“Happiness: a dare”–Daily Metta

October 3:

“I would like people to compete with me in my contentment.”

–Gandhi (Young India, April 30, 1925)

Nonviolence does not eschew all forms of competition. Not at all. Competition can be a healthy, positive technique to help us unfold our full selves. But like anything else that can quickly become narcissistic and destructive, it has to be harnessed toward ends that benefit everyone, in which our own good is included. Ultimately such forms of beneficial competition are not against other people: Can I be kinder than I was yesterday? Can I remember to express my gratitude faster today? Can I learn from my mistakes earlier? Can I detach others from their actions sooner?

Sometimes, however, we can hold up a mirror for one another, and invite one another, playfully, in a competitive effort that is really at its basis cooperative.

It’s in this spirit that Gandhi here throws down the nonviolent gauntlet and dares us to compete in, of all things, happiness! Not the kind that we see in what Michael Nagler refers to as “tonsil ads” – you know, the kind where someone’s mouth is wide open with excitement because they just saved five dollars on their car insurance or qualified for a new kind of credit card or loan. It’s the kind of happiness that comes from service and daily deepening our capacity for nonviolence. We might call it instead of a “Cold War” a metaphorical “Cold Shower:” invigorating, refreshing, a wake-up from what the sages of the Upanishads call “this dream of separation.”