"Before this century, virtually all revolutions have been based on hope and hate. The hope was expressed in the rising expectation of freedom and justice. What was new about Mahatma Gandhi's movement in India was that he mounted a revolution on hope and love, hope and nonviolence. This same new emphasis characterized the civil rights movement in our country dating from the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956 to the Selma movement of 1965. We maintained the hope while transforming the hate of traditional revolutions into positive nonviolent power. As long as the hope was fulfilled there was little questioning of nonviolence. But when the hopes were blasted, when people came to see that in spite of progress their conditions were still insufferable, when they looked out and saw more poverty, more school segregation, and more slums, despair began to set in.

But revolution, though born of despair, cannot long be sustained by despair. This was the ultimate contradiction of the Black Power movement. It claimed to be the most revolutionary wing of the social revolution taking place in the United States. Yet it rejected the one thing that keeps the fire of revolutions burning: the ever-present flame of hope. When hope dies, a revolution degenerates into an undiscriminating catchall for evanescent and futile gestures. The Negro cannot entrust his destiny to a philosophy nourished solely on despair, to a slogan that cannot be implemented into a program.

Over cups of coffee in my home in Atlanta and my apartment in Chicago [located within the "ghetto"], I often talked late at night and over into the small hours of the morning with proponents of Black Power who argued passionately about the validity of violence and riots. They didn't quote Gandhi or Tolstoy. Their Bible was Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. This black psychiatrist from Martinique, who went to Algeria to work with the National Liberation Front in its fight against the French, argued in his book — a well-written book, incidentally, with many penetrating insights — that violence is a psychologically healthy and tactically sound method for the oppressed. And so, realizing that they are a part of that vast company of the "wretched of the earth," young American Negroes, who were involved in the Black Power movement, often quoted Fanon's belief that violence is the only thing that will bring about liberation.

The plain, inexorable fact was that any attempt of the American Negro to overthrow his oppressor with violence would not work. We did not need President Johnson to tell us this by reminding Negro rioters that they were outnumbered ten to one. The courageous efforts of our own insurrectionist brothers, such as Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, should be eternal reminders to us that violent rebellion is doomed from the start. Anyone leading a violent rebellion must be willing to make an honest assessment regarding the possible casualties to a minority population confronting a well armed, wealthy majority with a fanatical right wing that would delight in exterminating thousands of black men, women, and children." - Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., Chapter Twenty-Nine, "Black Power"

"God has the light that can shine through all the darkness. We have experiences when the light of day vanishes, leaving us in some dark and desolate midnight — moments when our highest hopes are turned into shambles of despair or when we are victims of some tragic injustice and some terrible exploitation. During such moments our spirits are almost overcome by gloom and despair, and we feel that there is no light anywhere. But ever and again, we look toward the east and discover that there is another light which shines even in the darkness, and the 'spear of frustration' is transformed 'into a shaft of light.' " - Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., Chapter Thirteen, "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence"

"Before this century, virtually all revolutions have been based on hope and hate. The hope was expressed in the rising expectation of freedom and justice. What was new about Mahatma Gandhi's movement in India was that he mounted a revolution on hope and love, hope and nonviolence. This same new emphasis characterized the civil rights movement in our country dating from the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956 to the Selma movement of 1965. We maintained the hope while transforming the hate of traditional revolutions into positive nonviolent power. As long as the hope was fulfilled there was little questioning of nonviolence. But when the hopes were blasted, when people came to see that in spite of progress their conditions were still insufferable, when they looked out and saw more poverty, more school segregation, and more slums, despair began to set in.

But revolution, though born of despair, cannot long be sustained by despair. This was the ultimate contradiction of the Black Power movement. It claimed to be the most revolutionary wing of the social revolution taking place in the United States. Yet it rejected the one thing that keeps the fire of revolutions burning: the ever-present flame of hope. When hope dies, a revolution degenerates into an undiscriminating catchall for evanescent and futile gestures. The Negro cannot entrust his destiny to a philosophy nourished solely on despair, to a slogan that cannot be implemented into a program.

Over cups of coffee in my home in Atlanta and my apartment in Chicago [located within the "ghetto"], I often talked late at night and over into the small hours of the morning with proponents of Black Power who argued passionately about the validity of violence and riots. They didn't quote Gandhi or Tolstoy. Their Bible was Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. This black psychiatrist from Martinique, who went to Algeria to work with the National Liberation Front in its fight against the French, argued in his book — a well-written book, incidentally, with many penetrating insights — that violence is a psychologically healthy and tactically sound method for the oppressed. And so, realizing that they are a part of that vast company of the "wretched of the earth," young American Negroes, who were involved in the Black Power movement, often quoted Fanon's belief that violence is the only thing that will bring about liberation.

