"How to Find Contentment according to Mahatma Gandhi"

How to Find Contentment…

According to Mahatma Gandhi.[1]

INTRODUCTION: One of the giants of the mid-20th century, who was assassinated in 1948, was Mohandas Gandhi of India. He was born in 1869, during a time when imperial England had occupied India, for almost 200 years. Gandhi was born to parents who were grocers, and as that culture and religion dictated, Gandhi’s parents chose a wife for him, whom he married at age 13.

Not surprisingly, Gandhi felt most inept as a husband, and at life. Nothing seemed to go well. When he entered medical school, he flunked not just one course, but all of them.

He then turned to law. His brother loaned him the money to get a law degree in England. His wife sold her jewelry to pay for the boat trip.

Once in England, Gandhi felt embarrassed at being an Indian and not an Englishman. He began to wear clothes like the British. Though a vegetarian, he began eating meat like the British. He took dancing lessons, violin lessons, and French lessons. He tried to look like, talk like, and act like, an Englishman.

After receiving his law degree, he returned to India. He could now put on his business card that he was "English-returned," which was supposedly the key to a successful law practice in India…but not for him. He was still a giant failure.

Finally, in desperation, he went to South Africa, which had a significant population of Indians like himself. There he had his first big success in life: He was able to negotiate an out-of-court settlement of a very important case. He learned that he had superb negotiating skills, which allowed him to secure a good position based upon those abilities. He sent for his wife and children, bought a big house and hired servants, and dressed, acted and talked like the Englishman he wanted to be.

Then, as I told the children in the “Word for All Ages,” one day on a South African train, despite his Bond Street suit, his English education, and his first class ticket, he was physically thrown off the train into the dust. The reason? Because he would not sit in the car reserved for persons of color.

Brushing himself off, he stood to his feet and had one of his first “experiments with truth." He went from what he had been trying to be – an Englishman – to something very different.

In the next several years, Gandhi underwent many changes. He adopted Indian traditional dress, founded a small experimental community, where no one was ever treated as inferior or as a servant because of their race or national origin. And he won many successful battles for Indian rights in South African courts.

Then at age 45, he returned to his homeland of India. Using what he had learned in South Africa, he led a non-violent revolution to rid India of Britain. It started from the bottom up, by empowering the people. For example:

n The British had imposed rules declaring that Indians had to buy clothes made in Britain, so as to provide a market for British textile manufacturers. In nonviolent disobedience, Gandhi encouraged Indians to make their own clothes, which they did.

n The British had decreed that Indians had to purchase salt processed by the British, despite the abundance of salt in India. In nonviolent disobedience, Gandhi led a great march to the sea where the Indians harvested their own salt.

Though it took almost half a century, eventually, the British relented, gave up the territory they had occupied for more than two centuries, and left peacefully, with India becoming an independent democratic nation in 1947.

It was one of the few overthrows of colonial domination that ended without a giant conflagration. And it was inspired by the example and insight of one man who found contentment in his own life and thereby enabled it for others.

So let’s look at the topic of contentment for a moment. To do so let’s use this scripture from Alice Walker:

SCRIPTURE

What if in turn, a flower were called upon to describe the nature of human beings? What would it say about us? What is the nature of human beings? If the nature of a flower is to bloom, what is the nature of a human being?

That's not so easy a question to answer, is it? And yet it’s a question by which each of us is addressed throughout life. We may attempt to hide from it, to gloss it over, or to fill our lives so full of clutter that we can’t hear its being asked. But when we can say about ourselves, what it is that we are about, as easily as we can say about the flower that its nature is to bloom; then, we have discovered the answer to the question that many people spend their whole lives in search of.

So what is the nature of human being? It is the nature of human being…to what?

First, it’s important to set the context of the question. We ask it in the knowledge that:

WE ARE CHILDREN OF THE UNIVERSE -- OR IN TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE -- CHILDREN OF GOD.

What does that mean? Genetics has told us that one solitary cell of our body contains enough DNA information to replicate our whole body. That’s another way of saying, that in one cell of our body, there is a miniature of our whole self.

I flew to Dallas on Christmas Day, to see Brett and Tamara, my son and daughter-in-law. One of the gifts they gave me was this framed sonogram, which says, “To my grandfather” on top, and “Love, Baby Robinson” on the bottom. The little teeny tiny appendage at the center of the sonogram -- baby Robinson -- is hardly the size of my finger, even though it’s possible to see the outline of a head, arms and legs and torso forming. There’s no doubt, tiny though it is, that when a full-sized baby is born next mid-July, it will be the same creation that began here…this tiny, handsome, beautiful little grandchild, baby Robinson.

