What did Gandhi believe about purity and enlightenment? How did his views on brahmacharya shape his lifestyle choices?
For Mahatma Gandhi, brahmacharya influenced his approach to marriage, sexuality, and diet. His commitment to self-purification led him to practice celibacy and adopt strict dietary restrictions. These choices were rooted in his belief that a pure mind and body were essential for finding Truth.
Keep reading to understand how Mahatma Gandhi’s brahmacharya practices shaped his personal life and spiritual journey.
Mahatma Gandhi on Brahmacharya
According to Mahatma Gandhi, brahmacharya—having a pure mind and body—is necessary to find Truth. A mind and body contaminated by harmful thoughts or elements, such as lust or meat, was more likely to commit violence, and therefore less likely to find Truth. Brahmacharya can be described as the pursuit of enlightenment through purity. Gandhi strived for self-purification through monogamy, celibacy, and diet, all of which he believed would help keep his body and mind clean and open to Truth.
(Shortform note: Gandhi’s belief that purity of body and mind are both necessary for reaching enlightenment is an example of our desire to conceal or sanitize many aspects of our animal behavior to get closer to the divine. In The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt suggests that almost everyone shares a deeply ingrained belief that you should regard your body as a temple and avoid contaminating it with anything impure or harmful. This notion of cleanliness elevates us above animals, while the opposite degrades and diminishes the godliness within us.)
Monogamy and Celibacy
Gandhi expresses his commitment to being a loyal husband to his wife, Kasturbai. However, he admits to having moments of being attracted to other women, which he felt deep shame about. He believes God intervened each time to save him from acting on the attraction. However, he explains that his commitment to being a loyal husband turned into jealousy. In the early years of their marriage, he was possessive and controlling.
His monogamy gradually became celibacy. After 18 years of marriage, he began practicing self-restraint to avoid having intercourse with his wife. At first, he wanted to prevent having more children because his activism was incompatible with family life. Five years later, he took a celibacy vow, which he described as freeing because it defended him against temptation. His self-restraint also helped his relationship with Kasturbai. Gandhi stopped seeing his wife as a sexual object, which helped him appreciate her personhood more fully.
(Shortform note: Gandhi’s relationship to sexuality—women’s sexuality in particular—is complex. Sexual desire caused him shame, and the shame he associated with sex often turned into controlling his sexuality and that of the women around him. For example, he was intent on controlling Kasturbai out of fear that she might be unfaithful despite being the one rumored to be having affairs with other women, and he made the unilateral decision to become celibate without asking Kasturbai what she wanted. After he embraced celibacy, he asked female followers to sleep naked next to him to test his self-restraint. Once, when a man harassed two young girls who were part of his following, Gandhi cut the girls’ hair to avoid enticing the man’s attraction.)
Diet
Gandhi believed that controlling the quality and quantity of his food was as crucial for spiritual enlightenment as controlling his sexual desires. At first, his dietary choices were motivated by health concerns, but later they were influenced more by his philosophical beliefs. As a result, his diet leaned more toward fasting and restrictions:
- He avoided alcohol all his life.
- After being a vegetarian for many decades, he adopted a fruitarian diet. Later, he felt that this diet was too enjoyable and that eating should focus only on bodily sustenance.
- When he was imprisoned for refusing to comply with an unfair law in 1908, he realized that the rules for inmates—for example, they couldn’t have tea, coffee, and condiments—fit well with his brahmachari lifestyle. After his release, he continued following these restrictions.
- Following his mother’s example, he began fasting regularly. He believed that fasting tamed the senses, purified his mind, and made it easier to practice celibacy.
| Food and Spiritual Enlightenment Gandhi is part of a spiritual tradition that believes the food you consume impacts the purity of your inner world. For example, some yogis believe that a plant-based diet aligns with the Yoga Sutra—a guide for achieving wisdom and self-realization through yoga, written around 400 CE. However, when these beliefs are taken too far, it can be harmful: Researchers found a correlation between basing dietary restrictions on ethical concerns and the development of orthorexia—an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. How can you infuse your diet with spirituality without harming yourself? Mindful eating is a middle-of-the-road approach that’s similarly rooted in ancient traditions like Ayurveda (traditional Hindu medicine) and argues that eating can be transformed into a spiritual practice by appreciating and being mindful of the food we consume. Here are some mindful eating tips: Cultivate mindfulness at the table. You can do this by: • Visualizing how food nourishes your body • Expressing gratitude for the efforts of farmers and producers • Giving thanks for the presence of others Eat lunch for pleasure but breakfast and dinner for sustenance. • Breakfast should provide you with the nutrition you’ll need that day, depending on the activities you’ll be doing. For example, if you need to focus on intellectual work, you might do well with a light breakfast and coffee, but you’ll need more energy to sustain you for physical labor. • Lunch is the time to enjoy a calorie-dense meal because you have the rest of the afternoon to digest and use the energy. • Dinner should be light and easy to digest so it doesn’t interfere with your sleep. Look for balance, not restriction. Mindful eating proponents believe different foods have different effects, and you should choose what to eat according to what you need that day, such as more or less stimulation. Gandhi shunned condiments, for example, because he believed they were too stimulating. But mindful eaters might reach for condiments when they feel tired and eat something more soothing, like a simple broth, when they want to feel calm. Don’t fill up—but do eat. Rather than fasting, mindful eating involves limiting how much you eat. Proponents suggest you stop eating when you’re about one-third full to maximize your body’s digestive power. |
