GANDHIJI’S THOUGHTS ON LIFE

 

          GANDHIJI’S THOUGHTS ON LIFE

Gandhiji has expressed a lot of thoughts on life. All of them are based on his personal experiences and observations . Here are some of them for the readers’ profit and pleasure.

1.     The aim of life is that we should serve the Power that has created us, and on whose mercy or consent depends our very breath, by heartily serving Its creation.

2.     The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly; the soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body.

3.     One’s life is not a single straight line; it is a bundle of duties very often conflicting . And one is called upon continually to make one’s choice between one duty and another.

4.     Life is not for making merry. Rather it is for the realization of God and for the service of humanity.

5.     My own experience has led me to the knowledge that the fullest life is impossible without an immovable belief in a Living Law in obedience to which the whole universe moves. A man without that faith is like a drop thrown out of the ocean bound to perish.

        In these few selected thoughts about life, we hear the illuminating voice of a great teacher and a most respectable mahatma.

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G.R.Kanwal

3^rd October 2023

 

Gandhiji on Communal Harmony

 

Gandhiji on Communal Harmony

Here are two quotations on communal harmony from Gandhiji’s journal Harijan. The first is dated March 16, 1947 when the partition of India was only five months away. It reads as follows:-

            “My experience of India tells me that the Hindus and Muslims know how to live at peace among themselves. I decline to believe that people have said good-bye to their senses, so as to make it impossible to live at peace with each other as they have done for generations. For, I believe with the late poet Iqbal that the Hindus and Muslims, who have lived together long under the shadows of the mighty Himalayas and have drunk the waters of the Ganges and the Jamuna, have a unique message for the world.”

            The second quotation is dated January 18, 1948 when the partition of India  had taken place and Pakistan had been formed from August 15, 1947. In this quotation Gandhiji  says:-

“Before I knew anything of politics in my early youth, I dreamt the dream of communal unity of the heart. I shall jump in the evening of my life like a child to feel that the dream has been realized in this life. The wish for living the full span of life, portrayed by the seers of old, and which they permit us to set down at 125 years, will then revive . Who would not risk sacrificing  his life for the realization  of such a  dream? Then, we shall have real Swaraj. Then, though legally and geographically we may still be two States in daily life no one will think we are separate States. The vista before me seems to me to be glorious to be true. Yet, like a child in a famous picture drawn by a famous painter, I shall not be happy till I have got it. I live and want to live for no lesser goal.”

Gandhiji was shot dead  on 30^th January 1948. He was born on 2^nd October 1869.

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G. R. Kanwal

1^st October 2023

 

  

 

 

LOVE’S PHILOSOPHY

 

          LOVE’S  PHILOSOPHY

The fountains mingle with the river,

And the rivers with the ocean;  

The winds of heaven mix forever.

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In one another’s being mingle---

Why not I with thine?

 

See! The mountains kiss high heaven,

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister flower would be forgiven

If it disdained its brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth,

And the moonbeams kiss the sea:-

What are all these kissings worth,

If thou kiss not me?

 

            This is a love poem by the English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). The poet wants to convince the lady whom he loves that “Nothing in the world is single”.  There is a divine law of pairing and combining. Fountains get mingled with rivers and rivers get mingled with the ocean. Waves clasp one another. A sister flower will not be forgiven if it disdains its brother flower. The sunlight of the sky clasps the earth.  Likewise the moonbeams kiss the sea. All these kissings in nature are according to love’s philosophy which governs all beings.  But the poet seems to be unhappy because her lady love is not paired with him. “What are all these kissings worth/If thou kiss not me? “ He asks: If “All things by a law divine/in one another’s being mingle/Why not I with thine?”

 

            What Shelley wants to convey is that the philosophy of love is a philosophy of marriage. It is a philosophy of coming together with a bond of mutual love, not of remaining aloof with an attitude of aloofness.

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G. R. Kanwal

30^th September 2023      

THE RAINBOW

 

THE  RAINBOW

My heart leaps up when I behold

A Rainbow in the sky :

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die !

The Child is Father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

 

This very short poem is by English romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770—1850). He is the only poet who is most famous as Nature poet of England.

 

As this poem reveals he was born with a love for nature and remained so not only till his manhood but also aspired to remain a lover of nature throughout his life. 

According to his personal belief Nature is not only a source of wisdom but also of health, beauty, physical grace and mental tranquility. People who have  natural piety in them  show a lot of respect for God and religion.    