The plain, inexorable fact was that any attempt of the American Negro to overthrow his oppressor with violence would not work. We did not need President Johnson to tell us this by reminding Negro rioters that they were outnumbered ten to one. The courageous efforts of our own insurrectionist brothers, such as Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, should be eternal reminders to us that violent rebellion is doomed from the start. Anyone leading a violent rebellion must be willing to make an honest assessment regarding the possible casualties to a minority population confronting a well armed, wealthy majority with a fanatical right wing that would delight in exterminating thousands of black men, women, and children." - Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., Chapter Twenty-Nine, "Black Power"

"God has the light that can shine through all the darkness. We have experiences when the light of day vanishes, leaving us in some dark and desolate midnight — moments when our highest hopes are turned into shambles of despair or when we are victims of some tragic injustice and some terrible exploitation. During such moments our spirits are almost overcome by gloom and despair, and we feel that there is no light anywhere. But ever and again, we look toward the east and discover that there is another light which shines even in the darkness, and the 'spear of frustration' is transformed 'into a shaft of light.' " - Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., Chapter Thirteen, "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence"

Leo Tolstoy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy

"One thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions — the truth that for our life one law is valid — the law of love [seen in the sense of things like the laws of physics], which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainous imbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once the truth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has been smothering it." - Leo Tolstoy, A Letter to a Hindu, December of 1908 (roughly two years before his death)

"I was listening to an illiterate peasant pilgrim talking about God, about faith, about life, about salvation, and knowledge of the truth was revealed to me. I became close to the people as I listened to his views on life and faith, and more and more I came to understand the truth. The same happened to me during a reading of Chetyi-Minei and the Prologues; this became my favorite reading. Apart from miracles, which I regarded as fables to express thoughts, this reading revealed to me the meaning of life." - Leo Tolstoy, Confession, Chapter Fourteen

Confession

What I Believe

The Gospel in Brief

The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Tolstoy Wasn't What We Now Call "Religious," He Believed in the Value and Potential of the Knowledge Within Religion, Not Dogma or "Miracles": https://lemmy.world/post/44866402

Tolstoy's Personal, Social, and Divine Conceptions of Life: https://lemmy.world/post/44903802

Ludwig Wittgenstein: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

"Are you acquainted with Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief? At its time, this book virtually kept me alive... If you are not acquainted with it, then you cannot imagine what an effect it can have upon a person." - Ludwig Wittgenstein https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/the-logical-mystic

"Tolstoy's religious writings, such as the Gospel in Brief and A Confession, clearly had an enormous influence on Wittgenstein especially at the time he was writing the Tractatus. Strange then that so few commentators have even acknowledged, let alone attempted to account for, Tolstoy's influence on Wittgenstein's philosophy. It is therefore especially worth considering the extent to which the Gospel in Brief specifically influenced the outlook of the Tractatus. Indeed, as his friend and correspondent, Paul Engelmann put it, out of all Tolstoy's writings Wittgenstein had an especially high regard for the Gospel in Brief. Yet it often appears to be simply assumed that the Gospel in Brief had a profound effect on Wittgenstein. Why this might be so is never clearly explained. That the book does not seem to be readily available or very well known in the English-speaking world may partly explain why its influence on Wittgenstein may have been neglected. But in this article we attempt to explain the impact of the Gospel in Brief upon Wittgenstein's philosophy (especially the later passages of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), and his general view of ethics." - http://www.the-philosopher.co.uk/2001/04/wittgenstein-tolstoy-and-the-gospel-in.html?m=1

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Mahatma Gandhi: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi

"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." - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Part Two, Chapter Thirteen

"His logic is unassailable. And above all he endeavours to practise what he preaches. He preaches to convince. He is sincere and in earnest. He commands attention." - Mahatma Gandhi, A Letter to a Hindu

The Story of My Experiments With Truth

Martin Luther King Jr.: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.

"Over cups of coffee in my home in Atlanta and my apartment in Chicago [located within the "ghetto"], I often talked late at night and over into the small hours of the morning with proponents of Black Power who argued passionately about the validity of violence and riots. They didn't quote Gandhi or Tolstoy." - Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., Chapter Twenty-Nine, "Black Power"

King graduated high school at fifteen, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Morehouse college at nineteen, and went on to earn his Bachelor of Divinity from Crozier Theological Seminary and a Doctorate of philosophy from Boston University. He read Plato, Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant, Aristotle, Rousseau, Hobbes, Bentham, Mill, Locke and even Marx, to "better understand the appeal of communism for many people," along with many others.

"The measured words of Leo Tolstoi’s confession in My Religion [that's a mistranslation of the American edition of the book, it's really What I Believe] _reflect an experience many have shared: ‘Five years ago faith came to me; I believed in the doctrine of Jesus, and my whole life underwent a sudden transformation. What I had once wished for I wished for no longer, and I began to desire what I had never desired before. What had once appeared to me right now became wrong, and the wrong of the past I beheld as right… My life and my desires were completely changed; good and evil interchanged meanings.' " - _ Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, Chapter Thirteen, "The Answer to a Perplexing Question"

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.

