Tuesday, March 31

A Calculating Contemplative

Reflection from Dan Snyder

Gandhi the strategist formally began his campaign for freedom from British rule in 1919. He experimented and refined his efforts over nearly three decades, finally winning independence in 1947. Mark and Paul Engler in their book This is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt is Shaping the Twenty-First Century (NY: Nation Books, 2016), comment that "Gandhi sometimes spoke of nonviolence as a developing science. He saw himself as conducting investigations into its unique laws and properties" (p.13). His autobiography carries the subtitle, The Story of my Experiments in Truth. He has been compared to Thomas Edison.

As disciplined as he was in experimenting, revising, and developing his methodology, which he called Satyagraha, or "holding fast to Truth," he was equally fierce and persistent in his spiritual practices and disciplines. A practice of deep listening prayer was always his orienting stance when planning the many and various actions throughout the campaign.

In the period leading up to the Salt March in 1930, a major campaign that drew many thousands of Indian citizens into a groundswell of hope and action, Gandhi retreated to his ashram. Narayan Desai, who was a child at the time, living with his parents in the compound, was interviewed for the film A Force More Powerful. This is what he says about the time of Gandhi's silence in the ashram: "Some said that he's a very clever man. He doesn't want the British government to know what strategy he is going to take. And he would all the time say, 'No, I'm just waiting. I'm waiting for the call. And I know I will hear the Inner Voice.'"

Prayer was always his first move - prayer, waiting, and listening. He was careful not to act until he could feel an interior alignment. He often said that "prayer is my greatest weapon."