 

He suggested that love for Nature should start as soon as a child is born. Man is a finished product of his childhood. His personality is shaped by his childhood activities.  This is what he wants to convey through the line “The child is Father of the Man”. 

 

Modern psychologists also agree with Wordsworth.   They too believe that “Man creates himself” or “The child is the constructor and maker of the adult.”

 

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G.R. Kanwal

28^th September 2023        

                                                               

THE NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES

 

THE NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES     

The night has a thousand eyes,

And the day but one;

Yet the light of the bright world dies

With the dying sun.

 

The mind has a thousand eyes

And the heart but one;

Yet the light of a whole life dies

When love is done.

 

            This very short poem by the British poet Francis William Bourdillon (22 March 1852 -- !3 January 1921) is quite famous due to the significance of its central idea.

 

The night has a thousand eyes and the day has but one.  The eyes of the night are the stars of the sky.  They emit light when the sky is clear. Against their  large number of a thousand eyes, the day has only one eye ,  the sun.

 

When compared the two, the massive light of one sun is far greater than the combined light of a thousand stars. It means it is the natural capacity of an object which matters, not its physical number.

 

In the second illustration of his idea, Bourdillon compares the mind with the heart, The former has a thousand eyes symbolizing non-vital thoughts  which are totally  outweighed by the single vital idea of  life-sustaining love of the heart.

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G.R. Kanwal

27^th September 2023

                                                              

 

Not the Struggle Naught Availeth

 

Not the Struggle Naught Availeth

 

         

Say not the struggle naught availeth

The labour and the wounds are vain,

The enemy faints not , nor faileth,

And as things have been they remain.

 

If hopes were dupes , fears may be liars;

It may be, in yon, smoke conceal’d,

Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,

And, but for you possess the field.

 

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,

Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back, through creeks and inlets making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

 

And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light;

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly !

But backward, look, the land is bright !

 

This is a most famous poem by Arthur Hugh Clough (1819—1861}. The theme is belief and disbelief, hope and despair about the results of human efforts and struggle. 

 

Pessimists think that their struggle has gone waste. There has been no change in the existing situation. But,  according to the poet, this is an incorrect assessment. The signs of success in any adventure are spread over a large area , as about soldiers’ victory  in a  large battle field or the success of the breaking waves in the vast sea.

The whole success is not concentrated at one place.  It is spread over.  If there is no gain at one spot, there is a lot of it at another.

 

Clough gives a very brilliant example of the rising sun:

                       

And not by eastern windows only,

                        When daylight comes, comes in the light;

                        In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly !

                        But westward, look, the land is bright !

 

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 G.R.Kanwal

26^th September 2023

 

 

     

HE PRAYETH BEST, WHO LOVETH BEST

 

HE PRAYETH BEST, WHO LOVETH BEST

            O Wedding Guest ! this soul hath been

            Alone on a wide , wide sea;

            So lonely ‘twas, that God himself

            Scarce seemed there to be

 

            O sweeter than the marriage feast ,

            ‘Tis sweeter far to me,

            To walk together to the kirk

            With a goodly company!—

 

            To walk together to the kirk,

            And all together pray

While each to his great Father bends,

Old men, and babes, and loving friends,

And youths and maidens gay !

 

Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell

To thee, thou Wedding Guest !

He prayeth well, who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast

 

He prayeth best , who loveth best

All things both great and small,

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.”

These poetic lines are extracted from a long poem entitled The Rime of the Ancient Mariner written by the British romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772—1834).

 

The poem tells the story of a sailor (the old mariner)  who shoots a friendly albatross , cursing himself and his crew. As punishment, he is forced to wear the bird around his neck, making  it a symbol of sinful burden and lifelong repentance. 

 

Coleridge makes this story a universal issue of religious preferences . Is it not spiritually better to attend a prayer meeting in a church with ‘”ld men, and babes, and loving friends, and youths and maidens gay”  than to join a wedding party with some other guests  for routine physical pleasure.

The mariner is the hero of the poem. He has suffered from extreme agony and loneliness after the shooting of the friendly albatross.

 

God’s perfect prayer demands universal love for both man and bird and beast .  His best prayer is not for some things  but for all the things whether they are great or small  for they also are made by the same God who has made human beings and loves them.

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G.R.Kanwal

25^th September 2023