Metta’s Opinion

The Hidden Power of Surrender: Bend or Break

by Annie Hewitt 

Michael Nagler PACS164A Lecture 12

The Patna Surrender (1922-1924) was Gandhi’s response to a split in the Congress Party based on whether or not to take part in local councils set up by the British. On one side was Nehru and his supporters, convinced that Indians should participate in the councils even though they were largely symbolic and wielded very little concrete power. On the other side was Gandhi, who believed that for Indians to join ineffective councils was to take part in a political lie, ultimately at their own expense. 

Gandhi finally gave up and yielded to Nehru — what made him cave in and surrender his position?

If we stop and look at this question, we can see that the language used is not neutral, certain terms connote weakness: 

‘Give up’

‘Yield’

‘Cave in’ 

‘Surrender’

What happens when we look at these words afresh, can we break free of our habitual understanding and in this, can we reconceive Gandhi’s decision? Gandhi himself saw the Patna surrender as a victory, an expression of strength. How could this be?

Professor Nagler explains that ‘caving in’ for Gandhi is in fact a source of power; caving in creates space. In a conflict, when one party gives up something, whether a physical position or a demand, that act of letting go makes more room for both sides. This room in turn allows for movement, the possibility that opposing parties might come together and move forward united towards a larger, common goal. In this, Gandhi’s decision to give up/yield/cave in/surrender might be seen as an instance of Boulding’s ‘integrative power’ in action.

Yielding thus need not be understood as a sign of frailty nor does it entail abandoning principles — quite the contrary! Gandhi’s view suggests that surrendering is an act of creation which gives something to both sides. It reflects the wisdom found in a wider perspective, an awareness of our shared humanity, which is always there, underlying all our relationships, even if temporary masked by the narrow parameters of an immediate conflict. 

Haemon, in Sophocles’ Antigone expresses a similar point when talking to his father who rigidly clings to his position in opposition to his niece. Haemon encourages King Creon to be flexible, to adapt and bend, making space for Antigone’s position. In the end, far from expressing weakness, nature itself reveals this kind of expansive action to be a way to survive and grow. 

Please don’t be quite so single-minded, self-involved, or assume the world is wrong and you are right. …it’s no disgrace for a man, even a wise man, to learn many things and not to be too rigid. You’ve seen trees by a raging winter torrent, how many bend and sway with the flood and salvage every twig, but not the stubborn—they’re ripped out, roots and all. Bend or break.

Third Harmony Screenings

The Third Harmony tells the story of nonviolence, humanity’s greatest (and most overlooked) resource.

“To be nonviolent is be an artist of your humanity,” says Palestinian nonviolence leader and founder of the Taygheer Movement, Ali Abu Awwad, in a new documentary about the power of nonviolence and a new vision of human nature. Drawing on interviews with veteran activists like Civil Rights leader Bernard Lafayette, scientists like behaviorist Frans de Waal and neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, political scientist Erica Chenoweth, futurist Elisabet Sahtouris, and others, this 44-minute documentary will help the general public, often at a loss to understand the protests occurring in many cities, to better grasp just what nonviolence is and how it works. The film also delves into the important role that nonviolence plays in the wider struggle to develop a new theory of human nature, how every one of us can add to our personal growth and fulfillment while benefitting society through the use of this time-tested power. 

Directed and produced by the respected nonviolence scholar and author, Michael Nagler, co-founder of the Peace and Conflict Studies Department at U.C. Berkeley, the viewer is given the deep awareness that nonviolence is a serious field of study, or in the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “Nonviolence is not the inanity people have taken it for.”

For information about screenings of the Third Harmony, visit the film’s website at this link.


What Gandhi Means to Me

Margaret Bourke-White’s famous portrait of Gandhi at his spinning wheel in 1946.

I didn’t learn about Gandhi until I was in graduate school. I joined a Master’s program in Conflict Resolution at Portland State, after spending two years in the United States Peace Corps (Benin 2005-2007). Nothing in my education before then, nothing in my upbringing in the Shenandoah Valley, rural Virginia, mentioned him. When I was in the Peace Corps, someone had left a reproduction of Margaret Bourke-White’s portrait of him on the spinning wheel in my house in a village in rural northern Benin, and I had that on my wall. I recognized him, of course, his stature, his work for peace, but if pressed for any aspect of his life or work, I would have struggled to come up with anything that resembles something accurate about his life or about nonviolence really. I imagine it’s like that for many of us.

