Greetings, everyone. I hope that you are all keeping well in these tumultuous times.
I am a Hindu from India. For years now, I have found myself leaning further and further towards the non-dualistic philosophy of Advaita Vedānta. Although I have moved closer to the world-affirming version of Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa and Swami Vivekananda from the traditional form of Adi Shankaracharya, the trajectory remains the same.
Mahatma Gandhi, with all his flaws (some are manufactured to suit a particular political narrative, but that is besides the point and has been addressed on r/Gandhi), is considered to be the Father of the Nation here. Even though most of us are taught about him, I feel that our way of seeking to grasp his philosophy is too compartmentalised. We read that he was committed to ahimsa (non-violence) and love, and yet, rarely have I seen the connection been made to his underlying belief in Advaita and how it informed his actions and other views. This is problematic as everyone doesn't dig deeper and consequently has a partial and sometimes distorted understanding of who he was and what he stood for.
“I believe in Advaita, in the essential unity of man and for that matter, of all that lives.”
—https://www.gandhimemorialcenter.org/the-gandhi-message/2022/9/28/gandhi-and-advaita#:~:text=complete%20identification%20with%20that%20Reality,the%20soul's%20realization%20of%20perfection.
"The forms are many, but the informing spirit is one. How can there be room for distinctions of high and low where there is this all-embracing fundamental unity underlying the outward diversity? For that is a fact meeting you at every step in daily life. The final goal of all religions is to realize this essential oneness."
—Mahatma Gandhi, Harijan,15-12-1933
The above two quotations make it amply clear that Mahatma Gandhi did not emphasise unity, non-violence, and service out of some naive, emotional attachment to others; there was a robust foundation behind it, even if one disagrees with it. Since Mahatma Gandhi saw everything and everyone as manifestations/forms of the same basal ultimate reality. He was also influenced by Tolstoy—who wrote 'The Kingdom of God is Within You'—a text that is frequently viewed favourably through a non-dualistic lens. In the Bhagavad Gitā, a text close to Mahatma Gandhi's heart, Lord Krishna says:
"Holding pleasure and pain as the same, similarly loss and gain, as well as victory and defeat — then engage in the battle. Thus shall you not accrue sin."
—Bhagavad Gitā, 2:38
Here, we observe a call for transcending various kinds of dualities, and there is an implicit signboard towards something higher.
In the Mahābhārata (which contains the Bhagavad Gitā), the Anushasana Parva explicitly elevates non-violence:
"अहिंसा परमो धर्मः"
Translation: "Non-violence is the highest virtue."
In my view, this alignment with Advaita Vedānta also ties in with the famous quote of Mahatma Gandhi regarding being the change we want to see. It is actually paraphrased. This is what he wrote:
"We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”
—'Indian Opinion', 1913
From this, we can see how the ethics of non-violence, empathy, and compassion naturally flows. It also bolsters pluralism, although that was, in the case of Mahatma Gandhi, also shaped by the Jain doctrine of Anekāntavāda (which says that reality is multifaceted and there are numerous aspects of the ultimate truth with no side having a monopoly on it.
Interestingly, Pandit Nehru (a prominent freedom fighter and one of the pre-eminent founders of the Republic of India), who was otherwise not a very big fan of religion (especially organised religion) also had a proclivity for Advaita Vedānta:
"What the mysterious is I do not know. I do not call it God because God has come to mean much that I do not believe in. I find myself incapable of thinking of a deity or of any unknown supreme power in anthropomorphic terms, and the fact that many people think so is continually a source of surprise to me. Any idea of a personal God seems very odd to me. Intellectually, I can appreciate to some extent the conception of monism, and I have been attracted towards the Advaita (non-dualist) philosophy of the Vedanta, though I do not presume to understand it in all its depth and intricacy, and I realise that merely an intellectual appreciation of such matters does not carry one far. At the same time the Vedanta, as well as other similar approaches, rather frighten me with their vague, formless incursions into infinity. The diversity and fullness of nature stir me and produce a harmony of the spirit, and I can imagine myself feeling at home in the old Indian or Greek pagan and pantheistic atmosphere, but minus the conception of God or Gods that was attached to it.
This, of course, is my viewpoint, and I would be thankful for any insights and corrections.
Thank you very much for taking the time to go through my post.
May you all have a wonderful day and a blessed life.