Strength to Love

Leo Tolstoy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy

"One thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions — the truth that for our life one law is valid — the law of love [seen in the sense of things like the laws of physics], which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainous imbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once the truth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has been smothering it." - Leo Tolstoy, A Letter to a Hindu, December of 1908 (roughly two years before his death)

"I was listening to an illiterate peasant pilgrim talking about God, about faith, about life, about salvation, and knowledge of the truth was revealed to me. I became close to the people as I listened to his views on life and faith, and more and more I came to understand the truth. The same happened to me during a reading of Chetyi-Minei and the Prologues; this became my favorite reading. Apart from miracles, which I regarded as fables to express thoughts, this reading revealed to me the meaning of life." - Leo Tolstoy, Confession, Chapter Fourteen

Confession

What I Believe

The Gospel in Brief

The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Tolstoy Wasn't What We Now Call "Religious," He Believed in the Value and Potential of the Knowledge Within Religion, Not Dogma or "Miracles": https://lemmy.world/post/44866402

Tolstoy's Personal, Social, and Divine Conceptions of Life: https://lemmy.world/post/44903802

Ludwig Wittgenstein: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

"Are you acquainted with Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief? At its time, this book virtually kept me alive... If you are not acquainted with it, then you cannot imagine what an effect it can have upon a person." - Ludwig Wittgenstein https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/the-logical-mystic

"Tolstoy's religious writings, such as the Gospel in Brief and A Confession, clearly had an enormous influence on Wittgenstein especially at the time he was writing the Tractatus. Strange then that so few commentators have even acknowledged, let alone attempted to account for, Tolstoy's influence on Wittgenstein's philosophy. It is therefore especially worth considering the extent to which the Gospel in Brief specifically influenced the outlook of the Tractatus. Indeed, as his friend and correspondent, Paul Engelmann put it, out of all Tolstoy's writings Wittgenstein had an especially high regard for the Gospel in Brief. Yet it often appears to be simply assumed that the Gospel in Brief had a profound effect on Wittgenstein. Why this might be so is never clearly explained. That the book does not seem to be readily available or very well known in the English-speaking world may partly explain why its influence on Wittgenstein may have been neglected. But in this article we attempt to explain the impact of the Gospel in Brief upon Wittgenstein's philosophy (especially the later passages of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), and his general view of ethics." - http://www.the-philosopher.co.uk/2001/04/wittgenstein-tolstoy-and-the-gospel-in.html?m=1

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Mahatma Gandhi: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi

"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." - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Part Two, Chapter Thirteen

"His logic is unassailable. And above all he endeavours to practise what he preaches. He preaches to convince. He is sincere and in earnest. He commands attention." - Mahatma Gandhi, A Letter to a Hindu

The Story of My Experiments With Truth

Martin Luther King Jr.: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.

"Over cups of coffee in my home in Atlanta and my apartment in Chicago [located within the "ghetto"], I often talked late at night and over into the small hours of the morning with proponents of Black Power who argued passionately about the validity of violence and riots. They didn't quote Gandhi or Tolstoy." - Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., Chapter Twenty-Nine, "Black Power"

King graduated high school at fifteen, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Morehouse college at nineteen, and went on to earn his Bachelor of Divinity from Crozier Theological Seminary and a Doctorate of philosophy from Boston University. He read Plato, Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant, Aristotle, Rousseau, Hobbes, Bentham, Mill, Locke and even Marx, to "better understand the appeal of communism for many people," along with many others.

"The measured words of Leo Tolstoi’s confession in My Religion [that's a mistranslation of the American edition of the book, it's really What I Believe] _reflect an experience many have shared: ‘Five years ago faith came to me; I believed in the doctrine of Jesus, and my whole life underwent a sudden transformation. What I had once wished for I wished for no longer, and I began to desire what I had never desired before. What had once appeared to me right now became wrong, and the wrong of the past I beheld as right… My life and my desires were completely changed; good and evil interchanged meanings.' " - _ Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, Chapter Thirteen, "The Answer to a Perplexing Question"

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.

Strength to Love

"We must, say the believers, study the three persons of the Trinity; we must know the nature of each of these persons, and what sacraments we ought or ought not to perform, for our salvation depends, not on our own efforts, but on the Trinity and the regular performance of the sacraments.

We must, say the sceptics, know the laws by which this infinitesimal [extremely small] particle of matter was evolved in infinite space and infinite time; but it is absurd to believe that by reason alone we can secure true well-being, because the amelioration [make something bad, better] of man's condition does not depend upon man himself, but upon the laws that we are trying to discover.

I firmly believe that, a few centuries hence, the history of what we call the scientific activity of this age will be a prolific subject for the hilarity and pity of future generations. For a number of centuries, they will say, the scholars of the western portion of a great continent were the victims of epidemic insanity; they imagined themselves to be the possessors of a life of eternal beatitude, and they busied themselves with diverse lucubrations [laborious or intensive study] in which they sought to determine in what way this life could be realized, without doing anything themselves, or even concerning themselves with what they ought to do to ameliorate the life which they already had." - Leo Tolstoy, What I Believe, Chapter Seven

There's not knowing things, and then there's not knowing that you don't know things; not knowing things is an inevitability, like the knowledge of the understanding that of course you don't know everything there's to know about anything, or anyone. Tolstoy's trying to say here, in my opinion, that regardless your perspective, either is just as vulnerable to the closed mindedness that comes with convincing yourself that what you currently know regarding anything is no longer up for questioning, leading you into divison or iniquity to some degree otherwise; and that our inherent ability to reason that's at the basis of our ability to empathize and love, would be a significantly superior means for man to "ameliorate" its "condition."