Later, as I took up an interest in Gandhi studies, I read around in Joan Bondurant’s “Conquest of Violence,” in various other books that compiled quotes from the Mahatma. I even toyed with the idea of focusing on “Gandhian Philosophy” for my graduate research (which makes me laugh now because Gandhi’s way of life was never a philosophy. It’s a course of deliberate action). It was missing something. I wanted to know about the person, about myself ultimately. I knew he represented that search in some way.

It wasn’t until I began connecting with the work of the Metta Center for Nonviolence that Gandhi took on an even wider dimension. My friends and I began simplifying our lives. We took up meditation. We cut out as much consumerism as we could. We sought more communal structures, more humane ways of engaging with the earth and each other. It came on fast. I wanted to learn and put into practice a form of self-transformation that expressed itself spiritually and politically. If I had been alive in Gandhi’s time, I would have wanted to go to join his experiments in India — I have not the shadow of a doubt! 

Michael Nagler told me that something similar happened to him. Gandhi was so far away, so out of reach for someone growing up in Brooklyn, New York. It wasn’t until he met his spiritual teacher, Sri Eknath Easwaran, that Gandhi became “more accessible” and “greater” than he had even imagined. Later, when I worked as a pre-school teacher in a Montessori classroom, I had three to six-year-olds who could describe “civil disobedience” and knew about how Gandhi transformed his anger into power. (I wrote my book “Gandhi Searches for Truth: A Practical Biography for Children,” inspired by those children’s interest in him as they learned about nonviolence from me and my co-teacher.)

What I understand now is that the greatness in Gandhi has to do with what we share in common with him. That he represents for us the capacity that all of us have to examine ourselves in relation to others and the world around us, to examine the quality of our thinking, our capacity for depth into the very heart of matters, while drawing upon a force of life, which he also referred to as Truth, and Love. To think deeply and to act with confidence and conviction when grounded in a higher image of who we are.

On Gandhi’s birthday, Oct. 2, he wanted people in the movement not to make it about him, but about the work of nonviolence. He called it the “spinning wheel birthday,” or Charkha Jayanti. The United Nations has designated it as the International Day of Nonviolence. 

I invite you to join us at Metta in the work of nonviolence and upholding Gandhi’s legacy by learning about some of the key concepts and ideals that shaped Gandhi’s life. At Metta, we created a series called “Gandhi for Beginners” — 24 short audio talks that address questions like “What is Satyagraha?” or “What were Gandhi’s rules of fasting?” or “Who were some of Gandhi’s influences.” 

Happy Charkha Jayanti.

Like This We March

Confronted on a train while riding in the first-class compartment for which he had paid,
soft-spoken, brown-skinned Mohandas Gandhi recognized his treatment by railway officials 
as unfair, even barbaric. To their humiliations he would never choose to become accustomed.
Incredulous, he repelled the insults, refusing their demands to move to a second-class carriage.
He reasoned, “I have a ticket for this seat.” But, to no avail. 
For his resistance, he was thrown from the train, his luggage tossed beside him.

Young barrister, stylish and suited in the English way, he had pride and courage; he knew his place
was not on the ground, nor in the gravel. 
Mild-natured, he rose from the earth and took aim, determined to speak and demonstrate his Truth
without fighting back. Resolute, he took the blows when they came. 
His conviction grew: that Right Action would prevail, and violence fail.
In this, he remained unshaken.

Intelligent, educated, most clever, yet simple, 
he knew his foes in the struggle; he could think just like them. Thus, he came to expect equal treatment.
Trained in law, familiar with nuance, he understood the Magna Carta from which British jurisprudence flowed,
the laws and protections which governed the lives of English citizens. 
His inner reasoning was sound: Like you, we are industrious, self-reliant human beings, just of different color.
As Indian subjects of the British Crown, your laws and protections should apply to us.

Collective memory had not yet faded, it remained deeply etched in the plain: 
The grain from our mouths you have taken; hunger in our homes and famine on our land was in your name.
You have claimed the livelihood of our weavers and artisans. All our wealth you have drained.
Shooting down a peaceful gathering of our people, how came the orders for such shame?
No longer will we tolerate such cruelty, disregard or anonymity. You have treated us with disdain.
In all your battles, we stood by you; we gave our sons, brothers, fathers and husbands for you.
Our earth and hearts are stained; this arrangement can no longer be sustained! 
The time of atonement is here, the moment of reckoning most near: for our true loyalty and deep affection,
our sacrifices in your name, the tough scars which remain and may never be slain, we demand you
restore us with our freedom! 