The same is true of us, in relation to the universe: We human beings are a microcosm of the macrocosm. We are an infinitesimal portrait of the universe…a tiny sonogram of the way the world is. Imbedded within us is the story of the history of how chemicals, and mud, and water united to give us this marvelous existence on Planet Earth. We are children of the Universe. Or to put it in religious language, we are children of God and we claim that lineage through the re-presentation of the pure unbounded love of God in Jesus Christ, in the prophet Muhammad, in the insight of the Buddha, and in the many manifestations of the gods of Hinduism, and in the proclamations of Moses.

We are a microcosm of the universe, and the universe is a macrocosm of us, which is another way of saying that the potential of the universe is inside each of us. What gifts are resident within each of us! The implications of that knowledge are enormous.

So how does that help us understand who we are? What difference does it make to know we have an enormous capacity within, which stems from the creative impulses of the Universe?

Fusion energy occurs when two positively charged elements are combined into one. It’s what drives the sun and the stars.

So think for a moment: If we are children of the universe…related to the sun and the stars, right?…then we possess the possibility of a different kind of fusion power.

What do I mean? If fusion energy occurs when two positively charged elements are combined into one, what if we get two positive thinking people together? Pow! Wham!

What if, instead of only two positive thinking people creating wonderful energy, we committed to having the whole congregation become positive thinking energy. Wham! Wow! Pow! Think of all the good things colliding and causing even more and better things to happen.

That old negative stuff that creeps into life can be flushed down the toilet. We can reclaim our portfolio, namely, that we are children of the universe…offspring of the gods…heirs to worlds unknown.

So in answer to Alice Walker’s question, here is what I think the nature of human being is:

First, we’re meant to be in relationship. We were born in relationship to our mothers and fathers. We grew up in relationships. As adults most of us found long-term relationships. It’s our nature.

But there’s another dynamic to that. We by nature are meant to be in positive relationships. Its relationships are built upon positive affirmation.

“You’re beautiful. I love you. You have such talent. You’re an incredible person. How lucky we are.”

Because according to fusion energy, when two positives collide some wonderful things happen: love like you can’t believe; happiness like you’ve never known; joy that spills over into work, home, and family and fills up your whole life.

It’s our nature to be in positive relationships…which is what this congregation is about. When Louise Stuart started working on Hope House, somebody else joined in with her, and soon there were several positive people working together: Wow! Then Patricia Smith saw the positive work of the Hopesters and kaboom: Soon she had Chicos and White House/Black Market working on it. Now the whole place at Hope House is changed. Positive power upon positive power.

Last week about eight of us met to discuss Appreciative Inquiry. Do you know what it’s about? Let me tell you. Namely, it’s based on the thesis that we can align people’s strengths so that our weaknesses are irrelevant. It presumes that focusing on wholeness brings out the very best in human beings.

More practically, what we are about is implementing this principle: There is a powerful dynamic at work when we find ways not only to listen to people, but to create ways to insure that they are heard. And between now and Founders Day on Feb. 20, we are working to create a way for every participant in this congregation to be asked, “unconditionally positive questions,” and for those answers to be heard.

That’s dynamite. It’s fusion energy. It taps in to the very nature of who we are. Joy upon joy. Positive upon positive. Strength upon strength.

Think of what happened to Gandhi on the train in South Africa, and then let me repeat that statement. "Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."

The first thing that Gandhi did was to accept who he really was. He was an Indian. He had brown skin. He was of a different religion than the English. But being who he was didn’t mean demeaning himself, or putting himself down, or thinking only other people can do meaningful things.

I always have liked how Dr. Scott Peck in The Road Less Traveled, defined humility. He said it’s not saying, “Oh, I’m such a poor worthless soul. I can’t do anything. I’m too old, too young, too skinny, too fat, too too.” No, he said, humility is recognizing the incredible talent of others, not demeaning ourselves. That means we can say, heck yeah, we can do thus and so. There may be other people who can do it better, but that doesn’t diminish the capacities we have.

The truth is that we didn't choose our parents, nor did they ask us where we would like to go to school, where we would live, the people we would come into contact with, the influences, both negative and positive that we would experience as a result.

And for each of us, some of our early experiences were better or worse than was true for others. But, “Freedom is what you do with what you've been given.” Or to use another idiom, it’s how you play the hand you’ve been dealt. And the first act of a free person is to know that who we are is who we are.

It seems to me that the dividing line in our world today is essentially right here: Do we look for something external to make a difference in our lives, in our work or relationships – more more -- or do we turn to within? Do we plumb the inner depths or find an outside fix? The answer to that question lies within us. I say we can say yes. Yes to hope. Yes to faith. Yes to life. Blessed be and Amen.

[1] Given January 09, 2005 at the All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting at the Alliance of the Arts, 10091 McGregor Boulevard, Ft. Myers, FL, the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, Minister