“Every man has an equal right to the necessaries of life even as birds and beasts have.” ~ Gandhi, Young India, March 26, 1931, p. 49 I recently came across an order issued by Delhi High Court, from May of 2015 on the topic of bird confinement: “all the birds have fundamental rights to fly… read more
Tag Archives: compassion
Awakening Compassion: Daily Metta
Here Michael cites the discovery by Rachel MacNair of what she calls ‘Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress’–the fact that as the Buddha and the others often said, when we injure another, we feel that injury ourselves, a fact for which there is now scientific proof. Michael emphasizes how the nonviolent actor can awaken awareness of this reflection… read more
“Gandhi and the man from Assisi”–Daily Metta
October 4: “Compassion or love is the human being’s greatest excellence.” –Gandhi (Indian Opinion, August 9, 1913) Only a couple of days after the celebration of Mahatma Gandhi falls the “feast day” (in the Roman Catholic tradition) of St. Francis of Assisi. Two people from different times, hundreds of years apart, they realized one and… read more
“Hearts as Broad as the Ocean”–Daily Metta
July 12: “Make your hearts as broad as the ocean.” –Gandhi (Young India, January 1, 1925) Compassion is as essential to nonviolence as dehumanization is to violence. From Latin, it means “to suffer with,” or to paraphrase religious scholar Karen Armstrong, “to put yourself in the shoes of another, and take the journey with them.”… read more
“The ideal and the practice”–Daily Metta
June 18: “The propositions from which I have drawn my arguments are as true as Euclid’s definitions, which are none the less true because in practice we are unable to even draw Euclid’s line on a blackboard.” –Gandhi (Young India, October 8, 1925) Remember the story from June 17th’s Daily Metta about the scorpion and the… read more
“A reminder”–Daily Metta
June 4: “We do not exaggerate when we say that life is a mere bubble.” –Gandhi (Young India, October 16, 1930) It is quite a paradox that human life is as fragile as it is powerful. Weak as we are, small as we are, our capacity for love, forgiveness, compassion, and nonviolence has no limit.… read more
“Disagree without hostility”- Daily Metta
January 3 Differences of opinion should never mean hostility. -Gandhi (Young India 3-17-1927) Gandhi created this pair of sandals for his “opponent” in South Africa, General Jan Smuts, which were clearly worn very often. Where there is more than one person, there will be differences of opinion. How we handle differences of opinion is a… read more
Empathy, Compassion and Nonviolent Intervention – Podcast
“I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.” –Maya Angelou (Botticelli’s La primavera is set in a bitter orange grove. . . What does this have to do with our show? Read below…) Empathy and compassion are essential to personal well-being. They are also skills we can develop that help… read more
Do we live in a meaningless universe?
Ours is not an empty, disorderly world, but an exquisitely structured web whose design embraces and affects all living things. –Sally Goerner WESTERN CIVILIZATION could be considered a grand experiment, culminating in the three-plus centuries of the industrial revolution, to see if the universe could be accounted for without resorting to the concept of a… read more
Compassionate Design
Originally published as “September 11 and Satyagraha” on Tikkun.org on September 8, 2011 by Michael N. Nagler As the news of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination spread through India on the first day of February, 1948, an American journalist was stunned by the intensity of the grief swirling around him. An Indian friend explained to him, “You… read more
