July 5:

“To seek God one need not go on a pilgrimage or light lamps or burn incense before or anoint the image of the deity or paint it with red vermilion. For He [sic] resides in our hearts.”

–Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi, Pyarelal, 1946)

When he was 24 and living in South Africa at a time of intense religious seeking, Gandhi read Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You, a book with a very suggestive subtitle: Christianity not as a Mystical Doctrine but as a New Understanding of Life. A very profound chord was struck in him; Tolstoy himself not only writing the book, but living it. Apparently, he had a major inward conversion, became vegetarian, renounced violence, and moved into a vastly simplified existence, much like that of a monastic around the time he wrote it. In reference to this book, Gandhi plainly stated, “It overwhelmed me.” Tolstoy’s message could have come directly from Hinduism, the tradition in which Gandhi grew up, though at this time in his life, was not yet fully exploring. When he began his second community in South Africa, he named it after Mr. Tolstoy.

Almost 50 years after reading The Kingdom of God is Within You, Gandhi had not forgotten its teachings, and even expanded on them based on his hard won personal experience. Here, he offers for us the contemplation of two different stages of religion: there is the religion that externalizes the sacred onto deities, cathedrals, and rituals, forgetting to offer dignity to ourselves. And then there is the stage where the external is the reflection of the internal: we honor what is without because it tells us something important about what is within — about who we are — and offers insight to how we can honor and respect one another.

It reminds me of a story my sister told me. A couple of years ago, my nephew Liam experienced his first Ash Wednesday, a ritual in the Catholic tradition to mark the first day of Lent. You will see Catholics around the world on this day with crosses smudged in ashes on their foreheads. While returning home from Mass, he turned to my sister and asked, “Mom, why do I have these ashes on my head?” And she reverently replied, “It’s a little piece of God, Liam.” He came back immediately, “I don’t need God on my head; I have him in my heart.” I’m not sure she had a response, other than an increased respect for her very sagacious child! Gandhi, of course, was smiling.

Experiment in Nonviolence:

Read Tolstoy’s book that so impacted Gandhi, and apply one lesson of it to your life.

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.