“Heart’s earnest and pure desire”– Daily Metta

by

January 5

The heart’s earnest and pure desire is always fulfilled.

-Gandhi (Autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, p. 110) 

517613

If you were alive during Gandhi’s day and you wanted to listen to him speak, you would likely attend one of his interfaith prayer meetings. Prayer for Gandhi was more than an empty and passive ritual. The nourishment he received from prayer became more important to him than food or sleep. He experienced it as an active, daily practice which “unlocked the gate of the morning and closed the bolt of the evening,” and powered him during the day.

Prayer’s purpose was practical: it aimed at opening his heart so that he might become consciously aware of anything within himself impeding him from loving anyone–friend or foe–to the full extent of which he was capable. For this reason, it became a discipline for his vision of nonviolence. And he was an expert–when he was assassinated, he was on his way to his evening prayer meeting, and managed to recite a prayer-word, Rama, even while his body fell.

Gandhi scholar (and Metta Center’s Founder) Michael Nagler learned from his teacher that Gandhi identified three main criteria for prayer, or as he says here, “the heart’s earnest and pure desire,” to be answered.

  1. One must pray with concentration.
  2. The prayer must be selfless.
  3. One must sense that the entity to whom one prays is within oneself, not anywhere outside.

When you stop to think about Gandhi’s life, however, there has to be a fourth criterion: service, or action. The heart’s pure desire will not be fulfilled without the individual’s commitment to act on it. One might pray to end poverty or injustice, but without acting on it, Gandhi would say, the prayer is incomplete. Prayer’s fulfillment is always the increase in our capacity for selfless service.

 

Experiment in Nonviolence:

Reflect on Gandhi’s criteria for prayer. Consider how you could incorporate prayer or meditation in this spirit into your day.

 

Daily Metta 2015, a service of the Metta Center for Nonviolence, is a daily reflection on the strategic and spiritual insights of Mahatma Gandhi in thought, word and deed. As Gandhi called his life an “experiment in truth,” we have included an experiment in nonviolence to accompany each Daily Metta. Check in every day for new inspiration. Each year will be dedicated to another wisdom teacher.