adopting mentors

... I tell you, the real economics for you are that you should wear khaddar. You should spin and spin. Spin in order to make khaddar cheap. That is discipline for you. It will enable you to create your purity. Sit at the spinning-wheel calmly for half an hour and watch the transformation of your heart. I can quote to you instances of many men and women, of brilliant administrators, one of whom was a member in the Bombay Executive Council. He is as old as I am. He learnt spinning only a few months ago. He said: 'After I began spinning at the wheel, I have somewhat got rid of my insomnia. I returned from office tired, sometimes at midnight and, then, I was dozing, thinking of many problems which I did not want to think of. Now I sit at the spinning wheel and spin away. Immediately comes the all-refreshing sleep - the sleep of innocence.' Find out for yourselves what it can do. Find out what it cannot do. 

When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

Only eat when you're truly hungry, and stop when you're full.

Seven years when the inner critic and the fear of failure won out. What was missing from my life during those seven years was not just writing but everything writing practice gives me: daily bliss, meaning, a sense of self-expression and of accomplishment, but most importantly, let me say it again, daily bliss. Daily contact with something bigger than me. Daily grace. 

Fear makes us lose our awareness. It can make us cowards as well.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. 

Facts not fear