Tag: mohandas gandhi

Conscience

Survey:

 

Bible Readings:

Skim these Scripture passages. Pick one that appeals to you and

  1. summarize its main point,
  2. tell how it relates to the theme “Understanding Conscience”,
  3. list one or two thoughts that entered your mind when you read it.

Reflect:

The reflection will take effort, but it is an effort to focus – for yourself – an ego-conscience. If that’s not worth the effort, you will always have a personality, but it is unlikely you will ever develop character.

Draw a line down the center of a piece of paper. On one side of the line, list the do’s and don’ts your parents, teachers, and media (other external forces) have taped on your Superego that you have already checked against reality and find are now wrong – or at least far too simplified. On the other side, write the elements of your Superego that you now see for yourself are valid.

Quotable Quotes:

“Faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love.” – 1 Corinthians 13:11-13

“The more a correct conscience prevails, the more do persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and try to be guided by the objective standards of moral conduct.” – The Church in the Modern World, 16

“Return to the root and you will find the meaning.” – Sengstan

“A man’s action is only a picture book of his creed.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Rather fail with honour than succeed by fraud.” – Sophocles

“In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.” – Mohandas Gandhi

Activity:

Choose:

  1. Roughly how many of your peers do you guess cheat routinely on homework, quizzes, and tests? What are the reasons most would give for doing that? Why is “Well, everybody does it” not a legitimate excuse? If trust and honesty are the glue that holds together the web of our human ecology, what is the effect of widespread cheating on the web of society?
  2. When schools discover that a great deal of cheating is going on, the administration frequently will encourage teachers and exam supervisors to have greater vigilance and require strong punishment when someone is caught cheating. Similarly, with the increase of crime in our cities, the almost automatic response is to call for an increase in the number of police. What would be a better way to attack the problems of cheating and crime at their roots?

The Bhagavad Gita and Mohandas Gandhi

The Bhagavad Gita, or “Song of God,” is one of the most influential Hindu religious texts. It is part of the epic poem Mahabharata, which tells of a war between two sets of relatives. The Bhagavad Gita opens with Arjuna, the leader of one side, despairing at the thought of killing his kinsmen. His charioteer, Krishna – who later reveals himself as a god – urges him to do his duty as a noble by leading his men into battle. Krishna reassures Arjuna that our souls are immortal, so he cannot truly kill anyone. He then goes on to tell Arjuna of three ways that the soul can be freed from the cycle of death and rebirth. The soul can be freed through karma yoga, doing one’s duty without self-interest in the consequences of one’s actions; through jnana yoga, or withdrawal and concentration that lead to knowledge; and through bhakti yoga, or devotion to God.

Mohandas Gandhi led India’s independence movement in the early twentieth century. He credited the Bhagavad Gita with helping him to cope with life’s tragedies. Based on what you know of Mohandas Gandhi, write about the influence of the Bhagavad gita on his life and work.