“All obstacles in our path will vanish, if only we observe the golden rule that we must not be impatient with those whom we may consider to be in error, but must be prepared, if need be, to suffer in our own person.” ~ Gandhi, from Gandhi’s Dialogue with Christianity, p. 5 (published by Swaraj Peeth)

While we can cultivate the means for accessing our energy at deeper and deeper levels through practices like meditation, in general, we can say that our energy is limited. Take the amount of energy one person has during one day. Spending all day in argument with another person, whether it is just in our mind, i.e. thinking about how wrong someone is, seething as it were, or whether it be in a back and forth exchange, i.e. “I’m going to prove you wrong…” is a sure way to drain our energy from the projects that really need it. Here we turn to the motivation: could it be that we are driven forward by our desire to make someone less, to place ourselves above them in some way, be it morally or intellectually? If we want to guarantee that our interactions only uplift us, it’s a kind of law in nonviolence that it has to uplift everyone involved, even those who are clearly in error.

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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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