THE METAPHYSICS OF GANDHI

The book by Ved Mehta, Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles, was written at a time when some of Gandhi's apostles were still alive and able to tell their stories about relationships with Gandhi. The book is more down to earth than many I have read over the years, not all complementary. This book looks at Gandhi's life without psychologizing or analyzing or judging it. It is refreshing from that point of view. I suppose I was expecting more mythologizing. Instead, it is a book about the granularity and contradictions of his life and what his legacy was for those who followed him.

I am looking at Gandhi's life through Mehta's eyes as well as the Zen lens I apply to many of my own observations. Mehta offers details that allow the reader to see Gandhi's life and draw conclusions from an individual perspective. I have done that and I have tried to read the details and read between the lines as well as subjecting them to a brighter light. I know from my own experience that I am reading this book now differently than I would have several decades ago when I was in a different place in my life and needing different things from my reading and especially needing different things from the biographies of icons I sought out. I am also aware that I am reading books now with a background of exposure to a changed social and historical world inhabited by figures that have changed my mind about human behavior (I am thinking here primarily of Donald Trump and other authoritarian figures of the mid to late 20^th century). What I have observed of these changes and the effects on large swaths of the population continues to baffle me and lead me on to sources that might explain them. I have grappled with the details that seem so present but, at the same time, attempting to establish a way to think about them (rather than being told what to think).

More and more as I age, I am intent on drawing insights from this changed world of ours, a world that continues to change (as it has throughout history and evolution) and also to cultivate curiosity about those changes. I have found that it is useful to have some intellectual infrastructure to work with in order to frame and evaluate change. It has become more important for me to examine assumptions more closely—those of others and my own. It is important to know when myths and reality are in opposition and to discern a sharper truth. I have tried to do this with Gandhi's biography and now find that some of the myths I had once subscribed to are myths that existed within the contexts of Gandhi's life and of his apostolic circle but that no longer fit into a narrative that has emerged for all of us in a post-pandemic era and in a world where authoritarianism is on the rise across the globe.

Gandhi has always been a fascinating figure for me because of the image of him built around the ideas of sacrifice, simplicity, discipline, and a revolutionary approach to social activism. His ethics were admirable and worth imitating for a younger me. Perhaps I am more jaded now and less easily subject to popular formulations of celebrity. Perhaps I am more skeptical of assertions made by others and also more curious about exploring my own sources of information. In any case, how to think about Gandhi and his legacy is a metaphysical exploration, in part, using a Zen lens to contrast not only Mehta's descriptions of Gandhi's life but also those of his apostles decades after his death—and to use the Zen lens of my perspective to explore my sense of his life within the context of the 21^st century. Of course, so much has changed since the 1940s but certain aspects of human behavior and motivations are universally timeless and are the subject of the Buddha's teachings over several thousand years ago, for example. Contemporary psychology and neuroscience are more sophisticated in their approaches but the basic experimental subject, the human species, remains an open source of information and continuing mystery.

I want to isolate some ideas and impressions I derived from Mehta's book and examine them, realizing that the story of Gandhi's life is a seamless narrative over time, as is the life of each one of us. But there are some threads in the fabric that interested me. The first one is that of his early life when he was trying to find his path in the Indian caste system, the British colonialization of India, his family dynamics, and the Hindu religion. At one point or another he rebelled against all of them and how he managed psychological balance is an interesting sketch.

Gandhi's early life was a restless one. He was not altogether committed to an educational experience, save what it could contribute to earning a living. He moved in and out of India and finally went to South Africa where he got involved in local politics by fits and starts. Over his early life he experimented with breaking Hindu taboos against eating meat and extramarital relationships. At one point he was tending to his dying father but left him to have intercourse with his pregnant wife, another Hindu prohibition. While all of that was going on in the bedroom, his father died and this event, evidence of his uncontrolled lust and abandonment of his father, weighed heavily on him for the rest of his life and helped demarcate how he thought of lust/celibacy and the guilt and shame that can accompany abandonment. What resulted, for him, was to embed personal hygiene and mutual dependence as concepts in his ethic and to insist on them for all of his followers. Interestingly, so heavy was the temptation to waver from swearing off sexual activity that to the end of his life he had young women, clothed and unclothed, sleep with him, a version of self-flagellation I suppose. All the women who did this for him claimed that the gesture was one of a celibate nature. Gandhi used women in all phases of his life. The word “used” is carefully chosen, as he was consciously oppressive in his relationship with his wife, Kasturbai. He used her to procreate and recreate and opposed any educational opportunities for her, even though she sought them.

