Gandhi discusses Love and Service

http://www.mkgandhi.org/momgandhi/chap88.htm

 

The Gospel Of Love

Cohesive Power

THE FORCE of love is the same as the force of the soul or truth. We have evidence of its working at every step. The universe would disappear without the existence of that force…. Thousands, indeed tens of thousands, depend for their existence on a very active working of this force. Little quarrels of millions of families in their daily lives disappear before the exercise of this force. Hundreds of nations live in peace. History does not and cannot take note of this fact. History is really a record of every interruption of the even working of the force of love or of the soul. Two brothers quarrel; one of them repents and reawakens the love that was lying dormant in him; the two again begin to live in peace; nobody takes note of this. But if the two brothers, through the intervention of solicitors or some other reason, take up arms or go to law-which is another form of the exhibition of brute force-their doings would be immediately noticed in the Press, they would be the talk of their neighbours and would probably go down to history. And what is true of families and communities is true of nations. There is no reason to believe that there is one law for families and another for nations. History, then, is a record of an interruption of the course of nature. Soul force, being natural, is not noted in history. (HS, pp. 77-79)


Scientists tell us that, without the presence of the cohesive force amongst the atoms that comprise this globe of ours, it would crumble to pieces and we would cease to exist; and even as there is cohesive force in blind matter, so must there be in all things animate, and the name for that cohesive force among animate beings is love. We notice it between father and son, between brother and sister, friend and friend. But we have to learn to use that force among all that lives, and in the use of it consists our knowledge of God. Where there is love there is love there is life; hatred leads to destruction.
(YI, 5-5-1920, p. 7)


I believe that the sum total of the energy of mankind is not to bring us down but to lift us up, and that is the result of the definite, if unconscious, working of the law of love. The fact that mankind persists shows that the cohesive force is greater than the disruptive force, centripetal force greater than centrifugal.
(YI, 12-11-1931, p. 355)

 

Law Of Our Being

Brute force has been the ruling factor in the world for thousands of years, and mankind has been reaping its bitter harvest all along, as he who runs may read. There is little hope of anything good coming out of it in the future. If light can come out of it in the future. If light can come out of darkness, then alone can love emerge from hatred. (SSA, p. 188)


I have found that life persists in the midst of destruction and, therefore, there must be a higher law than that of destruction. Only under that law would a well-ordered society be intelligible and life worth living. And if that is the law of life, we have to work it out in daily life. Wherever there are wars, wherever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love. In this crude manner, I have worked it out in my life. That does not mean that all my difficulties are solved. Only, I have found that this law of love has answered as the law of destruction has never done. (YI, 1-10-1931, p.286)


If love or non-violence be not the law of our being,….there is no escape from a periodical recrudescence of war, each succeeding one outdoing the preceding one in ferocity…
All the teachers that ever lived have preached that law with more or less vigour. If Love was not the law of life, life would not have persisted in the midst of death. Life is a perpetual triumph over the grave. If there is a fundamental distinction between man and beast, it is the former’s progressive recognition of the law and its application in practice to his own personal life. All the saints of the world, ancient and modern, were each according to his light and capacity a living illustration of that supreme Law of our being. That the brute in us seems so often to gain an easy triumph is true enough. That, however, does not disprove the law. It shows the difficulty of practice. How should it be otherwise with a law which is as high as truth itself? When the practice of the law becomes universal, God will reign on earth as He does in Heaven. I need not be reminded that earth and Heaven are in us. We know the earth, we are strangers to the Heaven are in us. If it is allowed that for some the practice of love is possible, it is arrogance not to allow even the possibility of its practice in all the others. Not very remote ancestors of our4s indulged in cannibalism and many other practice which we would today call loathsome. No doubt in those days too there were Dick Sheppard’s who must have been laughed at and possibly pilloried for preaching the (to them) strange doctrine of refusing to eat fellow-men. (H, 26-9-1936, p. 260)


History is a record of perpetual wars, but we are trying to make new history, and I say this as I represent the national mind so far as non-violence is concerned. I have reasoned out the doctrine of the sword, I have worked out its possibilities and come to the conclusion that men’s destiny is to replace the law of the jungle with the law of conscious love. (H, 3-7-1937, p.165)


Where love is, there God is also. (SSA, p.360)


Love never claims, it ever gives. Love ever suffers, never resents, never revenges itself.
(YI, 9-7-1925, p. 24)

 

Rule Of Service

The safest rule of conducts to claim kinship when we want to do service, and not to insist on kinship when we want assert a right. Indeed, I have applied this rule of life, which I call the golden rule of conduct, even for inter provincial relations in India….. I know no other method of preserving sweet relations in human affairs and I am fortified in my conclusion by an experience extending over a long period of years that, wherever there is an interruption is the observance of this golden rule, there have been bickerings, quarrels and even breaking of heads….. (YI, 8-12-1927, p. 407)

Equality Of Treatment

[My central aim] is equal treatment for the whole of humanity and that equal treatment means equality of service. (YI, 12–3-1925, p. 91)


For, though they [men] are not all of the same age, the same height, the same skin, and the same intellect, these inequalities are temporary and superficial, the soul that is hidden beneath this earthly crust is one and the same for all men and women belonging to all times. . . There is a real and substantial unity in all the variety that we see around us. The word ‘inequality’ has a bad dour about it, and it has led to arrogance and inhumanities, both in the East and the West. What is true about men is also true about nations, which are but groups of men. The false and rigid doctrine of inequality has led to the insolent exploitation of the nations of Asia and Africa. Who knows that the present ability of the West to prey upon the East is a sign of Western superiority and Eastern inferiority? (YI, 11-8-1927, p. 253)


The forms are many, but the informing spirit is one. How can there be room for distinctions of high and low where there is this all-embracing fundamental unity underlying the outward diversity. For that is a fact meeting you at every step in daily life. The final goal of all religion is to realize this essential oneness.
(H, 15-12-1933, p. 3)


I believe in the sovereign rule of the law of love which makes no distinctions. (H, 25-5-1947, p. 165)


I have known no distinction between relatives and strangers, countrymen and foreigners, white and coloured, Hindus and Indians of other faiths, whether Mussalmans, Christians or Jews. I may say that my heart has been incapable of making any such distinctions. I cannot claim this as a special virtue, as it is in my very nature, rather than a result of any effort on my part, whereas in the case of AHIMSA (non-violence), BRAHMACHARYA (celibacy), APARIGRAHA (non-possession) and other cardinal virtues, I am fully conscious of a continuous striving for their cultivation. (A, p. 204)


We must widen the circle of our love till it embraces the whole village; the village in its turn must take into its fold the district, the district the province, and so on till the scope of our love becomes co-terminus with the world. (YI, 27-6-1929, p. 214)


We are living in times when values are undergoing quick changes. We are not satisfied with slow results. We are not satisfied with the welfare merely of our own caste-fellows, not even of our own country. We feel or want to feel for the whole of humanity. All this is a tremendous gain in humanity’s search towards its goal. (H, 30-5-1936, p. 126)


My appeal to you.. is to cleanse your hearts and to have charity. Make your hearts as broad as the ocean. … Do not judge others lest you be judged. There is that Supreme Judge who can hang you, but He leaves you alive. There are so may enemies within you and around you, but He protects and looks upon you with a kindly eye. (YI, 1-1-1925, p. 8)

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Mohandas Gandhi

“God has no religion”

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