The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling (51 page)

9

By the year 1915 Gandhi knew that he was complete with his work in South Africa. He felt called to return to India, where his people were suffering under the increasingly onerous burden of British rule. Gandhi returned to India a seasoned veteran of
satyagraha
, and he believed that the principles he had tried so successfully in South Africa could be put into action in India. He believed that they would inevitably result in the political freedom and self-determination of the Indian people. He knew that this could be done without war, without violence, and without contempt for the British. And he knew that it was his dharma to lead the way.

Gandhi had left India a fearful, befuddled young attorney. He returned a masterful
satyagrahi
. More than anything else, he had mastered his disabling fear. He had become an exemplar of courage. And he knew that this kind of courage would be required of the whole Indian people in order to throw off British rule. “
Greater courage is required of the
satyagrahi
,” he often said, “than the run-of-the mill soldier with a gun in his hand. Any coward can be brave when holding a rifle.”

Gandhi’s courage surprised no one more than himself. He sometimes wondered just how far his own courage would hold. He really did not know. He wrote: “
Have I that nonviolence of the brave in me? My death alone will show that. If someone killed me and I died with a prayer for the assassin on my lips, and God’s remembrance and consciousness of His living presence in the sanctuary of my heart, then alone would I be said to have had the nonviolence of the brave.”

Krishna taught Arjuna that the origin of all fearlessness is the facing of death. Indeed, their entire conversation took place just on the edge of death—on the edge of the great battlefield on which Arjuna might well die. Gandhi himself had to wrestle with death almost constantly throughout his career. Indeed, it is likely that Gandhi knew he would face a violent death. He wrote presciently: “
Death is the appointed end of all life. To die by the hand of a brother rather than by disease or in such other way, cannot be for me a matter of sorrow. And if, even in such a case, I am free from the thought of anger or hatred against my
assailant, I know that it will redound to my eternal welfare, and even the assailant will later on realize my perfect innocence.”

This is exactly how Gandhi did die, of course. Then seventy-eight years old, he was in Delhi, working—as ever—for unity. He had had a particularly busy day. And as he was hurrying to evening prayers, arm in arm with two young disciples, a young man approached him, offered him a gesture of respect, and then fired a gun point-blank into his heart.

As the Great Soul crumpled to the ground, his mantra emerged spontaneously from his lips:
Rama, Rama, Rama
.

10

For Mahatma Gandhi, all of his courage, all of his trust in God, all of his capacity to love the world as himself issued from the pages of the Bhagavad Gita.

No human being living in the twentieth century has lived the precepts of this great text with more fidelity and passion than Gandhi. “
Select your purpose,” he challenged, “selfless, without any thought of personal pleasure or personal profit, and then use selfless means to attain your goal.”

“
Do not resort to violence,” Gandhi wrote, “even if it seems at first to promise success; it can only contradict your purpose. Use the means of love and respect even if the result seems far off or uncertain. Then throw yourself heart and soul into the campaign, counting no price too high for working for the welfare of those around you, and every reverse, every defeat, will send you deeper into your own deepest resources. Violence can never bring an end to violence; all it can do is provoke more violence. But if we can adhere to complete nonviolence in thought, word, and deed, India’s freedom is assured.”

And assured, indeed, it was, largely as a result of the faith and integrity of this one small man who took himself to zero—and who simply put into practice the words of his divine mentor, Krishna.

11

When Gandhi first discovered his dharma—“to unite parties riven asunder”—he realized that this calling would somehow save him—give
him something to live for—give him a focus for his life. Gandhi’s sacred calling showed up just in the nick of time. It appeared to him as a lifeboat in a stormy sea. At last! Something reliable to cling to. Something that actually floats. Beethoven’s music occurred for him, too, as a welcome raft in a gale. And Keats’s poetry. And Mark’s playwriting.

Many of us have precisely this experience of dharma: a lifeboat! You cling to it because it is the only boat you have and the storm is rising. You work at it—you row as hard as you possibly can against the storm, because you have to survive. But gradually the seas calm, and you don’t have to row quite so hard, and you actually begin to enjoy the exercise. You get stronger from the exertion—as Gandhi did. Finally, the storm abates. You have a spell of beautiful weather. You feel your strength. You begin to love this rowing. You begin to love the sea itself. You see things in the waves that others do not see. You begin to see that rowing this little boat of dharma connects you to very life. Gradually the task of rowing itself begins to ease. At times it is effortless. There are moments of rapture.

Dharma is very much like Gandhi’s mantra.
Rama, Rama, Rama
. Eventually it takes on a life of its own. It does things spontaneously that you had no reason to expect. It begins to drill down into the deepest parts of your mind. Soon you begin to see that this dharma is not just any old stick of bamboo. It is a magic wand. A wish-fulfilling wand. It is a way to
know
—to interact with, to be in relationship with—the deepest parts of yourself. It is a vehicle to know the world.

Eventually your dharma takes you into a new land, as Gandhi’s did. A land where you can rely only upon God. You cross a bridge, and you are suspended in the air. Only God is holding you up now.

“
Abandon all supports,” says Krishna to Arjuna in one of his great final teachings. “
Cast off your dependency on everything external, Arjuna, and rely on the Self alone.”

We work first because we have to work. Then because we want to work. Then because we love to work. Then the work simply does us. Difficult at the beginning. Inevitable at the end.

EPILOGUE