This brings up another of Gandhi's contradictions and that is his insistence that his followers remain dutifully attentive to native crafts (spinning and weaving) at the expense of furthering any efforts to improve educational opportunities for them. Gandhi said this was the way of simplicity but it seemed to me more a symbol of the simple life than it was in actuality. He was said to spin every day but only as a example to his followers of what he expected of them. His emphasis on bodily hygiene included almost daily enemas to eliminate toxins but this was an extension of his dedication to naturopathy and the idea that cleansing the mind and body of pollutants was enough to ward off illnesses and diseases. He eschewed personal privacy and expected his followers to share their most intimate moments with others without embarrassment or withholding. So, his spirituality was directed to a daily routine of cleansing and detoxifying. He had an aversion to medical science and technology in general. Outdoor latrines were good enough for him and he imagined they were good enough for everyone.

What strikes me about all of this is how Gandhi's compulsions and repressions found expression in his dogmatic teachings and expectations for people around him. There is no question in my mind that he accepted his role as a guru to his people and formulated a dogma for them to follow. Thousands and thousands did follow him. But my impression of dogma is that it leads to rigid rules of behavior and those rules can sometimes become a prison for those following them. I think I saw that in the last portion of Mehta's book in which he interviewed a few of the “apostles” who survived Gandhi. Some of them were now older women and men who had participated as willing subjects for his experiments with celibacy, called brahmacharya, and with truth, called ahimsa. The men had become close associates of Gandhi in the political struggle for Indian independence but they, too, had become stuck in what their roles had been decades before and remained loyal to the symbol of Gandhi. Gandhi, in the last years of his life, was not able to persuade as easily the thousands that had followed him without reservation. The forces of history were much larger than Gandhi's movement and eventually swamped it as the British left the scene of a former colony and its dangerous partition into two states in conflict (India as Hindu and Pakistan as Muslim). As his stature waned in the public realm, the vacuum was filled with others who had agendas and plans driven by their own egos, often conflicting with Gandhi's experiments and sometimes with active dissension resulting in personal animus or outright violence.

As Gandhi's influence increased, he embraced the power that it laid on him. It is said that all power is about coercion. Gandhi's power as head of a patriarchal household also involved coercion, as his relationship with his wife showed. It also applied to his relationships with his children whom he coerced to follow his path. One son rebelled and was later separated from his father only to become wanton and addicted and lost. Gandhi's power in the public sphere was also coercive, as his relationships with his followers resulted in dogmatic teachings and expectations and behavior. He insisted that native simple arts replace education as a lifetime commitment, thus embedding in society ignorance and diminished initiative and, ultimately, left them encased in caste and poverty. Those closest to him were expected to follow his dogma and were purposely expelled when they resisted.

Brahmacharya (celibacy), ahimsa (truth and non-violence), and satyagraha (passive resistance) were the three pillars of his dogma. All three of them were designed to lift his followers out of ignorance and poverty and to gain self-determination in the face of British rule and its oppressive laws. They were lofty goals and tactics that only symbolically served to unite the people while the forces of history were pushing in Gandhi's favor. However, it seems to me that they didn't change the hearts and minds of so many because they carried within them so many contradictions, not the least of which was an unrealistic idea about how human beings behave. Gandhi's agenda based on the context of his own life was not one that could sustain itself over time. Passive resistance (fastings, the salt march to the sea, sit-ins leading to imprisonment), for instance, was a social activist tactic that served by way of calling attention to restrictive laws but not as a tactic to bring greater advantages to many thousands. The needs of those thousands remained during Gandhi's life and persisted after his assassination and persist even to this day, despite global economic advances.

It is no surprise to me that the ego of a guru or any other celebrity with power can result in coercion and reactive repression. The context of a guru's life differs from those of followers even though followers adopt dogmatic agendas laid on them. His compulsions and needs were not identical to those of his followers. It is this aspect of human behavior that still baffles me. I can't understand how intentions for good (or evil) can result in herd behavior at the expense of rational thought or compassionate action or personal agency. There seems to be some basic need to belong to a cause, even if the cause is only cosmetically altruistic. It seems to me that attention to dogmatic rhetoric and behavior would reveal inconsistencies and contradictions and be rejected to avoid the imprisonment that authoritarianism necessarily incorporates within its structures. Gandhi used his own version of coercion with the British authorities in a physical way but also as psychological coercive tactics with his followers. Throughout his active adulthood he pandered to the British, seemingly based on his exposure to what he gained from his educational experiences in England as well as his early flirtation with British styles and culture. This was another of his contradictions but it shows how it might have weakened his satyagraha campaigns in the eyes of his own Indian colleagues. Of course, the presence of contradictions imply inconsistencies and all of us are subject to them in our own lives. It is how they are defined and dealt with that matter. To have expectations for others that we don't adhere to ourselves can become the fodder for resentment and rebellion. Gandhi was assassinated by a man who felt Gandhi was not true enough to his Hindu faith. His wife rebelled and some of his children and close followers rebelled. But millions did not and it is those whose devotion to Gandhi baffles me. Gandhi's satyagraha movement was fashioned in his own image and that was his allure and also his limitation. There are always more contradictions to explore.

