Gandhi Message Winter Issue 2015

Volume XXXXVIII - Winter Issue - 2015

The Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Foundation

The Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Foundation, Incorporated, was founded in the United States of America in 1959 by Swami Premananda of India. The purpose of the Foundation is to disseminate the philosophy, ideal,

life, service and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. The Foundation is a legally independent, nonprofit cultural and educational organization.

Gandhi Memorial Center Dedicated to the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, the Gandhi Memorial

Center seeks to offer a broad representation of authors from many cultures and times, as well as displays, recordings, lectures and demonstrations of

cultural and educational value. The Library of the Gandhi Memorial Center is open on Fridays and Saturdays from 10am to 4pm

(except during July and August).

Our AppealFor the expansion of its ideals and activities the Foundation will gratefully receive donations of funds and contributions of books, publications and

memorabilia pertaining to Mahatma Gandhi and his associates. Please make checks payable to the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Foundation, Inc.

or contribute online at our website: www.gandhimemorialcenter.org/contribute/

The Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Foundation is a 501c(3) tax-exempt non-profit organization. The staff of the Foundation and Gandhi Center are

dedicated workers who serve without any remuneration throughout the year. Your contribution is an offering towards the services and activities of the

Gandhi Center. Your contribution is tax deductible.

Gandhi Memorial Center 4748 Western AvenueBethesda, MD 20816

301-320-6871Email: [email protected] Web: www.gandhimemorialcenter.org

Facebook.com/GandhiMemorialCenterUSA

© 2015 Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Foundation, Incorporated.Printed in the United States of America

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Table of Content

“Gandhi and His Legacy” (Painting by Shanthi Chandrasekar)........front cover

Gandhi Jayanti: “Gandhi and the Gospel of Selfless Service”..........2-9

Noble Thoughts..............................................................................10-11

Recent Events...............................................................................12-14

Student Visitors..............................................................................15-17

Photos from Gandhi Jayanti 2014.........................................back cover

For the man who seeks to scale the heights of yoga, action is said to be the means. For the same man, when he has scaled those heights, repose is said to be the means.

“For one who aspires to master yoga, the only means is work. If a person lets himself be beaten for a long time on the anvil of work, some day he may be shaped into a yogi, who has attained to a state of spiritual equipoise, whose mind has become steadfast, for such a person the right means (of continuing in this state) is shama, that is, rest-ing in peace. Such peace is not the peace of the grave or

the peace of lethargy or inertness. It is the peace of conscious life, the peace of the sea.”

-Mahatma Gandhi(From: The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi)

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“Gandhi and the Gospel of Selfless Service”Remarks by Carrie Trybulec, Director of Gandhi Memorial Center

at Gandhi Jayanti – October 2, 2014

Gandhiji’s Gujarati translation of the Gita was published on March 12, 1930, the day on which he marched to Dandi from Sabarmati Ashram. A member of the Ashram who read it found it very difficult to understand and complained about it to Gandhiji who was then in Yeravda prison. There-upon he wrote a series of letters to the Ashram in which he devoted one letter to each chapter of the Gita.

Gandhiji explained in his discourses on the Gita, that…

“The battlefield of Kurukshetra only provides the occasion for the dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna. The real Kurukshetra is the hu-man heart, which is also a dharmakshetra (the field of righteousness) if we look upon it as the abode of God ... Some battle or other is fought on this battlefield from day to day. Most of these battles arise from the distinction between ‘mine’ and ‘thine’, between kinsmen and strang-ers.

“When I look upon a person or thing as ‘mine,’ attachment takes hold of my mind; and when I look upon him as a stranger, aversion or hatred enters the mind. Therefore we must forget the distinction be-tween ‘mine’ and ‘thine’. That is to say, we must give up our likes and dislikes. This is the teaching of the Gita and all other scriptures. To say this is one thing; to practice it is quite another.

Lamp Lighting: Srimati Kamala, Carrie Trybulec, Ambassador Taranjit Singh Sandhu; As-sistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Nisha Biswal.

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“Arjuna said to Krishna, ‘The course of conduct you have mapped for me seems to be beyond my capacity. Not to worry about defeat or victory, not to waste a thought on the result,— how can one attain such an evenness of temper and steadfastness in spirit? How does one with such attainments behave?

“The Lord Krishna replied, ‘O king, one who renounces all the crav-ings which torment the heart and derives his contentment from within himself is said to be a sthitaprajna or samadhistha (one stable in spir-it). He is unruffled in adversity, and he does not hanker after happi-ness. The senses are so powerful that they drag a man behind them by force if he is not on his guard. Therefore, said Lord Krishna, one must always keep them under control. This end one can achieve only if he turns his eyes inward, realizes God Who resides in his heart and is devoted to Him. The Lord continued, one who thus looks upon Me as His goal and surrenders his all to Me, keeping his senses in control, is a yogi stable in spirit.

