Gandhi’s 10 Fundamentals for Changing the World
June 9, 2008
Mahatma Gandhi’s advice:
1. Change yourself
“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
If you change yourself you will change your world. If you change how you think, then you will change how you feel and what actions you take. And so the world around you will change.
2. You are in control
“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”
What you feel and how you react to something is always up to you. You can choose your own thoughts, reactions and emotions.
3. Forgive and let it go
“An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”
Fighting evil with evil won’t help anyone. Forgiving and letting go of the past will do you and the people in your world a great service.
4. Without action you aren’t going anywhere
“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.”
Without taking action very little will be done. However, taking action can be hard. And so you may resort to preaching, or reading and studying endlessly. But you have to take action and translate that knowledge into results and understanding.
5. Take care of this moment
“I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.”
Stay in the present as much as possible, and be accepting. When you are in the present moment you don’t worry about the next moment. And the resistance to action comes from imagining negative future consequences or reflecting on past failures.
6. Everyone is human
“It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.”
When you start to make myths out of people, you run the risk of becoming disconnected from them. Keep in mind that everyone is just a human being no matter who they are.
7. Persist
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Be persistent. In time the opposition around you will fade and fall away.
8. See the good in people and help them
“I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won’t presume to probe into the faults of others.”
If you want improvement then focusing on the good in people is a useful choice. It also makes life easier for you as your world and relationships become more pleasant and positive.
9. Be congruent, be authentic, be your true self
“Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.”
When words and thoughts are aligned then that shows through in your communication. People tend to really listen to what you’re saying. You are communicating without incongruence, mixed messages or phoniness.
10. Continue to grow and evolve
”Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.”
You can pretty much always improve your skills and habits, or re-evaluate your evaluations. You can gain deeper understanding of yourself and the world.
150th anniversary of the Sepoy Revolt (Indian Mutiny)
August 19, 2007
From August 18, 2007
Recollections of the Indian Mutiny
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny (the Sepoy Revolt) at Meerut, 40 miles northeast of Delhi on May 10, 1857. The revolt arose out of real or imaginary grievances among troops of the East India Company, such as the issue of greased cartridges that offended both Hindu and Muslim religious sentiments, but was seized on by dispossessed Mogul and Maratha ruling families as an opportunity to recover their authority and drive the British out of India.
Among the celebrated actions by British troops was the relief of the besieged British Residency at Lucknow by the 32nd (Cornwall) Light Infantry, today incorporated into The Rifles. The relief of Delhi by a force under Major-General Archdale Wilson and the defeat of Tatya Tope at Gwalior in June 1858 effectively ended the mutiny.
The relief of Delhi, while not then capital of British India, (this was until 1911 Calcutta), had symbolic significance for the rebels. The city was stormed on September 14, 1857, by five columns including elements of the 52nd Light Infantry, the 1st/60th Rifles and the 61st (South Gloucestershire) Regiment, all now incorporated into The Rifles, the Sirmoor Battalion of Goorkhas, an antecedent regiment of the Royal Gurkha Rifles, the Kemaoon Battalion, later the 3rd Gurkha Rifles and the Guides Infantry, now part of the Indian and Pakistan Armies respectively.
The 3rd Column blew open the Kashmir Gate but a rebel force prevented the 4th from reaching the Lahore Gate. Six days of street fighting followed the assault on the city, in which the British force sustained 1,170 killed and wounded, but on September 20 the Red Fort and the main mosque were captured and the relief completed.
Before the assault, the deserted house of a Maratha merchant, Hindu Rao, on the ridge overlooking Delhi was occupied by the Sirmoor Battalion to observe the mutineers’ sorties from the city. During the fighting before the assault, surgeons (it is said) used the house’s dining table for operating on casualties, and after the relief its three sections were purloined by the 1st/60th Rifles, the Sirmoor Battalion and the Guides Infantry.
The exhibition Rifles and Kukris — Delhi 1857, organised by the Royal Green Jackets and Gurkha Museums, will display two sections of Hindu Rao’s table, weapons used by both sides in the battle for Delhi, including examples of the controversial cartridges that contributed to the Sepoy Revolt, diaries and letters from the period, maps, medals and a series of drawings and paintings by the modern South African artist Jason Askew, who has based his work on contemporary accounts and sketches.
The exhibition in the Macdonald Gallery of the Gurkha Museum, Peninsula Barracks, Romsey Road, Winchester, will be open weekdays and Saturdays 10am to 4.30pm and Sundays 12 noon to 4pm from August 18 to September 16. Admission: £5, including The Rifles and Gurkha Museums, servicemen and accompanied children, free. The book Rifles and Kukris: Delhi 1857 by Sir Christopher Wallace, £20, will be on sale.
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A Passion for Building: the Amateur Architect in England 1650-1850 at the Soane Museum until September 1. A companion catalogue is available at £12.95
See Times Online article …
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The Pleiades
The seven Pleiads which also include Alcyone, Merope and Sterope were the daughters of Atlas and Pleione who are also represented in the cluster. The Pleiades are commonly known as the Seven Sisters although only six stars are most easily seen. The whole cluster contains many more and in a dark sky a good, young eye may see a dozen or so. There has been much written about the missing Pleiad being Celaeno the faintest of the seven, but there is no direct evidence that it has faded in historical time. This galactic or open cluster of stars, which would have formed as a group close together about 80 million years ago, is some 400 light years from us. The stars are hot and blue and involved in much nebulosity that shows on long-exposure photographs. The cluster of a hundred or more stars covers an area about twice the Moon’s diameter and is a splendid sight in binoculars or a wide-field telescope.
from Times Online article …
