August 23:

“Every other thing has been tried and failed. Brute force has had the fullest chance and no one is happier or more moral or more courageous for it.”

–Gandhi (Day to Day with Gandhi, vol. 7, p. 42)

Gandhi had the insight early on that we have to pay attention to more than meets the eye when we choose our means for addressing a challenge. Note that he does not use this opportunity to claim that violence does not achieve any results at all. It may very well have an impact on a situation — but how did it feel to use it? Did it make you feel more secure? Happier? More courageous? Dare we ask, moral?  He categorically maintains that it does not. It cannot. Remember that slogan, “war is hell”? Gandhi’s drawing a picture for us of exactly where that hell resides–in our own psyches. Did you know, for example, that service people in the United States, including drone operators, are committing suicide in far higher numbers than they are dying in combat?  What a state, when your life has become so unbearable, such is the harm of your own action, that you think the only escape is to end it.

And nonviolence? I am reminded of a scene from the film Gandhi, when Gandhi had taken on a fast to restore communal harmony in Delhi in 1948, in the midst of rising violence between Hindus and Muslims.  A man came to his bedside, looking desperate. He threw a piece of bread at him and told him to “eat!” because he was already going to hell and didn’t want to be responsible for the Mahatma’s death, as well. He told him that he had killed a Muslim child because Muslims had killed his. Now, it’s not clear if Gandhi ever actually said what comes next, but admittedly, it does sound a lot like him, “I know a way out of hell. . .  Find a boy about the same age as your son whose parents have been killed in this conflict. Adopt that child and raise him as your own. Only make sure that he is a Muslim, and that you raise him as such.” It sounds a lot like the Buddha’s twin verses: “For hatred does not cease at any time by hatred; hatred ceases by love; this is an unalterable law.”

Experiment in Nonviolence:

Do something today to release yourself from a cycle of retribution and violence with something actively nonviolent. Notice how you feel.