Perry Garfinkel is a man on a mission. The veteran journalist, editor, frequent speaker, and author of the bestselling book Buddha or Bust undertook a fascinating experiment a few years back: to follow in the steps of Mahatma Gandhi and attempt to live a virtuous life in a demoralizing culture. The results of this yearlong exercise form the basis of his latest book, Becoming Gandhi: My Experiment Living the Mahatma's 6 Moral Truths in Immoral Times. A longtime contributor to the New York Times and National Geographic magazine, Garfinkel combines the hard-headed empiricism of a lifelong journalist with the curiosity (and interest in personal evolution) typical of a spiritual seeker. We recently met on Zoom to discuss what he learned during this Gandhian immersion course, and how these timeless lessons can help us navigate the troubling times we're in.
Mark Matousek: At the beginning of your book, you describe having fallen into a 'hungry ghost' realm of self-doubt and demoralization. Such a collapse of faith and hope is all too common these days.
Perry Garfinkel: I undertook this in the summer of 2019 when my career was at a standstill. I was self-sabotaging, not doing healthy things, and pursuing the wrong relationships. Even my style of writing made me feel like I was floundering.
MM: But why did you decide to follow in Gandhi's footsteps, particularly?
PG: I looked at the world and saw that we were going in the wrong direction, so I asked myself, "Who can I follow? Whose moral compass might take me in the right direction?" I knew of Gandhi superficially from being a hippie in India in the 70s and studying him in school, but I did not really understand the foundations of his philosophy or where his moral truths originated. Investigating that is how my journey began.
MM: The six principles you focus on in the book are: truth, simplicity, faith, celibacy, vegetarianism, and nonviolence. Let's begin at the top. Truth is a highly deceptive concept since most of us dissemble every day of our lives, sometimes without realizing it. What did Gandhi mean by telling the truth?
PG: Absolute or ultimate truth comes from God, the universe, or whatever you want to call it. A more personal level of truth involves seeking a more spiritual life by accepting who you are and working to improve that without the need to protect your insecurities and flaws. It also includes learning to filter your responses.
But truth is ever-changing, like all things. What you say in this moment may not be relevant in the next. That's why it's so important to think before speaking. In my youth, I thought it was compassionate to point out what I thought was important to people for their own self-improvement, whereas now I’ll say, “There may be another way of behaving that would make everyone love you more.”
MM: What practical steps did you take in changing your behavior in relation to telling the truth?
PG: My challenge has been in letting things go. Engaging in, "You told me your truth, now I’ll tell you mine,” gets us nowhere. At the same time, if I let it go and it’s still bothering me, that’s something I have to work on.
MM: This points to the difference between restraint and repression. How do we process conflictive feelings without becoming aggressive?
PG: The worst thing is responding in the heat of the moment and lashing out. A meditative pause, physical exercise to raise happiness hormones—whatever it takes—is better than that.
MM: How did you utilize Gandhi's precept about simplicity?
PG: Quite literally, I cleaned out my closet! I’d been on the road, living out of a carry-on suitcase. When I came home, I gave away shirts I hadn’t worn in six years and put a moratorium on buying nothing new that was not absolutely necessary for at least 18 months. Consuming more means producing more, which means we're probably doing things to the environment that are not healthy.
I also use less social media and communicate with fewer people, which allows me to focus more on those I care about and spend time on things that are important.
MM: When you made these changes, did the 'hungry ghost' — that insatiable, miserable part of the ego — start to settle down?
PG: Very much so. Ram Dass had this wonderful story. You're sitting in a hot tub, and you feel wonderful. Then you think, "Oh, well, gee, a little marijuana may make it more enjoyable. Or what if there were two women here in the tub? Two men and two women!” That attachment to wanting more is what the Buddha said is a cause of ignorance.
MM: Speaking of hot tubs and women, let's talk about celibacy or abstinence.
PG: The moment I hit rock bottom, morally speaking, was waking up next to someone I’d slept with and knowing it wasn't fulfilling. It's not that hard to observe celibacy. In my book, I talk about reducing the bombardment of sexual impulses by turning away from media images of half-naked women, and not looking at women in a way that focused on their bodies.
Sex with your life partner or your lover that comes from the heart, I advocate, because it's about coming into union. I didn't have that, so it was not that difficult to let sex go. But I still haven't landed on the fact that if I don't have sex for the rest of my life, I will be more godly.
MM: In itself, sex is not an obstacle to spiritual attainment, in other words?
PG: Not at all. But the way society uses sex appeals to our lower instincts ... we need to balance that with our higher instincts.
MM: Let's move onto faith — another moral challenge for lots of people. Were you able to integrate more faith into your life?
PG: I was brought up in a Jewish family, but I didn't have an experience of God through Judaism. Like many in my generation, I looked to the East for a more direct experience which eventually brought me to Buddhism. Faith was the heart of Gandhi’s practice. He started by saying, "God is truth." Then he decided that "truth is God," and that following our inner truth brings us closer to faith in God. We want to believe that if we have faith, good things will come to pass, but the truth is it's a crapshoot. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. I do have faith in myself but when it comes to free will and destiny, I'm still undecided.
MM: When you talk about having faith in yourself, which self are you talking about?
PG: Faith in myself is trust that my instincts will guide me. I’ve been right most of the time but, as Dylan said, "An artist always has to be in a state of becoming." We're never through evolving. "If you get to that place where you think you were supposed to land and be, you're not there," Dylan went on. That's how I think about faith.
MM: Regarding vegetarianism, it sounds like you've given up everything but fish?
PG: Yes, and I'm moving toward being vegan. I walk by the meat now at the market and look at it like a distant cousin I'm not in touch with anymore. I used to make these Vietnamese pork ribs for friends, but now it’s the thought that is more appetizing than the actual eating of it. Gandhi fasted so I took that on, but if I skip dinner, I feel a type of emptiness apart from my hunger. It's the rituals around eating that we get so attached to.
MM: What about nonviolence? How did Gandhi's philosophy of ahimsa change how you move through the world?
PG: Just like with sexuality, I chose not to take in media violence. We become inured to it, but there's a lot of research about violence associated with playing video games. Then I eliminated cursing, which is basically venting anger or exacerbating it.
MM: Is it possible to keep the violence of the world at bay without becoming ostriches, I wonder?
PG: When I watch CNN or Fox (where you have four people on a panel talking back and forth), I pick up on the tension and change the channel. I eliminated watching violent sports. My mother used to watch American football and say, “This is a demonstration of man's inhumanity to man.”
Then I looked at the violence I caused myself through inner dialogue. I took myself to task on things that were not going to be constructive to my state of peacefulness. Peace starts from within. “It is every step,” as Thich Nhat Hanh wrote. Working on yourself is the best way to generate nonviolence in the world. And then you share that with others in the best way you can.
MM: You state at the outset that you did not want this to be a self-help book, but one that offers help for a better world. I wonder how different those two intentions really are?
PG: It was a struggle for me because I did not want to write a “how to” sort of book. But then my editor asked me to sum up each chapter and I came up with this concept called, “How to Gandhi.” She said, "Oh, you've made Gandhi a verb." It was my tongue-in-cheek way of saying, “You can help yourself” because as Gandhi famously stated, “My life is my message.” We all need to remember that.
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