Follow Mahatma Gandhi:
Make TRUTH your
God!
Take the above pledge today on
The 147th Birth Anniversary of the Father of the Nation
Reveals
Gandhi: “But deep down in me I used to
say ….God is Truth, above all….But
two years ago, I went a step further and said Truth is God …. And I came to that conclusion after a
continuous and relentless search after Truth which began nearly fifty
years ago.”
Gandhi’s
meaning here is that ‘Truth’ is not merely an incidental quality, but
the very essence of (what we call or know as) God. This is further borne out by
his assertion: “Devotion to this Truth (as God) is the sole justification for
our existence.” Thus making Truth your God is to choose it as
your Highest Value which entails the following:
To
seek and find the truth - both at the micro
and macro levels; the former calls
for introspection and acknowledgment of one’s faults and weaknesses, the latter
necessitates attentiveness to social and political injustice. An essential
precondition of success in finding the truth here is that the individual who
undertakes such a task must be truthful himself/herself. The effort to become true necessarily
involves self-purification, which in turn is impossible without faith in a
Higher Power’s Grace. To admit to oneself a weakness which no one else knows,
may be, at once to feel assured that in doing so the burden of guilt is
lightened.
To
face the truth – is
to summon the courage to deal with the above. Because once it has been found,
truth also has to be ‘faced’; and this may call for an effort which is distinct
and often painful. This is specially so when one is confronted with the ugly
truth of one’s own inner weaknesses.
To
grow from truth to truth – is a thought that occurs freely in Gandhi’s writings.
This means to be constantly aware of and persist with one’s spiritual
evolution.
To
hear and pursue the voice of truth – is to follow one’s conscience. This means, first,
that we become aware of a higher value in life than the merely material; secondly
, that Truth alone is eternal and the true source of peace; thirdly,
the conscious choice of Truth as the cherished aim of life; and finally,
that all possible self-effort is made, through self-discipline and
discrimination, to reach the goal.
To commit oneself to truth – is to see, speak
and hear the truth – as epitomized in Gandhi’s famous three monkeys!
To live the truth – is to uphold
one’s convictions and abide by one’s principles and ideals
To wait upon Truth – is openness and
readiness to guidance from God/TRUTH
To
track TRUTH through truth – is to realise God as that which really is
and that is also the basic (derivative) meaning of truth or satya. Satya is derived from the Sanskrit root sat
– which means – that which is, that which cannot be destroyed because it is. Thus TRUTH is the END and truth
is the means to attain it.
To see TRUTH face to face – is to feel the Grace of God in one’s
truthful journey - this is termed sakshat darshan in the Indian
tradition.
To
opt for saytyagrha - is
to use only nonviolence as a means of protest and conflict
resolution. Satyagraha is a compound Sanskrit word: satya
means truth graha means holding fast …so Gandhian satyagarha means holding fast onto the
truth even at the cost of life itself.
When Gandhi began his nonviolent resistance 101
years ago in South Africa, the word used for such resistance was ‘passive
resistance’ coined by the Quakers. Though admiring greatly the Quaker stance on
nonviolence, Gandhi was very unhappy with the phrase, ‘passive resistance’ as
he was of the opinion that nonviolent resistance was anything but ‘passive’!
The word ‘passive’ somehow gave a false impression that nonviolent resistance
meant inaction; not doing anything at
all. Being the karmayogi that he
was, Gandhi wanted to convey to his satyagrahis – nonviolent resisters-
that nonviolent resistance demanded not only their conviction and commitment to nonviolence but
also continuous action geared to righting the wrong one was confronted with. So
he offered a small monetary prize in his newsletter, Indian Opinion, for the
person who would find an equivalent to the phrase ‘passive resistance’ without
the word ‘passive’. Gandhi’s nephew, Maganlal Gandhi came up with the term sadagraha
– meaning good resistance (sad
means good) and Gandhi changed sad to satya, thereby coining the
word satyagraha for posterity!
In our age, where formal religion is
increasingly becoming the cause of
hatred,
bloodshed, enmity, intolerance,
religious fundamentalism,
suicide bombings and terrorism, making TRUTH
our GOD seems to be
the need of the hour!
No comments:
Post a Comment