"We must, say the believers, study the three persons of the Trinity; we must know the nature of each of these persons, and what sacraments we ought or ought not to perform, for our salvation depends, not on our own efforts, but on the Trinity and the regular performance of the sacraments.

We must, say the sceptics, know the laws by which this infinitesimal [extremely small] particle of matter was evolved in infinite space and infinite time; but it is absurd to believe that by reason alone we can secure true well-being, because the amelioration [make something bad, better] of man's condition does not depend upon man himself, but upon the laws that we are trying to discover.

I firmly believe that, a few centuries hence, the history of what we call the scientific activity of this age will be a prolific subject for the hilarity and pity of future generations. For a number of centuries, they will say, the scholars of the western portion of a great continent were the victims of epidemic insanity; they imagined themselves to be the possessors of a life of eternal beatitude, and they busied themselves with diverse lucubrations [laborious or intensive study] in which they sought to determine in what way this life could be realized, without doing anything themselves, or even concerning themselves with what they ought to do to ameliorate the life which they already had." - Leo Tolstoy, What I Believe, Chapter Seven

There's not knowing things, and then there's not knowing that you don't know things; not knowing things is an inevitability, like the knowledge of the understanding that of course you don't know everything there's to know about anything, or anyone. Tolstoy's trying to say here, in my opinion, that regardless your perspective, either is just as vulnerable to the closed mindedness that comes with convincing yourself that what you currently know regarding anything is no longer up for questioning, leading you into divison or iniquity to some degree otherwise; and that our inherent ability to reason that's at the basis of our ability to empathize and love, would be a significantly superior means for man to "ameliorate" its "condition."

"From my sixth or seventh year up to my sixteenth I was at school, being taught all sorts of things except religion. I may say that I failed to get from the teachers what they could have given me without any effort on their part. And yet I kept on picking up things here and there from my surroundings. The term 'religion' I am using in its broadest sense, meaning thereby self-realization or knowledge of self. Being born in the Vaishnava faith, I had often to go to the Haveli [extravagant mansions or townhouses] but it never appealed to me. I did not like its glitter and pomp. Also I heard rumours of immorality being practised there, and lost all interest in it. Hence I could gain nothing from the Haveli. But what I failed to get there I obtained from my nurse, an old servant of the family, whose affection for me I still recall. I have said before that there was in me a fear of ghosts and spirits. Rambha, for that was her name, suggested, as a remedy for this fear, the repetition of Ramanama. I had more faith in her than in her remedy, and so at a tender age I began repeating Ramanama to cure my fear of ghosts and spirits. This was of course, short-lived, but the good seed sown in childhood was not sown in vain. I think it is due to the seed sown by that good woman Rambha that today Ramanama is an infallible remedy for me.

Just about this time, a cousin of mine who was a devotee of the Ramayana arranged for my second brother and me to learn Rama Raksha. We got it by heart, and made it a rule to recite it every morning after the bath. The practice was kept up as long as we were in Porbandar. As soon as we reached Rajkot, it was forgotten. For I had not much belief in it. I recited it partly because of my pride in being able to recite Rama Raksha with correct pronunciation. What, however, left a deep impression on me was the reading of the Ramayana before my father. During part of his illness my father was in Porbandar. There every evening he used to listen to the Ramayana. The reader was a great devotee of Rama—Ladha Maharaj of Bileshvar. It was said of him that he cured himself of his leprosy not by any medicine, but by applying to the affected parts bilva leaves which had been cast away after being offered to the image of Mahadev in Bileshvar temple, and by the regular repetition of Ramanama. His faith, it was said, had made him whole. This may or may not be true. We at any rate believed the story. And it is a fact that when Ladha Maharaj began his reading of the Ramayana his body was entirely free from leprosy. He had a melodious voice. He would sing the Dohas (couplets) and Chopais (quatrains), and explain them, losing himself in the discourse and carrying his listeners along with him. I must have been thirteen at that time, but I quite remember being enraptured by his reading. That laid the foundation of my deep devotion to the Ramayana. Today I regard the Ramayana of Tulasidas as the greatest book in all devotional literature.

A few months after this we came to Rajkot. There was no Ramayana reading there. The Bhagavat, however, used to be read on every Ekadashi day (eleventh day of the bright and the dark half of a lunar month). Sometimes I attended the reading, but the reciter was uninspiring. Today I see that the Bhagavat is a book which can evoke religious fervour. I have read it in Gujarati with intense interest. But when I heard portions of the original read by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya during my twenty-one days' fast, I wished I had heard it in my childhood from such a devotee as he is, so that I could have formed a liking for it at an early age. Impressions formed at that age strike roots deep down into one's nature, and it is my perpetual regret that I was not fortunate enough to hear more good books of this kind read during that period. In Rajkot, however, I got an early grounding in toleration for all branches of Hinduism and sister religions. For my father and mother would visit the Haveli as also Shiva's and Rama's temples, and would take or send us youngsters there. Jain monks also would pay frequent visits to my father, and would even go out of their way to accept food from us — non-Jains. They would have talks with my father on subjects religious and mundane. He had, besides, Musalman and Parsi friends, who would talk to him about their own faiths, and he would listen to them always with respect, and often with interest. Being his nurse, I often had a chance to be present at these talks. These many things combined to inculcate in me a toleration for all faiths.

