NOTES FROM GANDHI'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
"(as a teen), I stole a bit of gold out of my meat-eating brother's
armlet. This brother had run into a debt of about twenty-five rupees.
He had on his arm an armlet of solid gold. It was not difficult to clip
a bit out of it.
Well, it was done, and the debt cleared. But this became more than I
could bear. I resolved never to steal again. I also made up my mind to
confess it to my father. But I did not dare to speak. Not that I was afraid
of my father beating me. No. I do not recall his ever having beaten any
of us. I was afraid of the pain that I should cause him. But I felt that
the risk would be taken; that there could be not a cleansing without a
clean confession.
I decided at last to write out the confession, to submit it to my father,
and ask his forgiveness. I wrote it on a slip of paper and handed it to
him myself. In this note not only did I confess my guilt, but I asked
adequate punishment for it, and closed with a request to him not to punish
himself for my offence. I also pledged myself never to steal in future.
I was trembling as I handed the confession to my father. He was then
suffering from a fistula and was confined to bed. His bed was a plain
wooden plank. I handed him the note and sat opposite the plank.
He read it through, and pearl-drops trickled down his cheeks, wetting
the paper. For a moment he closed his eyes in thought and then tore up
the note. He had sat up to read it. He again lay down. I also cried. I
could see my father's agony. If I were a painter I could draw a picture
of the whole scene today. It is still so vivid in my mind.
Those pearl-drops of love cleansed my heart, and washed my sin away.
Only he who has experienced such love can know what it is.
This sort of sublime forgiveness was not natural to my father. I had
thought that he would be angry, say hard things, and strike his forehead.
But he was so wonderfully peaceful, and I believe this was due to my clean
confession. 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. I know that my confession made my father
feel absolutely safe about me, and increased his affection for me beyond
measure."
"It is impossible for me to believe that I could go to heaven or
attain salvation only by becoming a Christian. If God could have sons,
all of us were His sons.
I could accept Jesus as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine
teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born.
Thus if I could not accept Christianity either as a perfect, or the greatest
religion, neither was I then convinced of Hinduism being such. Hindu defects
were pressingly visible to me.
Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God is within you" overwhelmed me.
It left an abiding impression on me. Before the independent thinking,
profound morality, and the truthfulness of this book, all the books given
me by Mr. Coates seemed to pale into insignificance."
"I made too an intensive study of Tolstoy's books The Gospels in
brief, What to do? And other books made a deep impression on me. I began
to realize more and more the infinite possibilities of universal love."
"Look at Gautama's compassion! It was not confined to mankind, it
was extended to all living beings. Does not one's heart overflow with
love to think of the lamb joyously perched on his shoulders? One fails
to notice this love for all living beings in the life of Jesus."
"If by strength is meant brute strength then, indeed, is woman less
brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power then woman is immeasurably
man's superior …. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future
is with women."
President Ikeda refers to Gandhi as a "voice in the wilderness"
and that nonviolence represents the only means by which true liberty and
democracy can be truly saves.
"I have all along believed that what is possible for one is possible
for all. My experiments have not been conducted in the closet, but in
the open…" What he here refers to as "possible for one"
is the nonviolence of the strong, a practice that, as he said, "implies
as complete self-purification as is humanly possible."
Einstein praised Gandhi as the greatest political genius of our age.
But I (President Ikeda) think that it would not be excessive praise to
substitute the words "human history" for "our age."
"I could not be leading a religious life unless I identified myself
with the whole of mankind, and that I could not do unless I took part
in politics. The whole gamut of man's activities today constitutes an
indivisible whole. You cannot divide social, economic, political and purely
religious work into watertight compartments. I do not know any religion
apart from human activity. It provides a moral basis to all other activities
which they would otherwise lack, reducing life to a maze of "sound
and fury signifying nothing."
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