“On the other hand, if one is not master of his senses, he is al-ways musing on the objects of sense and conceives an attachment for them, so that he can hardly think of anything else. From this attach-ment arises desire; and when the desire is thwarted he gets angry. Anger drives him nearly mad. He cannot understand what he is about. He thus loses his memory, behaves in a disorderly manner and comes to an ignoble end. When a man’s senses rove at will, he is like a rud-derless ship which is at the mercy of the gale and is broken to pieces on the rocks.

“But if a man is not stable-minded, how can he think good thoughts? Without good thoughts there is no peace, and without peace there is no happiness. Where a stable-minded man sees things clear as day-

Bharatanatyam Dance Invocation by Malar Singaram at Gandhi Jayanti.

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light, the unstable man distracted by the turmoil of the world is as good as blind. On the other hand, what is pure in the eyes of the worldly wise looks unclean and repels the stable-minded man. Rivers con-tinuously flow into the sea, but the sea remains unmoved; in the same way all sense objects come to the yogi, but he always remains calm like the sea. One who abandons all desires, is free from pride and self-ishness and behaves as one apart, finds peace. This is the condition of a perfect devotee of God, and he who is established therein, even at the final hour, finds moksha, self-liberation.

“Krishna continues: ‘O Arjuna, since the beginning of time seekers have taken one or the other of two different paths. In one of these the pride of place is given to knowledge and in the other it is given to action. But you will find that freedom from action cannot be attained without action, that wisdom never comes to one simply on account of his having ceased to act. One does not become perfect merely by renouncing everything. Don’t you see that every one of us is doing something or other all the time? Our very nature impels us to action. Such being the law of nature, one who sits with folded hands but lets his mind dwell on the objects of sense is a fool and may even be called a hypocrite. Rather than indulge in such senseless inactivity, is it not better that a man should control the senses, overcome his likes and dislikes, and engage himself in some activity or other without fuss and in a spirit of detachment?

“While acting, remember that action leads to bondage unless it is performed in a spirit of sacrifice. Sacrifice means exerting oneself for the benefit of others, in a word, it means service. And where service is rendered for service’s sake, there is no room for attachment, likes and dislikes. Perform such a sacrifice; render such service. When Brahma created, the universe, He created sacrifice along with it, as it were,

Distinguished guests: Ambassador Taranjit Singh Sandhu and Mrs. Nisha Desai Biswal, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia at Gandhi Jayanti.

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and said to humankind, ‘Go forth into the world; serve one another and prosper. Look upon all creatures as God. Serve them as God’...”

My own personal introduction to the life and message of Mahatma Gan-dhi was through Gandhiji’s reflections on the Gita. Gandhi entitled his own translation and interpretation of the Gita as the “gospel of selfless service”.

When we think of the ideal of selfless service we often think of the word: volunteerism, we think of serving others. We think of something larger than ourselves.

Gandhiji believed that we must identify ourselves with all that lives. In our own reflection on selfless service, we realize that it all centers around the ideal of the Self. Gandhi said:

“One should see oneself in the whole world and the whole world in oneself. One should act toward others in this realization - that when human life is full of suffering,” [and, indeed, it is] “that we should cause suffering to no one.”

We should cause no suffering, for human life is already full of suffering.Is not this the ideal of nonviolence, of love? Should we not extend love to all? This raises the question: What causes suffering? Great souls of all times and all lands have meditated deeply upon this question. One possible an-swer to this question is separation - separation from the Self, separation from that which resides within all of us.

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Gandhi believed that the sphere of our service would eventually enlarge itself to embrace the whole world. It is through our selfless service that we identify with all of life. It is through selfless service that we remove the pain of separation. In realization of the universal Self of us all, we will cause no suffering. When our thoughts, speech and actions reflect this realization, we serve all of life with devotion.

So in a world filled with violence, in a world filled with suffering, where do we turn? Sometimes we think to ourselves, “What can I do? What can I do that will make a difference?”

We must in Gandhi’s words: “Give the truest part of ourselves.” I love this phrase. It is utterly simple, utterly beautiful, and utterly true. We must give the truest part of ourselves. Often we do what we think others want to see, what will bring us favor, what will bring us fame. We might do what we think will make others proud of us, our friends, our family, our neighbors. And yet, really, all we need to do is give the truest part of ourselves.