Only Christianity was at the time an exception. I developed a sort of dislike for it. And for a reason. In those days Christian missionaries used to stand in a corner near the high school and hold forth, pouring abuse on Hindus and their gods. I could not endure this. I must have stood there to hear them once only, but that was enough to dissuade me from repeating the experiment [Gandhi might of even hated what they were doing, but that didn’t stop him from being open minded enough to at least consider them]. About the same time, I heard of a well-known Hindu having been converted to Christianity. It was the talk of the town that, when he was baptized, he had to eat beef and drink liquor, that he also had to change his clothes, and that thenceforth he began to go about in European costume including a hat. These things got on my nerves. Surely, thought I, a religion that compelled one to eat beef, drink liquor, and change one's own clothes did not deserve the name. I also heard that the new convert had already begun abusing the religion of his ancestors, their customs and their country. All these things created in me a dislike for Christianity. But the fact that I had learnt to be tolerant of other religions did not mean that I had any living faith in God. I happened, about this time, to come across Manusmriti which was amongst my father's collection. The story of the creation and similar things in it did not impress me very much, but on the contrary made me incline somewhat towards atheism.

There was a cousin of mine, still alive, for whose intellect I had great regard. To him I turned with my doubts. But he could not resolve them. He sent me away with this answer: 'When you grow up, you will be able to solve these doubts yourself. These questions ought not to be raised at your age.' I was silenced, but was not comforted. Chapters about diet and the like in Manusmriti seemed to me to run contrary to daily practice. To my doubts as to this also, I got the same answer. 'With intellect more developed and with more reading I shall understand it better,' I said to myself. Manusmriti at any rate did not then teach me Ahimsa. I have told the story of my meat-eating. Manusmriti seemed to support it. I also felt that it was quite moral to kill serpents, bugs and the like. I remember to have killed at that age bugs and such other insects, regarding it as a duty [holding the opposite perspective when he became older and wiser as he mentions in a later chapter].

But one thing took deep root in me — the conviction that morality is the basis of things, and that truth is the substance of all morality. Truth became my sole objective. It began to grow in magnitude every day, and my definition of it also has been ever widening. A Gujarati didactic stanza likewise gripped my mind and heart. Its precept — return good for evil — [Matt 5:38] became my guiding principle. It became such a passion with me that I began numerous experiments in it. Here are those (for me) wonderful lines:"

• For a bowl of water give a goodly meal;
• For a kindly greeting bow thou down with zeal;
• For a simple penny pay thou back with gold;
• If thy life be rescued, life do not withhold.
• Thus the words and actions of the wise regard;
• Every little service tenfold they reward.
• But the truly noble know all men as one,
• And return with gladness good for evil done.

— Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Part One, Chapter Ten: "Glimpses of Religion"

"From my sixth or seventh year up to my sixteenth I was at school, being taught all sorts of things except religion. I may say that I failed to get from the teachers what they could have given me without any effort on their part. And yet I kept on picking up things here and there from my surroundings. The term 'religion' I am using in its broadest sense, meaning thereby self-realization or knowledge of self. Being born in the Vaishnava faith, I had often to go to the Haveli [extravagant mansions or townhouses] But it never appealed to me. I did not like its glitter and pomp. Also I heard rumours of immorality being practised there, and lost all interest in it. Hence I could gain nothing from the Haveli. But what I failed to get there I obtained from my nurse, an old servant of the family, whose affection for me I still recall. I have said before that there was in me a fear of ghosts and spirits. Rambha, for that was her name, suggested, as a remedy for this fear, the repetition of Ramanama. I had more faith in her than in her remedy, and so at a tender age I began repeating Ramanama to cure my fear of ghosts and spirits. This was of course, short-lived, but the good seed sown in childhood was not sown in vain. I think it is due to the seed sown by that good woman Rambha that today Ramanama is an infallible remedy for me.

Just about this time, a cousin of mine who was a devotee of the Ramayana arranged for my second brother and me to learn Rama Raksha. We got it by heart, and made it a rule to recite it every morning after the bath. The practice was kept up as long as we were in Porbandar. As soon as we reached Rajkot, it was forgotten. For I had not much belief in it. I recited it partly because of my pride in being able to recite Rama Raksha with correct pronunciation. What, however, left a deep impression on me was the reading of the Ramayana before my father. During part of his illness my father was in Porbandar. There every evening he used to listen to the Ramayana. The reader was a great devotee of Rama—Ladha Maharaj of Bileshvar. It was said of him that he cured himself of his leprosy not by any medicine, but by applying to the affected parts bilva leaves which had been cast away after being offered to the image of Mahadev in Bileshvar temple, and by the regular repetition of Ramanama. His faith, it was said, had made him whole. This may or may not be true. We at any rate believed the story. And it is a fact that when Ladha Maharaj began his reading of the Ramayana his body was entirely free from leprosy. He had a melodious voice. He would sing the Dohas (couplets) and Chopais (quatrains), and explain them, losing himself in the discourse and carrying his listeners along with him. I must have been thirteen at that time, but I quite remember being enraptured by his reading. That laid the foundation of my deep devotion to the Ramayana. Today I regard the Ramayana of Tulasidas as the greatest book in all devotional literature.

