February 1 “Victory is impossible until we are able to keep our temper under the gravest provocation.” –Gandhi (Young India, 8-25-1921) In the summer of 2014, my colleagues from the Metta Center and I visited a village in the occupied West Bank of Palestine, At-Tuwani. From within this impoverished village of sheep herders has sprung… read more
Tag Archives: gandhi
“A Burning Passion and Absolute Detachment”
January 31 “A burning passion coupled with absolute detachment is the key to all success.” –Gandhi (Harijan, 9-29-1946, p. 336) When Gandhi uses the term “detachment” he does not mean a passive disinterest or cold indifference; he is pointing to an active state of conscious awareness of the unity of life. We glimpse that… read more
“Hating Systems, Not People”–Daily Metta
January 30 “By a long course of prayerful discipline, I have ceased for over forty years to hate anybody. I know that this is a big claim. Nevertheless, I make it in all humility.” –Gandhi (Young India, 6-18-1925) While Gandhi said that he ceased to hate anybody, he never denied hating the acts of people.… read more
“Tending Toward Truth”–Daily Metta
January 29: “Every moment of our life should be filled with mental or physical activity but that activity should be sattvika, tending to truth.” –Gandhi (From Yervada Mandir, pp. 23-26) Energy drives the human being and all of life, but not all energy is the same. The Bhagavad Gita breaks it down into three… read more
“Necessities and Nonviolence”–Daily Metta
January 28 “A starving man thinks first of satisfying his hunger before anything else.” -Gandhi (Young India, 3-18-1926) At the basis of the Indian Freedom Struggle was the spinning wheel. It represented independence through grassroots employment and freedom from the dependence on the British to supply their basic need of cloth. Gandhi worked endlessly… read more
“Life and Death”–Daily Metta
January 27 “Bereavement ceases to leave us desolate when the death of our dear one only spurs us on to a more vivid consciousness of our duty.” –Gandhi (Letter to Devdas, 7-24-1918, from Day to Day with Gandhi, vol. 1, p. 196) In a magnificent letter from 1918 to his son, Devdas, who was grieving… read more
“Human Duties”–Daily Metta
January 26 “The true source of rights is duty.” –Gandhi (Mahatma, Vol. 2, p. 179) When Gandhi was asked to sign the Declaration of Human Rights, he said to bring him instead a Declaration of Human Duties, and he would sign that. Duties and rights always went hand in hand for him. The talk… read more
Women of the Civil Rights Movement
Take a moment and think of some notable American female leaders… Probably Alice Paul, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Blackwell, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Golda Meir are a few women that immediately come to mind. Now take a moment and think of female leaders of the Civil Rights Movement… Probably Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Diane Nash, Daisy… read more
“The causes of war”–Daily Metta
January 25: “All activity for stopping war must prove fruitless so long as the causes of war are not understood and radically dealt with.” –Gandhi (Harijan 2-11-1939) My friend Tom Hastings had a New Yorker cartoon on the door to his Portland office. It depicted several individuals throwing a plastic bottle into a trashcan overflowing… read more
The Art of Nonviolence-PPR
(Gandhi’s only possessions at the time of his samadhi) On this episode of Peace Paradigm Radio, we talk with Josef Helfenstein, curator of a Houston exhibit (in the Menil Collection), and book published by Yale and Menil, entitled Experiments with Truth: Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence. Helfenstein spent decades researching the subject and brought together an amazing… read more
