fundamentally changed my view of the world...


Oft In My Thought


Ah, how often I have sought in my days,

To emulate the great leaders, and be gently led,

By their virtuous actions and well-laid plans.

How often I charted the best courses to take

To reach those heights of thought and action;

And thought evermore of what best will portray

Their everlasting influence on this humble self,

That will make this world to be as they always saw,

In their lofty wishes and their fanciful dreams.


But all those thoughts, More...

The man who took his mother's advice literally

After reading it I felt Gandhi was "this dysphoric worthless loner with zero self-esteem; someone without an iota of individuality"

Why, then, give this impression when we know Gandhi was more than this?


My copy of the book had torn spine, small print, dog-eared cover and the quality of paper so inferior, that it set a new precedent for me -- It was an old edition printed in India. But I shouldn't complain because a friend of mine had lent it to me.

L More...

Having read Fischer's biography of him in high school led to reading a whole lot of Gandhi's own writing in college--until, that is, hitting his commentaries on the Gita--starting with his early autobiographical My Experiments with Truth.

My primary interest in Gandhi was his pacifism and his reasons for it. The United States' invasion of the south of Vietnam had been going on since my childhood and I had become a draft counselor in college and, ultimately, a draft resister after I'd started fill More...

بدأت بقراءته ، اعجبتني الصراحة والوضوح .. والكثير من الافكار الساميه لدية
سيره ذاتيه راءعه وملهمه اعجبتني انجازاته وكفاحه وجهاده لرغباته. والتزامه. بنذوره وحفاظه عليها في اسوء الظروف
اشعر انه جعل للقلم والحرف قوه كبيره حقق من خلالها اهدافه كتب وكتب وكتب حتى نال مايريده
اكثر شي ازعجني هو تعامله مع زوجته
خصوصا لما اوشك على طردها من المنزل في جنوب افريقيا
إضافه الى اجبارها على تنظيف مراحيض نزلاءه
انصح بقراءتها للجميع

أحب قراءة السيّر لأنها تمنحنا حياة آخرى و تجارب أكثر ,
و سيرة غاندي من أروع السير الحياتيه.

I simply gave up around page 300.

I didn't know much about Gandhi except that he was a pacifist and helped free India. So I wanted to find out more about him. What better way than to read the man's own words about his life? So I went in with vim and vigor, ready to learn.

I got bogged down in details that didn't mean anything to me [he wrote about current Indian authority figures like I might toss off a comment about Britney Spears].

He routinely came across as a complete prick, ie, he would almo More...

كتاب ضخم ان صح التعبير.. يحتوي علي تفاصيل دقيقة عن حياة المهاتما غاندي وسيرته الذاتية في حقل المحاماة وتجارب الدراسة في بريطانيا و العمل في جنوب افريقيا والبقية تأتي. بدت في البداية ممتعة، وممتعة جدا حتى أني تجاوزت المائة صفحة في مدة وجيزة، سرني أن أتعرف عن قرب على جزء من المجتمع الهندي وهم الهندوس وبعض عاداتهم في القرن الماضي..
الجزء الأول تحدث عن طفولته وصباه بشكل مركز ودقيق. وعن شعوره وبعض مغامراته.. ودراسته وزواجه المبكر جدا والذي أحززني كما أحزنه.. ومن ثم انطلاقه للحياة في بداية التجربة للد More...

In Gandhi’s Autobiography (which was hand written by someone else, but told supposedly word-for-word by Gandhi.) the book starts off with Gandhi as a child and his recollections. From here to his teenage years its pretty exciting and an overall page turner. I don’t want to give away anything, but his childhood was pretty weird in comparison to the American lifestyle.

Anyway I found that the chapters later on that involved his life in England overall drab and boring. Gandhi seemed to recall borin More...

"My experiments with truth" describes perfectly the stoic life of Gandhiji! How he developed himself through 'good company', 'good books' and 'self-will'.
This writing is an Apotheosis for showing,"Winners are not born, they are made!"

I thought this book will be more about British East India and our Freedom struggle but its basically about "experiments" of Gandhiji in his journey and it's remarkable how he sticked to his beliefs!
Though many of his beliefs or rules I didn't find right(or orthodox, More...

