PNTV: Gandhi the Man by Eknath Easwaran (#422)

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Hi, this is Brian.

Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv.

Today we've got another great book, Gandhi the Man by Eknath Eswaran. Subtitle How One Man Changed Himself to Change the World Gandhi the Man. We've got our five ideas here, but I'm going to look at this cover photograph for a moment longer. Gandhi just emanates what we would call soul force. You look at his image and you just feel the power of a man living in integrity, with his values soft, non violent in his own expression, yet absolutely present. And this book is a fantastic look at how he became who he is. Eknath Eswaran is one of who he was and how he led India to freedom, etc. But who was he? Not just Gandhi in politics or economics, but what was his life philosophy that allowed him to become Mahatma the Great soul? Eknath Eswaran is one of my favorite teachers. In fact, we've done notes on eight of his books. This is the eighth book we've done a note on. I think that holds the record for most books by one author in our collection of philosopher's notes. Now, over 600 of these six page PDFs, 20 minute MP3s, et cetera, optimize me. Check it out. Free trial, blah blah blah. But Eknath Eswaran is one of my absolute favorite teachers. He was a professor of English in India who walked with Gandhi as a young man, saw him firsthand, felt his presence, which some of this book is based on. Then he went on a Fulbright scholarship to California, United States, where he taught at UC Berkeley, where I dropped out of law school. He taught one of the, actually the first meditation class in the U.S. he's also translated the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada. He's a very advanced spiritual teacher in his own regard. One of the lights of the 20th century. He reminds me of a Indian, Joseph Campbell. It's like they're born on different continents, but the same essence, the same spirit. You watch a video of them and you feel their soul force. You feel their life force effervescently bubbling up. It's very inspiring. So Gandhi the man, how he changed his life and became the change he wanted to see. Note, he worked very, very, very hard at that. We take it for granted, but he was crazy disciplined. Which leads us to the first idea here, a fundamental equation. You may know that Gandhi said that his goal in life was to reduce himself to Zero. He wanted to reduce himself to zero such that the infinite power of God could come through him. But do you know how hard he had to work in order to become zero? It's the paradox of the ego that we talked about in Richard Rohr, the Catholic monk's book Falling Upward. We talked about it a little bit in the Second Mountain as well. The paradox of the ego is that in order to have a strong presence, a strong soul force and a strong connection to the divine, somewhat paradoxically, you need to have a really strong container. And people get it wrong when they think they could just drop something they never had. They can't drop an ego they never had. Fully integrated. Eknath Esron talks about this, which is why when I draw this image, which is an image of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy, with you plugging in and shining, I draw this around the base. Your fundamentals, your practices are so unbelievably important. Gandhi was such a disciplined man. And so the equation here is. This is a symbol for philosophy. And when I. It's. It's what I use as a symbol for philosopher. That's the Greek symbol phi, philosopher, Right? When I write that, I go like that. And then I think of our virtue compass. I keep on talking about, right? And yes, I promise I'll keep on talking about it. We want to use that as our guide. I think of that line that goes from the top. You remember what our virtues are. Wisdom and self mastery. Those are the first two cardinal virtues we hammer, right? Then we talk about courage and love, and we go through the whole equation. But we need to start with a commitment to playing that game. Well, as lovers of wisdom, knowing the ultimate prize is living with virtue. The byproduct of that is joy that you see on Gandhi's face when you look at his image. It's a calm, energized tranquility. That man is alive, he's living on.

Purpose, he's giving himself to the world.