A few months after this we came to Rajkot. There was no Ramayana reading there. The Bhagavat, however, used to be read on every Ekadashi day (eleventh day of the bright and the dark half of a lunar month). Sometimes I attended the reading, but the reciter was uninspiring. Today I see that the Bhagavat is a book which can evoke religious fervour. I have read it in Gujarati with intense interest. But when I heard portions of the original read by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya during my twenty-one days' fast, I wished I had heard it in my childhood from such a devotee as he is, so that I could have formed a liking for it at an early age. Impressions formed at that age strike roots deep down into one's nature, and it is my perpetual regret that I was not fortunate enough to hear more good books of this kind read during that period. In Rajkot, however, I got an early grounding in toleration for all branches of Hinduism and sister religions. For my father and mother would visit the Haveli as also Shiva's and Rama's temples, and would take or send us youngsters there. Jain monks also would pay frequent visits to my father, and would even go out of their way to accept food from us — non-Jains. They would have talks with my father on subjects religious and mundane. He had, besides, Musalman and Parsi friends, who would talk to him about their own faiths, and he would listen to them always with respect, and often with interest. Being his nurse, I often had a chance to be present at these talks. These many things combined to inculcate in me a toleration for all faiths.

Only Christianity was at the time an exception. I developed a sort of dislike for it. And for a reason. In those days Christian missionaries used to stand in a corner near the high school and hold forth, pouring abuse on Hindus and their gods. I could not endure this. I must have stood there to hear them once only, but that was enough to dissuade me from repeating the experiment [Gandhi might of even hated what they were doing, but that didn’t stop him from being open minded enough to at least consider them]. About the same time, I heard of a well-known Hindu having been converted to Christianity. It was the talk of the town that, when he was baptized, he had to eat beef and drink liquor, that he also had to change his clothes, and that thenceforth he began to go about in European costume including a hat. These things got on my nerves. Surely, thought I, a religion that compelled one to eat beef, drink liquor, and change one's own clothes did not deserve the name. I also heard that the new convert had already begun abusing the religion of his ancestors, their customs and their country. All these things created in me a dislike for Christianity. But the fact that I had learnt to be tolerant of other religions did not mean that I had any living faith in God. I happened, about this time, to come across Manusmriti which was amongst my father's collection. The story of the creation and similar things in it did not impress me very much, but on the contrary made me incline somewhat towards atheism.

There was a cousin of mine, still alive, for whose intellect I had great regard. To him I turned with my doubts. But he could not resolve them. He sent me away with this answer: 'When you grow up, you will be able to solve these doubts yourself. These questions ought not to be raised at your age.' I was silenced, but was not comforted. Chapters about diet and the like in Manusmriti seemed to me to run contrary to daily practice. To my doubts as to this also, I got the same answer. 'With intellect more developed and with more reading I shall understand it better,' I said to myself. Manusmriti at any rate did not then teach me Ahimsa. I have told the story of my meat-eating. Manusmriti seemed to support it. I also felt that it was quite moral to kill serpents, bugs and the like. I remember to have killed at that age bugs and such other insects, regarding it as a duty [holding the opposite perspective when he became older and wiser as he mentions in a later chapter].

But one thing took deep root in me — the conviction that morality is the basis of things, and that truth is the substance of all morality. Truth became my sole objective. It began to grow in magnitude every day, and my definition of it also has been ever widening. A Gujarati didactic stanza likewise gripped my mind and heart. Its precept — return good for evil — [Matt 5:38] became my guiding principle. It became such a passion with me that I began numerous experiments in it. Here are those (for me) wonderful lines:"

• For a bowl of water give a goodly meal;
• For a kindly greeting bow thou down with zeal;
• For a simple penny pay thou back with gold;
• If thy life be rescued, life do not withhold.
• Thus the words and actions of the wise regard;
• Every little service tenfold they reward.
• But the truly noble know all men as one,
• And return with gladness good for evil done.

— Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Part One, Chapter Ten: "Glimpses of Religion"

"One thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions — the truth that for our life one law is valid — the law of love [seen in the sense of things like the laws of physics], which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainous imbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once the truth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has been smothering it." - Leo Tolstoy, A Letter to a Hindu, December of 1908 (roughly two years before his death)

"I was listening to an illiterate peasant pilgrim talking about God, about faith, about life, about salvation, and knowledge of the truth was revealed to me. I became close to the people as I listened to his views on life and faith, and more and more I came to understand the truth. The same happened to me during a reading of Chetyi-Minei and the Prologues; this became my favorite reading. Apart from miracles, which I regarded as fables to express thoughts, this reading revealed to me the meaning of life." - Leo Tolstoy, Confession, Chapter Fourteen

Confession

What I Believe

The Gospel In Brief

The Kingdom of God Is Within You

To Tolstoy, knowledge is knowledge no matter its source and no matter what we've rendered it ever since its been revealed and labeled. He ultimately believed that a more objective interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount - Matt 5-7 and its precepts, including to "not take an oath at all" (promising to believe things as unquestionably or absolutely true would be an example of an oath), holds the potential of becoming a kind of constitution for our conscience so to speak — for our hearts, as a species; but without the power or authority aspect.

There's believing in a God, and then there's what we now call "religion." A religion isn't necessary to hold the belief in the idea of an unimaginable God(s) or creator(s) of some kind — in fact, it was science that led me back to the idea of a God(s), after 15 years of the Sahara that is atheism, one that wants you to do good, even suffer for it, if one's willing; not only for the sake of yourself, ultimately — in this life, but especially for the sake of everything else. By good, I mean doing things to others that you would want done to you. Would you want to be considered an "abomination" for being sexually attracted to the opposite sex? Of course not. How would you feel if a bunch of men or women told you, you couldn't do something because of your sex? Case closed.

The Unnecessary Seperation of Our Knowledge of Morality

"And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.” - Mark 2:22

What would be the "wineskin" we use to hold the wine of the knowledge of everything we've ever presently known as a species? Observation. If we look at our world around us, we can plainly see a collection of capable, conscious beings on a planet, presently holding the most potential to not only imagine selflessness to the extent we can, but act upon this imagining, and the extent we can apply it to our environment, in contrast to anything — as far as we know — that's ever existed; God or not.

What would happen if the wine of our knowledge of morality was no longer kept separate from the skin we use to hold our knowledge of everything else: observation, and poured purely from the perspective of this skin? Rather than poured into the one that it's always been poured into, and that kept it separate at all in the first place: a religion. There's so much logic within religion that's not being seen as such because of the appearance it's given when it's taught and advocated, being an entire concept on what exactly life is, and what the influences of a God or afterlife consist of exactly, our failure to make them credible enough only potentially drawing people away from the value of the extremes of our sense of selflessness — even the relevance of the idea of an unimaginable God(s) or creator(s) of some kind; only stigmatizing it in some way or another in the process.

"One thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions — the truth that for our life one law is valid — the law of love [seen in the sense of things like the laws of physics], which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainous imbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once the truth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has been smothering it." - Leo Tolstoy, A Letter to a Hindu, December of 1908 (roughly two years before his death)

"I was listening to an illiterate peasant pilgrim talking about God, about faith, about life, about salvation, and knowledge of the truth was revealed to me. I became close to the people as I listened to his views on life and faith, and more and more I came to understand the truth. The same happened to me during a reading of Chetyi-Minei and the Prologues; this became my favorite reading. Apart from miracles, which I regarded as fables to express thoughts, this reading revealed to me the meaning of life." - Leo Tolstoy, Confession, Chapter Fourteen

Confession

What I Believe

The Gospel In Brief

The Kingdom of God Is Within You

To Tolstoy, knowledge is knowledge no matter its source and no matter what we've rendered it ever since its been revealed and labeled. He ultimately believed that a more objective interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount - Matt 5-7 and its precepts, including to "not take an oath at all" (promising to believe things as unquestionably or absolutely true would be an example of an oath), holds the potential of becoming a kind of constitution for our conscience so to speak — for our hearts, as a species; but without the power or authority aspect.

There's believing in a God, and then there's what we now call "religion." A religion isn't necessary to hold the belief in the idea of an unimaginable God(s) or creator(s) of some kind — in fact, it was science that led me back to the idea of a God(s), after 15 years of the Sahara that is atheism, one that wants you to do good, even suffer for it, if one's willing; not only for the sake of yourself, ultimately — in this life, but especially for the sake of everything else. By good, I mean doing things to others that you would want done to you. Would you want to be considered an "abomination" for being sexually attracted to the opposite sex? Of course not. How would you feel if a bunch of men or women told you, you couldn't do something because of your sex? Case closed.

The Unnecessary Seperation of Our Knowledge of Morality

"And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.” - Mark 2:22

What would be the "wineskin" we use to hold the wine of the knowledge of everything we've ever presently known as a species? Observation. If we look at our world around us, we can plainly see a collection of capable, conscious beings on a planet, presently holding the most potential to not only imagine selflessness to the extent we can, but act upon this imagining, and the extent we can apply it to our environment, in contrast to anything — as far as we know — that's ever existed; God or not.