I should probably wait till I actually finished the book to write a review. But I feel like writting now because I've got something to say now. I tentaivley picked up this book and that is how I am making my way through the pages. I've only just begun, Gandhi is about thirteen. But I find myself angry at him. I can't get through a page without watching his struggle with a thought, idea or truth. His life, from the very early stages, reveals his struggle towards ahimsa,non-violence, and brahmacha More...

Gandhi..called as Mahatma??? A self deceiver can be called as Mahatma?? I call him self deceiver only because of his rules and regulations which was maintained or still maintaining in his ashram..

He calls Gita his mother!!then what about Quran or Bible?? What about Buddhist scriptures?? And there are still people who goes on calling these people as Mahatmas???People like him were always against rebels..I calls him traditional..the very stupid mediocre mind of vedic period..and this so called Mah More...

After seeing the movie biopic, I knew I needed to find out more about Gandhi so I picked this up. Don't let the width of the book fool you, it isn't a thousand pages like it appears. The translation of the book is actually pretty good and it reads easily. For the most part, Gandhi spends time talking about the little details in his life before he became famous. That is sort of the opposite of what you would expect in an autobiography, but as he says, his life was well known by then. This may lea More...

This was a fascinating read. Gandhi's writing is oddly simple, even almast naive in places. He faithfully records small personal struggles, giving them the same wieght as major political battles. Gandhi's zeal and idealism comes across powerfully, as does his lifelong concern with self-discipline and purity (bramacharya).

I was especially interested in his evolving understanding of satyagraha and his increasingly strict vegetarianism. His ascetism increased in direct proportion to his growing po More...

Self-revealing and fascinating to read alongside Erik Erikson's at-a-distance psychoanalysis of the saint, Gandhi's Truth (1960). The autobiography is full of surprises: At one point in his youth, Gandhi became convinced that India was behind the times because of vegetarianism, so he vowed to convert all of his homeland to carnivorious wisdom. Perhaps the only vow he did not keep.


Would that his teachings on non-violent resistance (satyagraha) were more widely applied. Detractors argue, however, More...

"Tak ada hal baru yang bisa kuajarkan kepada dunia. Kebenaran (truth) dan antikekerasan (non-violence) sama tuanya dengan gunung-gunung."

"...Tuhan adalah kebenaran."

"...Orang yang tidak murni hatinya tidak dapat melihat Tuhan. Karena itu, proses pemurnian diri tentu harus diupayakan dalam perjalanan hidup. Dan proses pemurnian diri akan mudah mempengaruhi orang-orang yang ada disekitarnya."
(M.K. Gandhi)

Toleransinya terhadap perbedaan keyakinan mengingatkan saya akan Gus Dur,dan inilah yang palin More...

تحدث غاندي في هذا الكتاب عن طفولته في الهند، كيف تزوج وهو ابن ثلاث عشرة عاما وكيف أكل اللحم خلسة وكيف هاجر الى بريطانيا، حيث درس الحقوق.
كما تحدث عن قصة نضاله المثيرة في جنوب افريقيا من اجل حقوق الهنود ضد عنصرية الرجل الابيض، حيث رُمي بالحجارة والبيض الفاسد.
كذلك تحدث غاندي عن رأيه في المسيحية والإسلام، ولماذا أيد المسلمين في مطالبهم بإقامة خلافة اسلامية في الولايات الهندية ذات الأغلبية الاسلامية . وكيف كبح غرائزه واستغنى عن المرأة.وعن صيامه الطويل والمتكرر كأسلوب لتهذيب النفس وتطهير الجسد.
ويروي More...

Not what I was expecting.

Of late I have been more and more interested in Gandhi and Gandhisim. Born and brought up in India, Gandhiji was a well known figure introduced to all children very early and quite frequently. However, what we heard where only glimpses of what transpired during the freedom struggle. So, I wanted to read more about Gandhiji to understand his thoughts and ideas about non-violence and Satyagraha, which he pioneered in the early nineteen hundreds. I became more interested in More...

Orwell: “Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent.” Gandhi may be a saint, but he is one fussy holy man. His autobiography only takes us to 1927, before the campaign to free India of British rule. He had become famous for leading a civil rights movement for Indians in South Africa where he lived for years before taking the “satyagraha” movement back to India. On the way, he is a young anglophile who admires the Empire, studies law in London and sides with the colonial More...

