Gandhi’s View

One religious leader chose to “help a women through legalized sexual encounters” a.k.a. polygamous marriage. This religious leader claims to have chosen the “difficult path” of polygamous marriage.

Another leader, his name is Gandhi, chose to help mankind, simply by practicing what he preached consistently and with integrity. And he has succeeded to do so for the whole mankind of his era.

And quoted below is his view on sex and marriage. He too has chosen the difficult path, that is to spread out love to other human being while restraining his lust and desires. See the difference? So which stance would you respect more?

From The Mind of Mahatma

Human society is a ceaseless growth, an unfoldment in terms of spirituality. If so, it must be based on ever-increasing restraint upon the demands of the flesh. Thus, marriage must be considered to be a sacrament imposing discipline upon the partners, restricting them to the physical union only among themselves and for the purpose only of procreation when both the partners desire and the prepared for it.

What chiefly distinguishes man from the beast is that man from his age of discretion begins to practice a life of continual self-restraint. God has enabled man to distinguish between his sister, his, mother, his daughter and his wife.

The brute by nature knows to self-restraint. Man is man because he is capable of, and only in so far as he exercises, self-restraint.

What is Brahmacharya? It is the way of life which leads us to Brahma (God). It includes full control over the process of reproduction. The control must be in thought, word and deed. If the thought is not under control, the other two have no value.

Brahmacharya, like all other observances, must be observed in thought, word and deed. The foolish man, who appears to control his body, but is nursing evil thoughts in his mind, makes a vain effort. It may be harmful to suppress the body, if the mind is at the same time allowed to go astray. Where the mind wanders, the body must follow sooner or later. It is one thing to allow the mind to harbour impure thoughts; it is a different thing altogether if it strays among them in spite of ourselves. Victory will be ours in the end, if we non-co-operate with the mind in its evil wanderings.

From that day when I began brahmacharya, our freedom began. My wife became a free woman, free from my authority as her lord and master, and I became free from the slavery to my own appetite, which she had to satisfy. No other woman had any attraction for me in the same sense that my wife had. I was too loyal to her as husband and too loyal to the vow I had taken before my mother to be slave to any other woman. But the manner in which my brahmacharya came to me irresistibly drew me to woman as the mother of man. She became too sacred for sexual love. And so every woman at once became sister or daughter to me.

If I were sexually attracted towards women, I have courage enough, even at this time of life, to become a polygamist. But I do not believe in free love –secret or open, Free, open love I have looked upon as dog’s love, secret love is, besides, cowardly.