When we do this, we automatically become selfless, we begin to serve without regard for anything in return, without regard for the fruit of our work. This Gandhi believed was the heart of the message of the Bhagavad Gita - to work without desire for the fruits of our actions. In such a state of renunciation, we can do no harm. We have not given up action. We have not given up our duty. We have only given up the attachment to the results of our action, and therefore, have focused on giving the truest part of ourselves.

Selfless service requires mastery of the Self. It requires mastering our thoughts, our desires, our emotions. It is a discipline, and it is not an easy one at that. Self-mastery requires self-awareness.

Golden Lotus Temple Bell Choir prepares to present “Lead, Kindly Light” following vocal introduction by Nasim Sultan.

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We know that Gandhi and his compatriots were seeking Swaraj, self-rule, self-rule for India. And at heart, Gandhi had an even higher ideal and meaning for Swaraj. His ideal of self-rule was not merely political, social, economic; by his ideal he truly meant “Self-rule”: mastery of the Self, of over-coming the obstacles that our minds attach to the self.

Gandhiji said, “My Life is My Message.” The Bhagavad Gita served as a strong foundation for his life. He reminded us that action must be performed with nonattachment. This ideal of renunciation was greatly impressed upon the heart and mind of Gandhiji through the dialogue of Krishna and Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Yet, these ideals are not ex-clusive to the Gita: the ideals of nonattached service come to us from all sacred scriptures and all great Souls. Here are a few such thoughts:

GURU GRANTH SAHIB:“Through selfless service, eternal peace is obtained.”

BUDDHA’S DHAMMAPADA:“From attachment arises sorrow,

and fear is the shadow of attachment. He who is completely free from attachment has no cause for grief,

and his consciousness transcends all fear.”

OLD TESTAMENT: PSALM 23The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

NEW TESTAMENT: ROMANS 12:2:“Do not be conformed to this world,

but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God,

what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

TAO TE CHING: Ch 2Therefore the sages: Manage the work of detached actions;

Place themselves last but end up in front; Are outside of themselves and yet survive; Is it not due to their selflessness?

That is how they can achieve their own goals.

THE QU’RAN: (25:57)Say (O Beloved Prophet): I ask of you no reward for it,

except that whoso will, may take a (straight) Path to His Lord.

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Gandhiji’s life was dedicated to self-realization. And in order to realize the Self -- he followed the path of selfless service. He exclaimed:

“What I want to achieve, what I have been striving and pining to achieve all these years is self-realization, to see God face to face. I live and move and have my being in pursuit of this goal. All that I do is directed toward this end.”

Gandhiji believed that we must identify ourselves with ALL that lives. And the means to that end is selfless service.

Photos: Aishwariya and Aditya Chandrasekar, the Golden Lotus Temple Bell Choir and Jeffrey Hallam Bauer (piano) with Nasim Sultan (vocal).

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Photo Top: Pratap Das (tabla), Steve Bauer, Fred Dixon, Jacki Rockwell, Jeffrey Bauer and Vasanthi Athavale (harmonium) present the “Ram Dhun” for Gandhi Jayanti, October 2, 2014.

Photo Bottom: The Golden Lotus Temple Bell Choir presents “Lead, Kindly Light” with Steve Bauer (vocal) and Nasim Sultan (vocal), with bells rung by Andrea Law, Karen Shanor, Katy Bauer, Ellie Bauer, Ashley Law, Jeff Bauer, Fred Dixon, Kathy Keenan, Fritz Kramer, Shirley Bauer, Susan Hayden, Jacki Rockwell, and Tom Beckman.

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Thou hast given me an eternal life. I now dedicate it to thy universal ser-vice. The performance of righteous deeds with complete self-surrender to God is the only source of abiding inner peace. Let me come to thee with all my being, my body, my mind, my heart and soul, that I may be thine forev-er. The perfection of love is realized in complete self-surrender. Complete self-surrender is the essence of love. In love renunciation is automatic.

The proof of pure love is complete selflessness.

-Swami Premananda

Anyone can rescue his human life, in spite of his professional life, who seizes every opportunity of being a man by means of his personal action, however unpretending, for the good of fellow men who need the help of a fellow man. Such a man enlists in the service of the spiritual and the good. No fate can prevent a man from giving to others this direct human service

side by side with his work.

-Albert Schweitzer

Krishna served the people all his life; he was a real servant of the people. He could have led the hosts of Kurukshetra, but he preferred to be Ar-

juna’s charioteer. His whole life was one unbroken Gita of Karma.

