u/Wise_Ability_2874

Two assumptions the idea contains:

• The idea that there is a definite moment when a person finally becomes enlightened.
• The belief that, once attained, this state will remain permanent, leaving no possibility of further egoic movement.

I see this as a fantasy of the ego. The ego imagines its own future perfection and wants to possess enlightenment as its ultimate achievement.

“One day, I will achieve enlightenment. Then I will be permanently free, and I will have attained the highest state.”

The “I” exists in the present, works toward a goal, and imagines itself possessing a final achievement in the future. Enlightenment has simply become the ego’s ultimate object of attainment.

The irony is that the ego seeks its own dissolution while imagining that it will be the one to enjoy the achievement. It wants to disappear, yet it also wants to remain as the one who can claim, “I have become enlightened.”

nihilism may not be a discovery that life has no meaning; it may be the result of becoming tired of searching for meaning in the wrong places.

most nihilist confuses the tiredness of chasing meaning with understanding the nature of meaning itself.

I have been trying to understand Gandhi’s ideas of Satya (Truth) and Ahimsa (Non-violence) beyond the usual behavioural or political interpretations.

A lot of what is popularly associated with Gandhi is something like:

• Non-violence means not physically harming another person, even when resisting them.
• Non-violence is demonstrated through things such as fasting, civil disobedience, accepting suffering, etc.
• Truth means being honest — if I cheated, I should admit that I cheated.
• Satyagraha means peacefully protesting or resisting injustice.

All of these may be legitimate expressions of Gandhi’s thought, but they seem to describe the practice rather than the philosophical foundation behind it.

It also seems important to me that these concepts did not originate with Gandhi himself. Ahimsa has much older roots in Indian philosophical traditions, including Buddhism and Jainism, while Satya and the inquiry into Truth are deeply present in the Upanishadic tradition. These traditions themselves place such ideas within much larger philosophical frameworks — for example, questions about the nature of the self and reality in Vedanta, and questions of self, suffering and emptiness in Buddhist philosophy.

So I am curious about something more specific: What did Gandhi actually mean by these concepts, and what philosophical foundations did he inherit, reinterpret, or depart from?