Now in these days of rising authoritarian figures around the world (including in India with Narendra Modi) it is worth exploring what relevance all of this has for me. I think what Gandhi represents for me is the idealized vision he presented to the world that doesn't take into account his contradictions and inconsistencies and faults. This is what appealed to me in my younger adulthood when I might have been looking for an icon to guide me through personal difficulties and a world of social tumult (Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, always identity challenges related to the wider world). I think this attraction to a guru always overlooks what might very well be transparently obvious but rejected in need of the icon figure for one reason or another.

Today we have a situation in America in which Trump, possessed of an oversized and dangerous ego, has a grip on the consciousness of millions of citizens—again, to my bafflement. But I suppose they adhere to him in the same way I have held onto the icon persona of Gandhi over the years. Maybe it is the way Gandhiism has been shaped by his followers, just as how Trumpism has been shaped by his. I do not and have never viewed Trump as an icon of ideal vision. But to what extent was Gandhi's vision true? Again, I think it matters what the contexts and relationships are that we examine. In some ways, an authoritarian figure infantilizes his followers and serves as a patriarchal symbol of truth and authority, expecting obedience and commitment. It is this way in families and in the wider social sphere of politics and economics and wherever celebrity spills over into the public consciousness. It is how cults are formed. Strong personalities can attract attention and the ego makes its own path.

It is one thing for an iconic figure to teach and present dogma, but another to exhibit real ownership of those teachings. It is one thing for an authoritarian figure to present one face to the crowds and another thing to use a different mask in his/her own life. Eventually the disconnect from the reality of life shows up and gurus lose their luster—and sometimes their lives and sometimes their freedom.

All of this raises the question for me about whether I am true to the expectations I have for other people and how I judge them, all the while refraining from examining my own motivations. It is humbling to see in myself some of the same tendencies I associate with and brand others. What I looked for in Gandhi is probably not too far from what Trump's followers see in him. I think it is true that all of us have needs to belong, to overcome the loneliness of disconnected relationships and losses, to follow someone who promises a different, if not a new, life of advantage as defined by a dogmatic vision. It is not easy at times to discern contradictions and inconsistencies in our guru figures and perhaps we don't want to see them after all. Perhaps we in our basic needs of belonging and identity can blind us and bind us to figures that don't care about us. How do we find this out? How do we go about building a stronger personal infrastructure of self-trust, of right and wrong, of interdependence, altruism, self- discipline, of truth and goodness, of bodily health, of spiritual “muscle,” and compassion? How do we transcend the grittiness of this worldly existence to experience the metaphysical perspective and equanimity?

The metaphysics of Gandhi involves broadening out the context of his life and what we know about it. It is seeing in his life, in all its various contexts and relationships, forces and vectors that are at play in our own lives and to realize that contradictions and inconsistencies are a part of every life and the passage of time shapes them and us. I think metaphysics has to do with exploration, discernment, and non-judging and to see in the granularity of life its capacity to transcend even the most obvious flaws. Perhaps it is because of and not in spite of them that we are able to appreciate metaphysical energy.

The metaphysics of Gandhi also include ideas about how one approaches a life from the ground level up. It is about using the details and granularity of daily toil as steps on a path that might lead to liberation. I can imagine that this was a difficult task for Gandhi in his satyagraha work, recruiting enough people to help him in what he considered a grand struggle, a struggle that often consigned his followers to actions of sacrifice and sometimes imprisonment. If I look at this task more closely and with a more compassionate eye, then I see how he was able to use his own contradictions and inconsistencies as the only true platform available to him to enlist the energies of his followers. It does seem to me now that his efforts were not contributions to his ego as much as they were driven by it with a higher purpose in mind. He wanted autonomy for his people and felt that individual identity and preferences needed to take a back seat to the common needs of a society bound by colonial oppression, effects of which were known to all people considered subjects of colonial occupation.

I think Gandhi's contradictions and inconsistencies are what have held him in my life for so many decades. At times I have been too quick to judge and to see his lifeways as calculating and negative, even harmful, as the initial part of this piece indicates. But when I put aside the noise of current media tones that seem to resound so loudly, I find room for using the Zen lens optics. Seeing contradictions and inconsistencies in his life and knowing of my own, I admire what he was able to do. He has been idolized and criticized at different times not only in his lifetime but also in the decades since his death. I don't think he is at the center of media attention today, in times that could use his life and message to organize and inspire social changes.

