March 4:

“The proper way to view the present outburst of violence throughout the world is to recognize that the technique of unconquerable nonviolence of the strong has not been at all fully discovered as yet.”

-Gandhi ( Harijan, 6-9-1946, p. 174)

Here is food for thought: the vast majority of human beings do not like being violent. Either we use because we’ve taken it for granted that it must be our nature (turns out that is not true), or we see it as a tool, and are willing to use it when we think we have to for self-preservation and the defense of those precious to us (because we like passivity even less than violence — appropriately).

What do you think happens, however, when we learn another way to make ourselves and others secure, namely through the active application of nonviolence? It turns out that most of us are willing to try it on.  Nonviolence is, in the words of the old spiritual, “a way out of no way.” The more we realize and understand that we do not need to use violence to meet our needs, the more the science of nonviolence can be developed. Perhaps the most important work of our time is to raise consciousness about how nonviolence can be put to work not only personally and in our families, but in its strategic application to social and global concerns; to share with people that it is not passivity or inaction, but an active force which requires courage and strength. And what a vast landscape of this great power there is still to be discovered!

Experiment in Nonviolence:

Why do you think that nonviolence (not passivity) is more attractive than violence?

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Daily Metta 2015, a service of the Metta Center for Nonviolence, is a daily reflection on the strategic and spiritual insights of Mahatma Gandhi in thought, word and deed. As Gandhi called his life an “experiment in truth,” we have included an experiment in nonviolence to accompany each Daily Metta. Check in every day for new inspiration. Each year will be dedicated to another wisdom teacher.