As fervor for India’s independence grew, Gandhi became more sure-footed and unflinching.
He showed us that when we gather we must band together, hold hands for our Truth,
act with Spirit to rectify past wrongs, recover self-rule in every step. 
He insisted that when we march, we act with caution:
We must resist the dark abyss of violence, he proclaimed;
he knew we must dodge this Demon, skirt it assiduously, to prevail.

Reverend Martin Luther King urged the same,
to lift voices skyward to our Creator, but not raise arms;
to sound the gavel, call for justice, hymn the praises of nonviolence and the Lord.
The Reverend and our Mahatma called upon us, both with their conviction and their passion,
to gather, to march, with love in our hearts
to take back what God already granted each one of us:
the salt from the sea, our equality,
an understanding of our humanity.

For our rights, for our mother earth, for those who are silent or invisible,
peaceably we march. We each matter, each one of us.
With our intellect and will, and wit as well, we elevate our voices to resist injustice.
Do not despair: we raise no arms, we will not kill.
We will speak, we will chant,
we will sing of the common life we share,
encircle those who need our protection, 
take back the lands of which we are the rightful heirs.

We must nourish and protect our Truth,
cultivate our trust in the peaceful fight, the boycott power of our changeable ways.
Principle and perseverance our weapons, 
clever strategic thought is our way.
To change the hearts of others, our compassion and humility must grow.
To change the laws of this country, we must believe in each other and our imperative, 
resist the wrongs bestowed.

If hope dims, the struggle too long, then 
inspiration we can re-discover.
Our humanity will unite us; 
neither color, nor creed divide us.
Let humility guide us.

We are strong, we belong, 
worthy resistance we can sow.

Like this we march.

Poem by Ira Batra Garde. Ira (pronounced “Eera”) is a physician, poet, wife, and mother. She lives with her family in the San  Francisco Bay Area and is currently at work on a novel exploring themes of history, culture, and psychological truth.  

Gandhi and Us: A Message from Michael Nagler

Today marks the 151st anniversary of Gandhi’s birth (Oct. 2, 1869) — and a crisis in American and world democracy such as I, for one, never dreamed I would witness in my by-now long lifetime.  For some time now, it has seemed that these two forces, the downward drive into chaos and violence and the uplifting surge of nonviolence in practice and understanding, have been growing towards some sort of climax.

What we have to do is very clear, in a way even inspiring: venerate the Mahatma’s legacy more than ever by rededicating ourselves to the hallowed path of personal empowerment > constructive program > (and if still necessary) nonviolent resistance.  More and more people are becoming aware that something’s seriously wrong and are looking around, pretty urgently, for a way out.  Well, did not the Civil Rights movement label nonviolence, drawing on an old spiritual, “the way out of no way”?

Gandhi Searches For Truth

Gandhi didn’t want October 2nd to be called his birthday, but rather “charkha jayanti,” the birthday of the spinning wheel, the sun that stood with pride and hope at the center of the “solar system” of constructive programme.  At Metta, as many of you know, we have thought long and deep about what the ‘charkha’ or central act every nonviolence actor could do today.  Our conclusion: uplift the human image at the center of the “new story:” that inspiring model of the universe and human nature to which our Third Harmony Project now is dedicated.

Great to be with you on this priceless path.

Michael Nagler

A Dream Realized!

MICHAEL NAGLER REFLECTS ON THE PREMIERE OF THE THIRD HARMONY DOCUMENTARY FILM BELOW.

Dear friends,

My heart is full of love, hope, and gratitude as our long-awaited film is having its world premiere at the Illuminate Film Festival and friends are already writing to us with such enthusiastic greetings:  

I got my notification just after midnight that the movie was available to watch, so I just sat down and watched it all. I’m filled with such hope for the first time in a long time. It is a beautiful film on every level (aesthetically, narratively, etc etc) that conveys these ideas in such a straightforward and powerful way. I truly can not wait to use it with students! . . . Looking forward to the panel discussion on Saturday. Bravo!!!

Since I can’t improve on those words from a friend and colleague, let me just point out that the panel she refers to will be 5:30 pm Pacific this Thursday, and features Rajmohan Gandhi, Erica Chenoweth, and Clay Carson.  There is also a “Reel Healing” conversation with Marianne Williamson on the Illuminate site available to those who’ve bought a ticket to the film + panel.

