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June 2 - June 6, 2018
Marriage among Hindus is no simple matter. The parents of the bride and the bridegroom often bring themselves to ruin over it. They waste their substance, 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.
‘Renunciation of objects, without the renunciation of desires, is shortlived, however hard you may try.’
man of truth must also be a man of care.
A reformer cannot afford to have close intimacy with him whom he seeks to reform.
Only he Who is smitten with the arrows of love, Knows its power.
A clean confession, combined with a promise never to commit the sin again, when offered before one who has the right to receive it, is the purest type of repentance.
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.
Let every youth take a leaf out of my book and make it a point to account for everything that comes into and goes out of his pocket, and like me he is sure to be a gainer in the end.
Experience
has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth.
Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man, and silence i...
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‘Never again shall I place myself in such a false position, never again shall I try to exploit friendship in this way,’ said I to myself, and since then I have never been guilty of a breach of that determination.
Carefully kept accounts are a sine qua non for any organization. Without them it falls into disrepute. Without properly kept accounts, it is impossible to maintain truth in its pristine purity.
The heart’s earnest and pure desire is always fulfilled. In my own experience I have often seen this rule verified. Service of the poor has been my heart’s desire, and it has always thrown me amongst the poor and enabled me to identify myself with them.
It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow-beings.
I have always felt that the undesirable traits I see today in my eldest son are an echo of my own undisciplined and unformulated early life.
‘Renunciation without aversion is not lasting.’
Brahmacharya means control of the senses in thought, word and deed. Every day I have been realizing more and more the necessity for restraints of the kind I have detailed above.
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, here, in the shape of openings for an ever greater variety of service.
I believed then, and I believe even now, that, no matter what amount of work one has, one should always find some time for exercise, just as one does for one’s meals. It is my humble opinion that, far from taking away
from one’s capacity for work, it adds to it.
I now realize that a public worker should not make statements of which he has not made sure. Above all, a votary of truth must exercise the greatest caution. To allow a man to believe a thing which one has not fully verified is to compromise truth. I am pained to have to confess that, in spite of this knowledge, I have not quite conquered my credulous habit, for which my ambition to do more work than I can manage is responsible.
Children inherit the qualities of the parents, no less than their physical features. Environment does play an important part, but the original capital on which a child starts in life is inherited from its ancestors.
I pondered over brahmacharya and its implications, and my convictions took deep root. I discussed it with my co-workers. I had not realized then how indispensable it was for self-realization, but I clearly saw that one aspiring to serve humanity with his whole soul could not do without it.
I saw that brahmacharya, which is so full of wonderful potency, is by no means an easy affair, and certainly not a mere matter of the body.
A true brahmachari will not even dream of satisfying the fleshly appetite, and until he is in that condition, he has a great deal of ground to cover.
Passion in man is generally co-existent with a hankering after the pleasures of the palate.
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 the 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.
