January 2

I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and nonviolence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could do. In doing so I have sometimes erred and learnt by my errors. Life and its problems have thus become to me so many experiments in the practice of truth and nonviolence.

–Gandhi (Young India, 6-13-1919) 

There is a story in India’s spiritual tradition about a student who receives a mantram--or prayer word–from his teacher. The teacher gives it to him with a caveat, “Keep this for yourself so that you may receive its benefits.” “What will happen if I tell it to others?” the student asked. The teacher responded, probably trying to hide his smile, “Well, then you might lose its benefits.” The student immediately found a high place where his voice would echo across the village and shouted his mantram for all to hear. Joy seized everyone and the student found himself in immersed in joy, as well. For the good of everyone, he was willing to take a risk to his own pursuit of happiness and discovered instead that his good was included in that of the whole.

Similarly, when Gandhi discovered the age-old power of nonviolence, he did not want to keep it to himself. Like a great scientist who discovered the potential of a healing salve to cure a wide-spread disease, he sought not to change the principles of nonviolence, but only to understand its transformative, therapeutic properties better. He adjusted its scale, not just by a few people or even a few nations, but to include to the extent he could everyone and everything.

We get closer to understanding the revolutionary charisma and soulful power of the person of Gandhi when we realize that he actually asked himself, What would happen if I experimented with love on as large and as vast of a scale as possible? In order to increase the scale in the world toward which he could extend his love, he had to increase his own personal capacity for it by working against all that was destructive and negative in himself. It’s truly breathtaking if you stop to think about it.

Certainly he took many risks by going against convention of what society generally considers even possible, but therein lay his genius and his greatness. This is the only way to make great discoveries–not by limiting ourselves to what has been done already, but by daring to try a new way, to take what seems like a risk to oneself, because if it worked, it could save the world. Not only this, but he used his failures and errors as moments for learning another way, not as signs to give up on the experiment. This is determination with a capital D.

A powerful vision, an age-old tool (nonviolence) and a willingness to change ourselves when the vision asks this of us. These three ingredients are a recipe for revolution on a massive scale.

 

Experiment in Nonviolence:

Make a commitment today to do something for the welfare of everyone, in which your own welfare is included.

 

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.