QNA WITH SRI SRI
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2015

Q: Please tell us about Mahatma Gandhi.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Mahatma Gandhi used to have eleven vows that he used to give people in his ashram. One of those vows was to have control over anger and to be compassionate and non-violent.

The importance of non-violence in life needs to be stressed. Don’t you think so? With our world becoming more and more violent, we are sort of getting immune to violence.

When I was growing up, if any student in the class got upset or threw any tantrum, everyone would look down upon that student, ‘Oh what is wrong with this guy? He has lost his balance’.

So on losing the balance or the equanimity of our mind, we were put to shame. Today, pride got itself attached with aggression, not with peace. We need to change this, we need to start attaching pride with compassion and non-violence, rather than with aggression and violence.

He inspired people. My teacher was with Mahatma Gandhi for 40 years. When we were children he used to tell us small stories of his days with Mahatma Gandhi, and they were very inspirational.

One incident was when Mahatma Gandhi was travelling in a small train uphill to Darjeeling. Darjeeling is a hill station in India, and you have a small train that goes there. It is a narrow gauge train. Now what happened is that, when the train was moving up the hill, somewhere, the engine got itself disconnected from the coaches. So the engine went ahead and the coaches started sliding backward.

Just imagine on a big hilly terrain, coaches are sliding backward, what would happen? There was huge panic, as people were between life and death. Any moment the coaches could fall off the hill, and one would not even find a trace of a bone. It was the Himalayas.

So while there was panic all around, Mahatma Gandhi was dictating letters, and he said to my teacher (he used to call him Bangalori, because he was from Bangalore), ‘Bangalori, take dictation’.

My teacher said, ‘Bapu (father), do you know what is happening? We may not be alive. We are in-between life and death. The coaches are moving backward with nothing to stop it, and its gaining speed.’

Do you know what Mahatma Gandhi said then? He said, ‘Suppose we get saved, we would have wasted all this time. If we die, we die. But if we are saved, we wasted so much time? So, come on, take dictation’.

With trembling hands my teacher was taking dictation.
He used to tell me, ‘Look at this old man, he would not waste a moment of his life’.

That was very inspiring. Even when he knew that there was danger, and death was just around the corner, Gandhi never wanted to waste even that much of time. He was busy, and he said, let us keep ourselves busy. And in a few minutes, maybe half hour or so, the train came to a standstill. It was picking up speed and then it stopped on its own.

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