“The hardest heart and the grossest ignorance must disappear before the rising sun of suffering without anger and without malice.” ~ Gandhi, from Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, XXVI, p. 159

Let’s be realistic. It’s important to realize that while our hard-hearted opponent must be changed by our suffering without anger or malice, her or his change might not necessarily be “to where you’d notice it.” In other words, our nonviolent behavior is no guarantee that the situation will be resolved then and there. Nonviolence is still the best option, of course, if you consider how rarely (never?) answering violence with violence can do anything but the most short-term good, if that much. While we’re at it, notice how Gandhi lays stress on “ignorance.” In Search for a Nonviolent Future, I offered that an “educational lens” is a more accurate and more effective way to view violence than a moral or even a medical lens, though the latter can also be helpful.

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About Daily Metta

Stephanie Van Hook, the Metta Center’s executive director, launched Daily Metta in 2015 as a way to share Gandhi’s spiritual wisdom and experiments with nonviolence.

Our 2016 Daily Metta continues with Gandhi on weekdays. On weekends, we share videos that complement Michael Nagler’s award-winning book, The Search for a Nonviolent Future: A Promise of Peace for Ourselves, Our Families, and Our World. To help readers engage with the book more deeply, the Metta Center offers a free PDF study guide.

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