What would happen if the wine of our knowledge of morality was no longer kept separate from the skin we use to hold our knowledge of everything else: observation, and poured purely from the perspective of this skin? Rather than poured into the one that it's always been poured into, and that kept it separate at all in the first place: a religion. There's so much logic within religion that's not being seen as such because of the appearance it's given when it's taught and advocated, being an entire concept on what exactly life is, and what the influences of a God or afterlife consist of exactly, our failure to make them credible enough only potentially drawing people away from the value of the extremes of our sense of selflessness — even the relevance of the idea of an unimaginable God(s) or creator(s) of some kind; only stigmatizing it in some way or another in the process.

"Whenever you set out to build a creative temple, whatever it may be, you must face the fact that there is a tension at the heart of the universe between good and evil. Hinduism refers to this as a struggle between illusion and reality. Platonic philosophy used to refer to it as a tension between body and soul. Zoroastrianism, a religion of old, used to refer to it as a tension between the god of light and the god of darkness. Traditional Judaism and Christianity refer to it as a tension between God and Satan. Whatever you call it, there is a struggle in the universe between good and evil.

Now not only is that struggle structured out somewhere in the external forces of the universe, it's structured in our own lives. Psychologists have tried to grapple with it in their way, and so they say various things. Sigmund Freud used to say that this tension is a tension between what he called the id and the superego. Some of us feel that it's a tension between God and man. And in every one of us, there's a war going on. It's a civil war. I don't care who you are, I don't care where you live, there is a civil war going on in your life. And every time you set out to be good, there's something pulling on you, telling you to be evil. It's going on in your life. Every time you set out to love, something keeps pulling on you, trying to get you to hate. Every time you set out to be kind and say nice things about people, something is pulling on you to be jealous and envious and to spread evil gossip about them. There's a civil war going on.

There is a schizophrenia, as the psychologists or the psychiatrists would call it, going on within all of us. And there are times that all of us know somehow that there is a Mr. Hyde and a Dr. Jekyll in us. And we end up having to cry out with Ovid, the Latin poet, 'I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do.' We end up having to agree with Plato that the human personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, wanting to go in different directions. Or sometimes we even have to end up crying out with Saint Augustine as he said in his Confessions, 'Lord, make me pure, but not yet.' We end up crying out with the Apostle Paul, 'The good that I would I do not: And the evil that I would not, that I do.' Or we end up having to say with Goethe that 'there's enough stuff in me to make both a gentleman and a rogue.' There's a tension at the heart of human nature. And whenever we set out to dream our dreams and to build our temples, we must be honest enough to recognize it.

In the final analysis, God does not judge us by the separate incidents or the separate mistakes that we make, but by the total bent of our lives. In the final analysis, God knows that his children are weak and they are frail. In the final analysis, what God requires is that your heart is right." - Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., Chapter Thirty-two, "Unfulfilled Dreams"

King's Thoughts on Nietzsche, Gandhi, and the Fundamental and Liberal Interpretations of Christianity: https://lemmy.world/post/43175379

"Whenever you set out to build a creative temple, whatever it may be, you must face the fact that there is a tension at the heart of the universe between good and evil. Hinduism refers to this as a struggle between illusion and reality. Platonic philosophy used to refer to it as a tension between body and soul. Zoroastrianism, a religion of old, used to refer to it as a tension between the god of light and the god of darkness. Traditional Judaism and Christianity refer to it as a tension between God and Satan. Whatever you call it, there is a struggle in the universe between good and evil.

Now not only is that struggle structured out somewhere in the external forces of the universe, it's structured in our own lives. Psychologists have tried to grapple with it in their way, and so they say various things. Sigmund Freud used to say that this tension is a tension between what he called the id and the superego. Some of us feel that it's a tension between God and man. And in every one of us, there's a war going on. It's a civil war. I don't care who you are, I don't care where you live, there is a civil war going on in your life. And every time you set out to be good, there's something pulling on you, telling you to be evil. It's going on in your life. Every time you set out to love, something keeps pulling on you, trying to get you to hate. Every time you set out to be kind and say nice things about people, something is pulling on you to be jealous and envious and to spread evil gossip about them. There's a civil war going on.

There is a schizophrenia, as the psychologists or the psychiatrists would call it, going on within all of us. And there are times that all of us know somehow that there is a Mr. Hyde and a Dr. Jekyll in us. And we end up having to cry out with Ovid, the Latin poet, 'I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do.' We end up having to agree with Plato that the human personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, wanting to go in different directions. Or sometimes we even have to end up crying out with Saint Augustine as he said in his Confessions, 'Lord, make me pure, but not yet.' We end up crying out with the Apostle Paul, 'The good that I would I do not: And the evil that I would not, that I do.' Or we end up having to say with Goethe that 'there's enough stuff in me to make both a gentleman and a rogue.' There's a tension at the heart of human nature. And whenever we set out to dream our dreams and to build our temples, we must be honest enough to recognize it.

In the final analysis, God does not judge us by the separate incidents or the separate mistakes that we make, but by the total bent of our lives. In the final analysis, God knows that his children are weak and they are frail. In the final analysis, what God requires is that your heart is right." - Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., Chapter Thirty-two, "Unfulfilled Dreams"

King's Thoughts on Nietzsche, Gandhi, and the Fundamental and Liberal Interpretations of Christianity: https://lemmy.world/post/43175486