مقتطفات من كتاب في سبيل الحق للمهاتما غاندي
-------------------
قلت لنفسي . اذا كان علي ان اكون وفياً لزوجتي فان عليها كذلك ان تكون وفية لي .. وتحولت تحت تاثير هذه الفكرة الى زوج شديد الغيرة حتى جعلت لنفسي من واجبها في ذلك حقاً مشروعاً يجيز لي ان انتزع منها اخلاصها انتزاعاً .. ولم يكن لدي من الاسباب ما يحملني على التشكك في اخلاص زوجتي واكن هكذا شأن الغيرة , فهي لا تحتاج الى اسباب ! و من هنا كان علي دائما ان اكون حذراً ارقب حركاتها وسكناتها ولا اسمح لها بالخروج الا بإذني .. فكان ذلك مثار نزاع مرير More...

Excuse the ramblings of a mind coping to understand...this really is a book review...of sorts.

Yesterday, a man in Oslo set off a bomb that killed seven people then went to a kid's camp and killed eighty four young people. The world is sickened. Why do these things happen? Details are still coming out. At first I heard an Islamic militant group had claimed responsibility. Now it seems that the killer may be an extreme anti-islamic; a christian fundamentalist. What is clear is that somehow he was More...

http://iandbooks.wordpress.com/

This is the first post I am writing on my blog where I want to write about the books that I have read and how they have changed my life or sometimes just given me moments of happiness in otherwise stressed life.
There cannot be a better book than “My Experiments with Truth” to start this journey. A book that helped me 20 years ago when I had read it for the first time and now again when I read it last month. The author of the book “Mahatma Gandhi” is probably one p More...

I read this book for my literature circles, we were required to pick an autobiography written by anyone. Immediately the biography that came to my mind was Gandhi's. I expected the autobiography to blow me away with his philosophies and experiences.

It might be because of my young age but the book was very hard for me to read because there was plenty of detail but very little emotion and everything he did seemed very bland, I don't blame Gandhi and still have the same respect for him. The writin More...

This is a great book useful as a guide in your life. Hes truly a mahatma.After seeing the movie biopic, I knew I needed to find out more about Gandhi so I picked this up. Don't let the width of the book fool you, it isn't a thousand pages like it appears. The translation of the book is actually pretty good and it reads easily. For the most part, Gandhi spends time talking about the little details in his life before he became famous. That is sort of the opposite of what you would expect in an aut More...

Gandhi's autobiography is one of those books that you just have to read, a story of developing oneself and raising the conscience of a people. The Mahatma (Great Soul, name apparently first used in relation with Gandhi by the great Indian poet Tagore) presents with a great deal of detail his life and development of beliefs such as vegetarianism (then fruitarianism), simplicity, brahmacharya (abstinence), non-violence, and pursuit of truth; there are also slight mentions of swaraj (right of self More...

This was one strange autobiography. But it is this strangeness that, at least, made it original if not riveting. Gandhi's view of his own life is very different than the typical narrative of his life as embodied by the movie Gandhi. He spends very little time discussing his most famous non-violent efforts and instead describes in detail his childhood, his education in England, his philosophical musings, and as he calls it his "experiments with truth." So he talks about--among other things--his d More...

I had trouble deciding whether to give this four stars or five. This book poses major problems for a contemporary western audience. It frequently alludes to another volume (Satyagraha in South Africa) which I have been unable to procure as a necessary companion volume. The final part (of five) assumes a more thorough knowledge of the birth of India as an independent nation and the events and persons that were involved in it than I possess. It becomes clear in this section that Gandhi was writing More...

Gandhi had a profound effect on history. As such, I thought reading his autobiography a must. I knew I had a lot of disagreements with what he believed, big and small, but his attitude as alluded to in his title disarmed me at first. He writes that "far from claiming finality or infallibility" truth is something he believes we seek and learn by testing. At first I found him likeable and admirable. I felt for his struggles with shyness and public speaking. But my respect for his views and my liki More...

If the name "Gandhi" conjures up an image of some fantastical demigod of peace and tranquility, this book will solve that for you. It's Gandhi's own account of his life (written in the 1920s, so it wasn't nearly over yet[1]), and it reveals the inner working of a man who is constantly pushed by his own high expectations for himself and for all of humanity.

On the one hand, the book is frustrating, because it thoroughly demolishes the superhuman reality of Gandhi. On the other hand, this book is l More...

Should have read this book long ago...............having read so much about the Mahatama. Absolutely remarkable and inspiring. Experiments with truth, truthfully narrated. Clearly demonstrates the power of mental and physical discipline and public confession.