“He who has a living faith in God will not do evil deeds with the name of God on his lips.” ~ Gandhi, Mahatma 4, p. 252

There is so much violence being done today in the name of religion that this law Gandhi identifies is if anything more relevant than it was even in the terrible time of the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan. But I want to bring up another, smaller question. Religious and moral vocabulary were perfectly natural for Gandhi in his time, but are not always meaningful for us. Let’s recast his law in more contemporary terms: “He or she who has a real feeling for principled nonviolence will not invoke nonviolence in the mistaken belief that it is just a tactic that can be used for a selfish end, much less to hurt others.” In this “nonviolence of the strong,” as Gandhi called it, means and ends are interconvertible; intentions and their eventual outcomes likewise. “Can a thief invoke the name of God (repeat a mantram) to help him commit a crime?”

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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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