But it's achieved via wisdom, self mastery. Plus one, plus one, plus one, chip away at what's getting in the way. We'll talk about Gandhi's own issues with sugar and how he advised a young boy in the 1930s, right? But plus one, plus one, plus one. We do that chipping away at all the things that are getting in the way of us allowing God to come through us. And as Eric Butterworth said, the best conductor of electricity is the thing, or the. Whatever you want to call it, the wire that has the least resistance, right? So the human that has the least resistance to God's life force is the one that can tap into God's, the divines, the universe, whatever you want to call it. Infinite power. So that's our equation. Practice your philosophy. Plus one, plus one, plus one. Get a little better each day. Then you can become zero. You fully actualize yourself to go beyond yourself and allow the divine to come through, tapping into that infinite power, which, again, Aknath Esran calls soul force, which we talk about a lot. And then when you do that, by the way, you can show up like Gandhi, where you can show up like Jocko Willink or David Goggins, or fill in the blank, who's your favorite spiritual hero, living or dead, Right? Thich Nhat, Hanh, Dalai Lama, they're all doing exactly this in their own style. And their idiosyncratic personality is coming through. They didn't get rid of their personality. Aknath Hesswan says Gandhi is the epitome of personality. He is a unique. This man showed up at meetings with British royalty and Parliament in his traditional attire. Everyone else is wearing shirts and ties. Not Gandhi. How you doing? I have contempt for conformity. We'll talk about the fact that his life was his message. That's what he wrote. One day a journalist says, what is your message for the world? In Gandhi writes on a piece of paper. Because you know what? That day was one of his days. He didn't talk. He needed to oscillate his energy. He knew if he wanted to show up powerfully, he couldn't be talking all day, every day, running around everywhere every day. He had days where he didn't talk. Global leader. Sorry, today's a silent day. Can't talk. So he wrote on a piece of paper, my life is my message. Contempt for conformity, soul force comes via disciplines. And then we get to making history. This is so good, it's worth actually checking out. We'll read it directly. You want to make history? The short story here is, ignore historians. Ignore historians who are telling you that what you're doing is impossible. Ignore the statistics. Go make the new statistic that says what you want to do, who you want to become is possible. The good news is, for most of us, someone has done it. There is a radiant exemplar out there, like a Gandhi or a Jocko Willink. Or pick your favorite hero who's demonstrated the thing that we want to achieve. Which is why Abraham Maslow said, don't look at averages. If I want to know how fast the fastest human can run, I do not look at the population's average, oh, it's about 11 minutes. I look at Usain Bull and I say, wow, that dude can run. And you know what's interesting about him? He had scoliosis. His body wasn't even perfect. Was he a natural talent? Sure, in some ways, but not in that way. He wasn't supposed to be able to run as fast as he did. He made the choice and determined that he was going to be great and use everything he's got. Boom. What did he do? Because I want to learn the essence of what he did. Not to run fast, but to be my own expression of greatness. Which is why Maslow said, if we want to know what the moral exemplars look like, go study them. Go study Gandhi. See what he did. Here's one thing he did. This is Eknath Eswaram. The historian JB Kripilani, who became one of Gandhi's closest co workers, has said that the first time he heard Gandhi talk this way about changing the world through nonviolent resistance, he was so shocked historian. That he went up to him and told him point blank, Mr. Gandhi, you may know all about the Bible or the Bhagavad Gita, but. But you know nothing at all about history. Never has a nation been able to free itself without violence. What do you think Gandhi said in return? Gandhi smiled. You know nothing about history, he corrected gently. The first thing you have to learn about history is that because something has not taken place in the past, that does not mean it cannot take place in the future. Now, that's so powerful for so many reasons. If you've got a history book on yourself and you're looking at it and go, I've never done this. I've never been able to meditate consistently. I've never been able to train. I've never been able to be my ideal weight since I've been an adult. I've never been able to start a business that I stuck with. I've never been in a relationship that I recommitted to. Like we talked about last time, whatever your I haven't been able to do it History book says you got to know the first rule of history is you got to do something for the first time before it shows up in the history books. Go work your tiny habits. Go write your algorithms. Master yourself. Practice, practice, practice. Make history by ignoring the historians, including your own little petulant demon historian in your own head. Then think about being a radiant exemplar. Once upon a time, in the 1930s, a woman traveled all across India in train after train to get to see Gandhi. She waits in a very long line in a very hot day and brings her son up to Gandhi. And she says to him, gandhi, please tell my son to stop eating sugar. He has a problem eating too much sugar. Gandhi hesitates and pauses and says, please come back in two weeks or whatever the period of time is, please come back to me. The woman's like, really? I just traveled all the way here, I waited in line and you're telling me to come back? Okay, you're Gandhi, the great soul perfect. So she goes back, comes back two weeks later or whatever it was, waits in line after the long train ride, gets up to Gandhi and says, gandhi, please tell my son to stop eating sugar. And Gandhi smiles and says, son, stop eating sugar. It's not good for you. Mom's like, you know, we could have taken care of this two weeks ago. What's going on? Or whatever, she says deferentially. And he says, two weeks ago, I was still eating sugar. And I, with my moral authority of being the change that I want to see, must be practicing the things that I'm going to tell you we should be doing. And I couldn't tell your son two weeks ago to not eat sugar because I was still eating sugar. So this is why in our mastery series for our optimized coach program, we spent 300 days on what we call client number zero. Before you can become an optimized coach, you need to be the change. You need to master yourself. You need to work tenaciously with client number zero and be a radiant exemplar. Because as Ralph Waldo Emerson says, who you are and what you do speak so loudly I cannot hear what you say. You're either walking into a room and none of us may or may not have, all of us are capable actually of having the same exact soul force of a Gandhi, of a jocko, willink of a pick your favorite soul force hero. Actually, I'll quote that Gandhi says this about. That may take me a moment as I leap through our six page PDF, but that's fine. Take a breathing break. That one's good too, but that's not.