-Mahatma Gandhi

Whosoever surrendereth his purpose to Allah while doing good, he verily hath grasped the firm handhold.

-Muhammed, The Qur’an

The common goal of all moral precepts laid down by the great teachers of humanity is unselfishness. All religions agree upon the necessity to control the undisciplined mind that harbors selfishness and other roots of trouble. And each, in its own way, teaches a path leading to a spiritual state that is

peaceful, disciplined, ethical, and wise, thus helping living beings to avoid misery and gain happiness.

-The Dalai Lama

Noble

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A person of the fourth level of consciousness is humanly divine in the attainment of sacrifice,

adoring and realizing the love of God everywhere and in all beings. Without relying on human knowledge or judgement,

confirmation or approval, he willingly and constantly lives and works in harmony with cosmic good.

His human kindness, love and service are offered in adoration of God with no ulterior motive of personal gain.

-Swami Kamalananda

We must serve God in a holy freedom; we must do our business faithfully, without trouble or disquiet, recalling our mind to God meekly,

and with tranquility, as often as we find it wandering from Him...Abiding in His holy Presence,

we may continue our commerce of love, now by an act of adoration, of praise, or of desire, now by an act of sacrifice or of

thanksgiving, and in all manner which our minds can devise.

-Brother Lawrence

True service is not tainted with ego needs. Selfless action arises from union with the Absolute; the server is totally open to a divine view of

serving the world. Every action is a prayer, a service to the True Self within oneself and others,

and an acknowledgement of love for humanity. In this way, service is the altar of devotion.

-Susan Trout

The people of Tao transcend self Through loving compassion

And find themselves In a higher sense.

Through loving service They attain fulfillment.

-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

THOUGHTS

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Recent Events at the Gandhi Center:

Hemang Mehta offered a presentation of Hindustani Classcial vocal music with accompanying artists: Arvind Bhand (harmoni-um) and Megha Shyam (tabla) at the Gandhi Memorial Center on September 21, 2014. The program was presented with support from Mr. Verinder and Mrs. Manjula Kumar.

Anupama Bhagwat performed on the sitar for an evening of Hindustani Classical music at the Gandhi Memorial Center on October 10, 2014 with accompanying artist Rahul Pophali (tabla).

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Film Screening and Discussion: “Indian Roots of Tibetan Buddhism”

With Benoy K. Behl

Benoy K. Behl, world-famous Buddhist scholar, art-historian, film-maker, photographer and author, is the director and the narrator of this film. On October 22, 2014 the Gandhi Memorial Center offered a screening of this film followed by a discussion led by Benoy Behl. The vast universities of Eastern India had hundreds of teachers and stu-dents who came from across India and from the many countries of Asia that had embraced Buddhist philosophy. The greatest of these was at Na-landa University, where there was a spirit of vibrant intellectual thought, a climate of discussion and debate. This film was made with sponsorship by the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India.

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Recent Events at the Gandhi Center:

Rajasthani Folk Music & Photography October 15, 2014

The Gandhi Memorial Center presented a program of sarangi and vo-cal music by Lakha Khan and his son, Dhane Khan, along with a photo graphic exhibition by Dr. Shalini Ayyagari, Assistant Professor of Ethno-musicology at American University, Washington DC. Shalini’s current book project, Small Voices Sing Big Songs: Music and Institutional Culture in Rajasthan, India, is a sociocultural history and musical ethnography of the Manganiyar, a community of hereditary musicians who have maintained music in a patronage system as their livelihood for years. Her many years of research and time spent in Rajasthan have also helped her produce a stunning exhibition of photos of these musicians and their families which remained on display in the Gandhi Center for several months.

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Student Visitors to the Gandhi Center:

Students from American University on October 22, 2014 (top and middle left photos) and from Center City Public Charter School through the DC Arts and Humanities Education

Collaborative Arts for Every Student Program on November 7, 2014 at the Gandhi Memorial Center (middle right and bottom photos).

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Student Visitors to the Gandhi Center:

Student visitors from the National Cathedral School of Washington, DC on December 5, 2014 (photos above) and Walter Johnson High School,

Montgomery County, MD on December 23, 2014 (photo below).

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Students from Center City Public Charter School in Washington, DC visited the Gandhi Center on November 21, 2014 through the Arts for Every Student

initiative of the DC Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative.

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Photos by Tony Ventouris

On the occasion of the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the Gandhi Memorial Center annually presents its observance of Gandhi Jayanti in

cooperation with the Embassy of India. Each year one additional light (diya) is added around the reflecting pool to mark the

number of years since his birth on October 2, 1869.