If I consider the rise of authoritarianism in societies across the globe, I see where a stubborn and humble approach, that of Gandhi, could strike a chord of commonality. His satyagraha tactics could be studied for what they offer in America, now so heavily armed and subject to violent crimes, mass murders on a daily basis. Gandhi was not a Zen Buddhist but his movement had elements shared with Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists alike. These elements derive from knowing the human behavior of others by understanding one's own behavior. It seems to me that progress toward commonly shared social change requires nothing less than patience and persistent effort to unite people rather than to divide them.

I understand how we have come to know the situation in America today as a deeply divided nation along fault lines that have existed for centuries and now form dogmas that drive people apart and cause them to adhere to superficial ideas about what a shared society should look like. The idea of sharing space with people with whom you disagree is uncommon today in the world of politics. The idea of a shared common public space begins with nascent concepts of inclusion, human dignity, contradictions and inconsistencies that can be shaped to serve as well as to reconstruct what we might agree on as beneficial or all citizens. I think Gandhi had these concepts in mind with his satyagraha movement and how he was able to capture the imagination of so many millions of people.

I no longer wish for a knight on a white horse to come from lands of myth to save us from ourselves. I now believe what saving is to be done begins in the soil of the Earth from which all of us derive our lives. It involves salt and devotion and walking barefoot miles to the sea. It involves attention to bodily hygiene and emptying chamber pots every day. It is making simple choices in a complicated world all too readily willing to defend prestige, power, profit, and pleasure. In fact, we need to beware the self-proclaimed knights that sit top white steeds. They will not save us from ourselves. We will be saved by making common cause in the service of those whose lives are full of contradictions and inconsistencies but also full of potential energy for discovering truth, goodness, and beauty. Gandhi's metaphysics are as simple and complicated as that.

The picture of Gandhi's life would not be complete without a rounded out sketch of the metaphysics that includes foibles, sorrows, and flaws (maybe all the more obvious to us in retrospect than to him in his own life, as it is with many of us) as well as what brought him satisfaction and joy. This is the story of everyone's life at its core. We are often strangers to ourselves when we are often obvious to others. Beginning to practice how to think about our inner lives and the shell of life around us will lead us naturally to what to think of it all.

It is appropriate to explore what metaphysics means to me. In essence, it is about context and relationships with a backdrop of functional form. It is impermanence and change set against a formulation of not “anything goes,” but of “what is it?” it is an appreciation of sets and tableaux that are produced and being replaced. It is about streaming. It is about all of that in my life and appreciating it in the lives of others. To that extent, it is about imagining a space for others' lives, just as I imagine a space of my own in the context of change and the relationships that always accompany it. It is about seeing contexts anew and watching them change through a Zen lens that is distanced from both the phenomenal (the world of beings and things) and the noumenal (the realm of spirit and spirituality) but originating from them.

Metaphysics is not one thing, fixed and rigid. It is a streaming process without rules. It is, for me, a way to understand more deeply the contexts and relationships that constitute what we perceive as reality. Because reality is difficult to apprehend, it calls forth the use of metaphors to bind it to what we actually experience in our daily lives. The metaphors are, in a way, translations of reality and can help others participate in conversations about it using their own experiences as a basis for relationships.

I was reminded that one of the Zen precepts is not to criticize or find fault with others and so I was brought up short thinking that I had done Gandhi a disservice in finding such fault with the events of his life and surmising what it was that he was thinking and feeling and then attaching a judgment to them. But when I surveyed the whole of my attempts to understand him and to formulate what I have called his metaphysics, I see that I have done what I intended and that is to work up from the granular details of his life to a more overarching concept of what his life meant to me. In other words, the metaphysical approach that this blog piece represents is one of how to think about him rather than what to think of his ideas and behavior and, yes, his successes and failures. I persist in making this distinction because it emphasizes the importance of supporting the concepts of impermanence, not knowing, bearing witness without judging. Focusing on the streaming of contexts and relationships involves a good bit of humility on my part and makes me more aware of how one person lives is not like that of any other person. Criticizing and judging separate me from the other and reify my truth over someone else's. But how we see the truth of anything is part of the streaming flow of life and that always means change and motion and surprising twists and turns that don't always signify linearity or consistency. I am left appreciating the contradictions and inconsistencies of Gandhi's life and work and stand in awe that he was able to accomplish what he did.

This has been a long essay on Gandhi and his life. He and his memory have emerged at different times of my life, attesting to the power of his historical presence. I could not be a Gandhi even with similar intentions to address the fear, anxieties, hate, and violence that now undermine this culture's sense of safety and peace. Hoping that one day we might once again revive his desire for a purer concept of bodily health, a pursuit of truth and nonviolence, and passive resistance leading to social reforms that benefit all people, understanding more about his life and its deeper meanings is useful. It has been useful for me to explore not only his life's trajectory, but also to understand better my own response to it and my own relationship to a changing world in the 21^st century.