Gandhi is one of the most popular and influential people to ever live. To add to that, Martin Luther King Jr started the civil rights movement after studying and learning from the teachings of this man. The Gandhi 7 sins will teach you conscious discipline that you can learn from just like MLK did.
Your conscience is that voice that helps remind you of your moral and ethical bearing. Making sure you are moving within the principles you have set before yourself.
#1 of 7 sins -Wealth Without Work
The first of Gandhi's 7 sins is this. Before we even go deep into this, we need to break down and define what “wealth” and what “work” means. These broad terms need to be set before you can understand what it means.
Wealth can be achieved in several ways. Wealth can be the cumulation of dollars and cents, it can be the gathering of love and respect, and it can even be the hoarding of experiences from life itself. More importantly, wealth is a combination of the above three things. Passion, Money, and Experience.
Now work is also an exciting word when used in this context. What is work? Now, that word can be defined in many different ways. It would mean something different for everyone depending upon their childhood. For some, work is acquiring callused hands. The sign of someone who gets work done is someone who has turned their usually soft and subtle skin into a thick hide.
Differences In Work
Then there are those who spend their days doing things that may be more cerebral for work, those that deal with finance, the arts, and the sciences. All of this isn't to say that those that reside on one side of the line can’t cross over to the other. It is just essential to understand that work is a broad spectrum, and work should still be considered work no matter where on the spectrum you lay.
Okay, so now we have some idea of what wealth and work mean we can get an idea as to what Gandhi was trying to say. When you gather wealth without work. If you are getting monetary rewards without providing a service or product that people get real benefit from that is a sin. When you are seeking love without actually working on loving others that are a sin as well. If you are stealing experiences from others that you have not earned through work is also a sin. You can’t have real wealth without putting in some real work along the way! The work requires conscience discipline daily to do what needs to be done.
#2 of 7 sins - Pleasure Without Conscience
Bliss is something everyone wants, and it is something everyone can overindulge in. They will do things that can seem shocking to others to experience pleasure. Pleasure seekers around the world will leave a wake of destruction behind them if they do not have an internal conversation that mitigates and decides whether it is a good idea to continue in the endeavor or not.
Your conscience is that voice that helps remind you of your moral and ethical bearing. Making sure you are moving within the principles you have set before yourself. Your conscience is your internal mentor or advisor that makes sure the pleasure you are seeking is within your moral boundaries.
You should not be throwing others under the bus to achieve your satisfaction. This is the act of a man or women who take what they want whenever they want. They kill, rape, and steal without remorse to improve their station as well as increase their bliss. Pleasure in the absence of conscience is a recipe for sin!
#3 of 7 sins - Knowledge Without Character
The third of the 7 sins is knowledge without character. It's an exciting concept, but I did not think deep enough to get it at first. However, I spent some time on it, and here is what I came up with. Many people say knowledge is power, and even more, people say power corrupts.
It corrupts people who are without good character. You need to be a good person, someone of high moral character to use the knowledge you gain for the benefit of humanity rather than taking the knowledge you gain and using it for personal gain and social destruction.
The Character of a person can be seen in their actions. A person who acts without knowledge in an immoral way is a fool. However, a person with a bad character who has a great deal of experience is dangerous. They are cunning, witty, and able to frame outwardly nasty situations in a good light.
However, those with good character, those who are seeking to improve the lives of their family and community as a whole who then gain knowledge are those that lead society into growth in the most positive sense of the word!
#4 of 7 sins - Commerce Without Morality
Are you a salesman? Do you have the stuff to sell? A service or a product? If the answer is yes, then is it something that is of real benefit to those who buy it or is it snake oil? It is a sin to sell goods or services you know are useless.
To do so is to participate in a system that predates on peoples emotions. Appealing to there impatience, and even their desperation. This is not a moral act. The 7 sins are there for a reason, and this one is tough for capitalistic countries.
If you have goods that are of great benefit to those who use it and you have great belief within the goods and services yourself then, by all means, deal with others. If you’re in the business of commerce but lack a moral compass, you are selling to those who lack the knowledge and are preying on those who do not know any better. This is a sin!
#5 of 7 sins - Science Without Humanity
Science is a fantastic thing. We have made so many great discoveries. Science has put us on the moon, on mars, found cures and treatments for many diseases and the list goes on and on. However, science has a dark side as well, experiments were done on children, and individual races are just a couple of examples. The point here is that science is great when it is in the presence of humanity.
Humanity is your ability to see the reasons behind why you are doing the science you are doing. Science with understanding is unique. You have a real reason behind why you are doing it; you are aiming to move humanity as a whole forward. When you participate in science without any understanding, you are just doing it for selfish gains. You don’t care who or what it effects when you are performing science without an aim. You are a child in the backyard, burning ants.
#6 of 7 sins - Worship Without Sacrifice
Now, you may or may not be religious. That is not the point here. We all believe in something or a particular set of values we all stick to. You can not have a set of values that you abide by without sacrificing something at some point.
It is easy to pay lip service to the things you love or the things you “believe” in. Without actually feeling it down to a DNA level, you are going to seem like a false prophet. What does sacrificing have to do with any of this?
I am telling you that when you set certain principles in front of yourself, you are going to have things that may seem to be of benefit to you in some form or fashion that you’re going to have to deny to stay on the path you have set before yourself. You are going to have to miss events, tell people no, or do things that you don’t want to do.
#7 of 7 sins - Politics Without Principle
We live in a world where everyone wants to be a politician. They are not able to even communicate a policy without putting other people down. Identity politics have become the most significant issue when it comes to electing the officials that layout how our societies are supposed to be run.
It is hard to find a politician these days who lay out a set of principles that are both moral and ethical. Everyone is looking to increase their standing in the public eye. It is not for the betterment of the republic but the improvement of their station.
Many politicians attack others on a personal level without taking the time to dissect their principles or their platform. These types of politics are now rendered down to a simple popularity contest, and the person who has the most significant following on social media will become the people setting forth policy. It is, however, not only the fault of the politicians. The public has the power to deny anyone who enters politics without any principles. They are not educated on what policies are suitable for the system or detrimental to it.
If you plan on going into politics, you should make sure it is for the betterment of your surroundings with real principles and real policies. When you are campaigning attack your opponents policies not them as a person, it is simple; keep it civil and focus on the real issues! It takes conscience discipline to do this.