“To serve one’s neighbor is to serve the world.” ~ Gandhi, Ashram Observances in Action, p. 37

And he goes on, “Indeed, it is the only way open to us  of serving the world.” We who wish to help the world very commonly judge our effectiveness by quantitative criteria: how many people reached, how many bad laws blocked, etc. This is to misunderstand who we are and the nature of action, not to realize that it is the quality of an action, meaning the state of mind in which it’s performed, that really determines its effectiveness in the long term. Of course, there’s an element of humility in all this, but it also would relieve activists (including the present writer!) of a lot of anxiety about not doing enough. As Mother (now, happily, Saint) Teresa of Calcutta said, “Do small things with great love.”

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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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