"The term 'religion' I am using in its broadest sense, meaning thereby self-realization or knowledge of self." - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Part One, Chapter Ten: "Glimpses of Religion"
"Towards the end of my second year in England I came across two Theosophists, brothers, and both unmarried. They talked to me about the Gita. They were reading Sir Edwin Arnold's translation โ The Song Celestial โ and they invited me to read the original with them. I felt ashamed, as I had read the divine poem neither in Sanskrit nor in Gujarati. I was constrained to tell them that I had not read the Gita, but that I would gladly read it with them, and that though my knowledge of Sanskrit was meagre, still I hoped to be able to understand the original to the extent of telling where the translation failed to bring out the meaning. I began reading the Gita with them. The verses in the second chapter made a deep impression on my mind, and they still ring in my ears:
- 'If one
- Ponders on objects of the sense, there springs
- Attraction; from attraction grows desire,
- Desire flames to fierce passion, passion breeds
- Recklessness; then the memory โ all betrayed
- Let's noble purpose go, and saps the mind,
- Till purpose, mind, and man are all undone.'
The book struck me as one of priceless worth. The impression had ever since been growing on me with the result that I regard it today as the book par excellence for the knowledge of Truth. It had afforded me invaluable help in my moments of gloom. I have read almost all the English translations of it, and regard Sir Edwin Arnold's as the best. He has been faithful to the text, and yet it does not read like a translation. Though I read the Gita with these friends, I cannot pretend to have studied it then. It was only after some years that it became a book of daily reading." - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Part One, Chapter Twenty: "Acquaintance With Religions"
This definition changes everything about interfaith conversation. If religion is self-realization rather than doctrinal commitment, then there's no need to choose between traditions. You can learn from the Gita, from Christian mysticism, from Buddhist practice, without that feeling of betrayal or syncretism.
It's why Gandhi could write respectfully about other faiths without converting. He was looking for what each tradition revealed about human nature and the path to understanding yourself.
Modern discourse lost this. We've narrowed 'religion' to mean institutional affiliation and belief claims. So now any serious engagement with another tradition gets read as either tourist consumption or ideological conversion. But Gandhi's framingโreligion as the practice of knowing yourself more deeplyโmakes the real work visible. That's harder to build into simple debate.
The trouble with such definition is though that by its standards most people who consider themselves deeply religious couldn't care less about religion. I have no problem with that idea, but I'm more inclined to make a distinction between the religious and spiritual.
I agree, well said. It's called religious pluralism.
"Know thyself." - The first of three Ancient Greek maxims chosen to be inscribed into the Temple of Apollo where the Oracle of Delphi resided in Ancient Greece