“Man is the maker of his own destiny, and therefore I ask you to become makers of your own destiny.” ~ Gandhi, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, XXVI p. 294

Gandhi’s vision—of life, of human nature—is in so many ways an opposite and a remedy to today’s popular beliefs. He is very much a prophet of what we call the “New Story.” While the papers tell us daily that we are the product of our genes—and as advertisers tell us we have to pursue sensations (by buying their stuff) to make us fulfilled, while some scientists (the ones who get all the popular coverage) still assume that evolution was a random process in a meaningless universe—he challenged and uplifted us by giving us back our critical agency. Of course there is much that we cannot control, but what’s important about our life is determined by what we think and how we live. However, we have to deliberately “become” conscious agents if we’re laboring under the human image in the mass media.

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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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