What I'm looking for. Getting close?

Nope.

Ah.

Gandhi tells us, I have no shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith. And then the very last quote that I pulled, I like to quote, I like to pull what I think is the most Powerful kind of boom. This captures the essence of the note in the last little thought, mini thought. Here the goal ever recedes from us. The greater the progress, the greater the recognition of our unworthiness. We know there's no there there. As George Leonard says, for the master, for every mile we take toward our destination, we hope the destination gets two miles further away. We're so committed to the practice. Gandhi says satisfaction lies in effort, in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory. You eating sugar? We talked about this with Jocko Willink. It triggers your addiction centers, just like cocaine and heroin, literally, nucleus accumbens. You have more willpower than a doughnut. He says, exercise it. It's the fastest way to get yourself where you need to be. And you need to show up like a warrior. We talked about this in Jocko's note or note on Jocko's book as well. Gandhi studied the Bhagavad Gita. The Bhagavad Gita is the classic bible.

If you will, of Hinduism.

It's set on a battlefield. You have a reluctant warrior named Arjuna and his advisor, the God Krishna, advising him on how to fight a war. Now, of course, the physical war in the material plane is just a metaphor for the internal war going on within each of us. The civil war within us, between our daimon and our demon. The best within us and the not so great within us. Every single day, that battle rages, and Gandhi says we have to show up like warriors. A fierceness to master our lower impulses. Those are our enemies. That's what we need to bring our anger in quotes and aggression against not others but ourselves. When we master ourselves and we achieve true nonviolence and integration within ourselves, that's when we can show up powerfully outside of the world. But that requires an intensity of focus that, again, most people aren't willing to muster. We and Gandhi challenges us. Be the change you want to see. Quit complaining about whatever's going on in the world. Be the change that you want to see. Period. Easier said than done. But that soul force that he cultivated, the great soul that he became, that he was not. Gandhi was a nervous barrister lawyer who was really bad at his job. He was so nervous before his first case, he had to walk out and give the case to his assistant. He was ashamed and embarrassed. And it wasn't until he got thrown off a train in 19 whatever in South Africa as an Indian man of color that his life changed. All of a sudden, his life became about something more than him. And he realized that he was pretty lucky and that there were a lot of people that didn't have his advantages. Couldn't afford the first class ticket he got kicked out of and he did something about it. He moved from the first mountain to the second mountain. Quit acquiring things and started acquiring self mastery and dedicated himself to something bigger than himself. Second mountain, second task of lifestyle. And became forged himself into the great soul as a warrior. And then we come back to the idea we had before of Gandhi. What's your message for the world? I'm not talking today because I have contempt for conformity. And check me out what I'm wearing. You're all wearing what you're wearing. But I have enough audacity and iconoclastic heroic mojo to show up and be me. Then I'm going to write something for you. My life is my message. That's my message for the world. My life. I am committed to being the change. And that begs the obvious question. What message do you have for the world? What is the message you're giving to the world by the life you're living? Because what you do and who you are speak so loudly we can't hear what you say. Your parents, your colleagues, your clients, all of your loved ones, etc. Be the change you want to see. Change the world with us together today. There you go. Eknath Eswaron. I wish you were alive so I could give you a high five and a hug and invite you to join our coaching program as a luminary. But in the meantime, thank you until we meet again for sharing your experience of Gandhi, how we can embody some of his ideals. What jumped out for you today? What's one thing you know you can move from theory to practice to mastery on simplify it. It's not +101. +101 +101. Don't overwhelm yourself. One thing. What's one thing you can do to get a little bit better today? Do that. Show up again tomorrow. I'm going to be here. We'll have fun tomorrow. How about we do Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces? That'll be fun. See you tomorrow. Hey guys, this is Bry.

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