His weekly paper Young India, 3 December 1925, p. 422

Eyes for the Inner

On 3 December 1925, Mahatma Gandhi wrote about fasting in his weekly paper, Young India. He described it as part of his own religious life. He could as well do without his eyes, he said, as without his fasts. He followed the comparison with a sentence about attention: "What the eyes are for the outer world, fasts are for the inner." The passage explains what the practice meant to him, through something his readers used every waking day.

Gandhiji compared two ways of paying attention. Sight disclosed the world around him; fasting, in his account, turned attention toward his own life. He was describing a religious practice that belonged to his experience. The comparison asks a wider question about self-examination: it is possible to notice every fault around us and give little thought to our own part in what happens. Looking inward takes a deliberate effort, just as looking outward takes attention.

Therefore

Set aside time to examine your own motives before judging someone else. Give that inward work the same attention you give to events around you.

A small reminder, on the desk or the water bottle, that looking inward requires its own quiet discipline.

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