Gandhi’s advice to a fellow seeker, given five months before his death:
I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny?… Then you will find your doubts and yourself melt away. ~ Cited in Narayan Desai, My Gandhi (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 2011), p. 189.
Two Stories about Gandhi: ‘My Life is My Message:’
A mother once brought her son to Mahatma Gandhi and said, “Sir, please tell my son to stop eating sugar.” Gandhi looked at the boy for a long time and then, turning toward mother, said, “Bring your son back to me in two weeks.” The mother did not understand the rationale for the delay in instruction, but she did as she was asked. Two weeks later she and her son returned. Gandhi looked deeply into boy’s eyes and said, “Stop eating sugar.”
The mother was grateful, but puzzled. She asked, “Why didn’t you tell my son to stop eating sugar two weeks ago when we were here?”
And Gandhi replied, “Two weeks ago, I was eating sugar.”
There is another story about Gandhi in which, as he was boarding a train, one of his sandals slipped from his foot and landed near the track. Suddenly the train began pulling away, leaving him no time to retrieve it. Immediately, Gandhi removed the other sandal and tossed it back to lie with the other along the track. When his astonished fellow passenger asked why he did this, Gandhi replied, “Now the poor man who finds it will have a pair he can use.
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