MOHAN MALA -A rosary of Gandhiji's
messages
Mohandas was Gandhiji's first name.That is how the word
Mohan is taken.
Mala means a garland or a rosary used for repeating a
mantra or the name of God.
Here,we bring you powerful and practical messages given
by Mahatma Gandhiji in the course of his life. For each day of the year,
there is one message.At the end of each, the source (book) from which
it is taken and then the date (wherever available) on which Gandhiji gave
the message are mentioned.
Read them, follow them and share them with your family
and friends.
Like Gandhiji, all his words are True and Eternal......
MAY 1 Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.
MAY 2 As food is necessary for the body, prayer is necessary for the soul. A man may be able to do without food, for a number of days-as MacSwiney did for over seventy days-but, believing in God, man cannot, should not, live a moment without prayer.
MAY 3 Prayer needs no speech. It is in itself independent of any sensuous effort. I have not the slightest doubt that prayer is an unfailing means of cleansing the heart of passions. But it must be combined with the utmost humility.
MAY 4 I am giving you a bit of my experience and that of my companions when I say that he who has experienced the magic of prayer may do without food for days together but not a single moment without prayer. For without prayer there is no inward peace. MAY 4 I am giving you a bit of my experience and that of my companions when I say that he who has experienced the magic of prayer may do without food for days together but not a single moment without prayer. For without prayer there is no inward peace. MAY 4 I am giving you a bit of my experience and that of my companions when I say that he who has experienced the magic of prayer may do without food for days together but not a single moment without prayer. For without prayer there is no inward peace.
MAY 5 Never own defeat in a sacred cause and make up your minds henceforth that you will be pure and that you will find a response from God. But God never answers the prayers of the arrogant, nor the prayers of those who bargain with Him.
MAY 6 I can give say own testimony and say that a heartfelt prayer is undoubtedly the most potent instrument that man possesses for overcoming cowardice and all other bad old habits. Prayer is an impossibility without a living faith in the presence of God within.
MAY 7 The prayer of even the most impure will be answered. I am telling this out of my personal experience, I have gone through the purgatory. Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven and everything will be added unto you.
MAY 8 Not until we have reduced ourselves to nothingness can we conquer the evil in us. God demands nothing less than complete self-surrender as the price for the only real freedom that is worth having. And when a man thus loses himself, he immediately finds himself in the service of all that lives. It becomes his delight and his recreation. He is a new man, never weary of spending himself in the service of God's Creation.
MAY 9 Our prayer is a heart search. It is a reminder to ourselves that we are helpless without His support. No effort is complete without prayer -- without a definite recognition that the best human endeavor is of no effect if it has not God's blessing behind. Prayer is a call to humility. It is a call to self-purification, to inward search.
MAY 10 There are limits to the capacity of an individual and the moment he flatters himself that he can undertake all tasks, God is there to humble his pride.
MAY 11 Man is a. fallible being. He can never be sure of his steps. What he may regard as answer to prayer may be an echo of his pride. For infallible guidance one has to have a perfectly innocent heart incapable of evil.
MAY 12 Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared.
MAY 13 There are subjects where reason cannot take in far and we have to accept things on faith. Faith then does not contradict reason but transcends it. Faith is a kind of sixth sense which works in cases which are without the purview of reason.
MAY 14 Without faith this world would come to naught in a moment. True faith is appropriation of the reasoned experience of' people whom we believe to have lived a life purified by prayer and penance. Belief Therefore in prophets or incarnations that have lived in remote ages is not an idle superstition but a satisfaction of an utmost spiritual want.
MAY 15 A man without faith is like a drop thrown out of the ocean bound to perish. Every drop in the ocean shares its majesty and has the honour of giving us the ozone of life.
MAY 16 Faith is a function of the heart. It must be enforced by reason; the two are not antagonistic as some think. The more intense one's faith is, the more it whets one's reason. When faith becomes blind it dies.
MAY 17 It is faith that steers us through stormy seas, faith that moves mountains and faith that jumps across the oceans. That faith is nothing but a living, wide-awake consciousness of god within. He who has achieved that faith wants nothing. Bodily diseased, he is spiritually healthy; physically poor, he rolls in spiritual riches.
MAY 18 I am a man of faith. My reliance is solely on God. One step is enough for me. The next step he will make clear to me when time for it comes.
MAY 19 That faith is of little value, which can flourish only in fair weather, Faith in order to be of any value has to survive the severest trials. Your faith is a whited sepulcher if it cannot stand the calumny of the whole world.
MAY 20 Faith is not a delicate flower, which would wither under the slightest stormy weather. Faith is like the Himalaya Mountains, which cannot possibly change. No storm can possibly remove the Himalaya Mountains from their foundation. And I want every one of you to cultivate that faith in God and religion.
MAY 21 If we have faith in us, if we have a prayerful heart, we may not tempt God, may not make terms with Him. We must reduce ourselves to a cipher.
MAY 22 There is a divine purpose behind every physical calamity. That perfected science will one day be able to tell us beforehand when earthquakes will occur, as it tells us today of eclipses, is quite possible. It will be another triumph of the human mind. But such triumphs even indefinitely multiplied can bring about no purification of self without which nothing is of any value.
MAY 23 This earthly existence of ours is more brittle than the glass bangles that ladies wear. You can keep glass bangles for thousands of years if you treasure them in a chest and let them remain untouched. But the earthly existence is so fickle that it may be wiped out in the twinkling of an eye. Therefore while we get breathing time, let us get rid of the distinctions of high and low, purify our hearts and be ready to face our maker when an earthquake or some natural calamity or death in the ordinary course overtakes us.
MAY 24 Death, which is an eternal verity, is revolution, as birth and after is slow and steady evolution; Death is as necessary for a man's growth as life itself.
MAY 25 Death is no friend; he is the truest of friends. He delivers us from agony. He helps us against ourselves. He ever gives us new chances, new hopes. He is like sleep, a sweet restorer.
MAY 26 It is as clear to me as daylight that life and death are but phases of the same thing, the reverse and obverse of the same coin. In fact tribulation and death seem to me to present a phase far richer than happiness of life. What is life worth without trials and tribulation, which are the salt of life?
MAY 27 My religion teaches that whenever there is distress, which one cannot remove, one must fast and pray.
MAY 28 There is nothing so powerful as fasting and prayer that would give us the requisite discipline, spirit of self-sacrifice, humility and resoluteness of will, without which there can be no real progress.
MAY 29 Fasting is a potent weapon in the Satyagraha armoury. It cannot be taken by everyone. Mere physical capacity to take it is no qualification for it. It is of no use without a living faith in God. It should never be a mechanical effort or a mere imitation. It must come from the depth of one's soul.
MAY 30 One fasts for health's sake under laws governing health, fasts as a penance for a wrong done and felt as such. In these fasts, the fasting one need not believe in ahimsa. There is, however, a fast which every votary of non-violence sometimes feels impelled to undertake by way of protest against some wrong done by society and this he does when he as a votary of ahimsa has no other remedy left.
MAY 31 A complete fast is a complete and literal denial of self. It is the truest prayer. Take my life and let it be always, only, all for Thee' is not, and should not be, a mere lip or figurative expression. It has to be a reckless and joyous giving without the least reservation. Abstention from food and even water is but the mere beginning, the least part of the surrender.
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