boundless. i had learnt the true practice of law. i had learnt to find out the better side of human nature and to enter men's hearts. i realized that the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven asunder. The lesson was so indelibly burnt into me that a large part of my time during the twenty years of my practice as a lawyer was occupied in bringing about private compromises of hundreds of cases. i lost nothing thereby - not even money, certainly not my soul."

p 136 137

"though i took a path my Christian friends had not intended for me, i have remained for ever indebted to them for the religious quest that they awakened in me. I shall always cherish the memory of their contact. The years that followed had more, not less, of such sweet and sacred contacts in store for me." p 138

"But truth triumphened in the end. The sufferings of the Indians were the expression of that truth. Yet it would not have triumphed except for unflinching faith, great patience and incessant effort. Had the community given up the struggle, had the Congress abandoned the campaign and submitted to the tax as invevitable, the hated impost would have continued to be levied from the indentured Indians until this day, to the eternal shame of the Indians in South Africa and the whole of India." p 158

"Such service can have no meaning unless one takes pleasure in it. When it is done for show or for fear of public opinion, it stunts the man and crushes his spirit. Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy." p 175

"My experience has shown me that we win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party." p 182

"And where a choice has to be made between liberty and self-respect that i gave them at the cost of the literary training. And where a choice has to be made between liberty and learning who will not say that the former has to be preferred a thousand times to the latter?" p 201

p 204

"Thus service of the indians in south africa ever revealed to me new implications of truth at every stage. Truth is like a vast tree, which yields more and more fruit, the more you nurture it. The deeper the search in the mine of truth the richer the discovery of the gems buried there, in the shape of openings for an ever greater variety of service."

"How heavy is the toll of sins and wrongs that wealth, power and prestige exact from man!!"

"The separation from wife and children, the breaking up of a settled establishment, and the going from the certain to the uncertain - all this was for a moment painful, but i had inured myself to an uncertain life. 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 is 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 Truth is the summum bonum of life. "

"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 practised, 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 a 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 found by experience that man makes his plans to be often upset by God, but at the same time where the ultimate goal is the search for truth, no matter how a mans plans are frustrated, the issue is never injurious and often better than anticipated. "

p 317 / 318

"But i could not for the life of me find out a new name, and therefore offered a nominal prize through Indian Opinion to the reader who made the best suggestion on the subject. A a result Maganlal Gandhi coined the word 'Sadagraha' (Sat=truth, Agraha = firmness) and won the prize. But in order to make it clearer i changed the word to Satyagraha which has since become current in Gujarati as a designation for the struggle."

p 329 definitely

332

345

"These words put me in mind of what the late Miss Emily Hobhouse wrote to me with regard to non co-operation: 'i should not be surprised if one of these days you have to go to the gallows for the sake of truth. May God show you the right path and protect you'. "

"Let no one cavil at this, saying that God can never be partial, and that He has no time to meddle with the humdrum affairs of men. I have no other language to express the fact of the matter, to describe this uniform experience of mine. 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. Even if it be a superstition to believe that complete immunity from harm for twenty-five years in spite of a fairly regular practice of non-killing is not a fortuitious accident but a grace of God, i should still hug that superstition."

"The grinding poverty and starvation with which our country is afflicted is such that it drives more and more men every year into the ranks of beggars, whose desperate struggle for bread renders them insensible to all feelings of decency and self-respect. And our philanthropists, instead of providing work for them and insisting on their working for bread, give them alms." p434

"The Gujaratis were deeply interested in the fight, which was to them a novel experiment. They were ready to pour forth their riches for the success of the cause. It was not easy for them to see that Satyagraha could not be conducted simply by means of money. Money is the thing that it least needs." p 436

"When the fear of jail disappears, repression puts heart into the people." p438