The Religious Teachings of Gandhi Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Religious Teachings of Gandhi - Essay Example Later on, Gandhi remarked that all religions are equal and there is only one God through different interpretations of various religions. This research paper provides a broad based understanding of Gandhi’s views on religions and also provides an understanding on his ideas on Jainism he learned from his mother as well as ideas of Jainism as a religion in its own right. Gandhi says that God is invisible but has many names and different forms to it. This paper shall be divided into two parts. The first part shall deal with the learning Gandhi adopted while going through various diverse experiences during his time as a lawyer in India and then in South Africa. The second part of the paper shall deal with his learning of Jainism, which his mom taught him as well as the other teachings, and learning of Jainism, which the writer is going to extract and put down in a brief format in this essay. Gandhi’s Religious and Philosophical Learnings: At the outset as a young boy Gandhi was not much into religious teachings and following the concept of God. He tried to defy his family and friends by making fun of the teachings and took pride in the fact that he experimented with meat at the age of 15. However, his mother was a staunch follower of Hinduism and she kept on instilling the beliefs of Hinduism, which at a young age did not inspire him much, but later on as he grew into a man and started living on his own, the ideas came to him and he took inspiration form the teachings of his mother. (Hill, B) When Gandhi embarked to England, he started reading the Bible and the Bhagvad Gita very religiously. He became a devotee in the teachings of these holy books, and soon when he came back to India he started practicing the teachings of the holy books he had read while he was in England. Despite his youthful resistance to religion, Gandhi did resort to understanding the intellectual aspect of the religions, which he had learned from his mother, with regard to Jainism and Hinduism. He appreciated he intellectual beauty that the religions showed and displayed in their understandings. Gandhi was an honest man and refused to cheat in school even when he was told by his headmaster to do the same. Once he landed in South Africa, Gandhi took to meditation in a religious manner. He also began the movement for the NRI in South Africa who were discriminated against by the white people, and Gandhi’s religious teachings allowed him to take a strong moral stand on this issue. Gandhi started the uprising against the white people claiming that each and every man is a son/daughter to the God and that all men are equally born before God, and therefore they should not be treated unequally or be discriminated against. Gandhi often found the inspiration of God from his heroes, which he admired during his lifetime. Gandhi’s quest for the truth kept him inspired to read the religious texts deeply and wholeheartedly. He devoted a lot of his time in unde rstanding the meaning of the Koran, Bible and the Gita, and applied the fundamentals of these books in his every day life, where morality was second to none, as well as non-violence, which he criticized the Gita for. During a visit to Rome, Gandhi was brought to tears when he looked at the Michelangelo’s panting of the Sistine chapel. An individual wh asked him the reason for his tears, he said that he believed in al forms of religions and did not restrict his beliefs to only Hinduism, as he was the man of God and believed in the ideology of God as One and all, and he was the follower of all religions. Gandhi in his teachings has practiced and