Swamiji Corrects Steve

Steve: I wanted to show my appreciation for spiritual India, so I presented to Swamiji that I had read the autobiography of Gandhi.  “It was glorious,” I said.  “What is glorious about it?” Swamiji challenged.  When he asked this, there were others present in the room.  Although I was a guest, he had no qualms about challenging me for having said something foolish.  I searched through my remembrances of Gandhi’s autobiography to answer his challenging question “What is glorious?” I began to relate that one time Gandhi, as a child, although raised as a vegetarian, was induced by some of his friends to eat meat, and that night he felt that a lamb was howling in his belly.  Swamiji dismissed this at once, saying, “Most of India is vegetarian.  That is not glorious.”  I couldn’t think of anything else glorious to say, and Swamiji said, “His autobiography is called Experiments with Truth.  But that is not the nature of truth.  It is not to be found by someone’s experimenting.  Truth is always truth.

Although it was a blow to my ego, being exposed and defeated by Swamiji seemed to be a gain for me.  I wanted to bring before him many different things for his judgment, just to see what he had to say about them.  I showed him the paperback edition of the Bhagavad-gita that I was reading and carrying in my back pocket.  He perused the back cover.  There was a reference to “the eternal faith of the Hindus,” and Swamiji began to take the phrase apart.  He explained how the word Hindu was a misnomer and does not occur anywhere in the Sanskrit literature itself.  He also explained that Hinduism and Hindu beliefs were not eternal.