While we designed the film (run-time 44 minutes) for schools and colleges, and teachers are already showing a lot of eagerness to use it, (a curriculum guide will be ready soon), it’s a general introduction to nonviolence and its situation in the “new story” of human nature that should be of use, not to mention of inspiration, to beginners and experienced practitioners alike.  It’s the first film, as far as we know, to really explore the intuitive connection between the practical aspects of nonviolence — the last part shares five steps anyone can follow — and its deep implications for who and what we think we are as human beings. 

It has long been our belief at Metta that the key leverage point for changing humanity from its disastrous course is the uplifting of the human image from that of a separate material fragment adrift in a meaningless universe to an evolving spiritual being inseparable from others and the rest of creation, endowed with the privilege and responsibility of playing our role, individually and together, in the unfolding of human destiny. 

Over the last few years, we’ve come to see more and more that the uniting of activists and spiritual practitioners, the fusion of the search for nonviolence, and the search for a new story, is the missing link to add critical momentum to the ongoing struggles for social change.  In this exploration, nonviolence emerges as both the missing link in the completion of the new story and the tool to install that as the overarching paradigm guiding our steps out of the existential dangers of racial violence, economic distortion, and climate disruption to a new world.

I am more convinced than ever that this film will make a difference.  And it could not be more needed.  Please see for yourself, and help us spread the word.

Warmest greetings,

Michael

If you were unable to attend the Illuminate festival, you can catch it at the following screenings —

Global Peace Week at Valencia College September 21st, 2020

United Nations Association Film Festival at Palo Alto, Stanford University, East Palo Alto and San Francisco from October 15-25.

And more to come!

 

 

Imagination, NV, Nuclear Weapons

The Children’s Peace Memorial in Hiroshima, Japan

There have been cataclysmic changes in the world. Do I still adhere to my faith in truth and nonviolence? Has not the atom exploded that faith? Not only has it not done so but it has clearly demonstrated to me that the twins constitute the mightiest force in the world. Before it, the atom bomb is of no effect. ~M.K. Gandhi

Dear Metta Community, 

As statues and monuments for violence come down around the world, we should also turn attention toward a set of thousands of violent “statues” still waiting to be used for harm, the ones dedicated to future mass-murder and destruction– nuclear weapons.  Knowing the violence they can do and have done, governments around the world continue to build, house, and defend them. Make no mistake: these statues must be removed and abolished. And they will be if we commit ourselves to nonviolence. 

Anna Ikeda, a Metta board member, who has dedicated her work to the abolition of nuclear weapons had these reflections to share on the 75th commemoration of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 

I still clearly remember that one of the things that really struck me when I read Michael’s The Search for a Nonviolent Future several years ago, was that he described violence as “a failure of imagination.”  When I think about why we still have to continue talking about and working for abolishing nuclear weapons, 75 years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that claimed so many lives, these words ring true.

Too many people simply lack imagination that we could live in a world without nuclear weapons, a world that does not depend on the threat of mass violence to maintain “peace and security.” Somehow those weapons are considered a necessary evil, worthy of spending trillions of dollars that could be spent on healthcare, education, and other human needs.

Those weapons, if used by accident or on purpose, can alter our ecosystems and climate irreversibly. They have been tested on the lands of Indigenous people.
So in a just, nonviolent society that we are working towards, nuclear weapons have no place. 

Michael also wrote,

“If I don’t have the imagination to realize that you and I are one, despite our physical separateness and the differences in our outlooks on life, what’s to prevent me from using violence if I think you’re getting in my way?”

Nuclear weapons are the very embodiment of the lack of imagination because those who justify them or are willing to deploy them are completely lacking imagination, to the extent that they are willing to use the kind of violence that can destroy our world many times over.


So perhaps what I call for people to do, on this anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is that we work on the power of imagination.

Imagine a world where nuclear weapons are eliminated – what would it take to get there, and what is the role of each of us? 


Below you’ll find a list of resources curated by Anna to share with you. Please take the time to check them out. 

In heart unity, 
Stephanie Van Hook, Executive Director 

PS: Michael Nagler hosts Hope Tank on Friday mornings on Zoom. Find out how to join the discussion and be added to our list here. 

“Every second of every day, nuclear weapons endanger everyone we love and everything we hold dear. Is it not yet the time for soul searching, critical thinking, and positive action about the choices we make for human survival?” ~Setsuko Thurlow

Resources to get involved in anti-nuclear action: 

Action:  Attend events  Educate yourself 

This is part of our bi-weekly newsletter, the Practical Idealist. You can sign up for it here. 

We are all part of one another.

Howard Thurman in his sermons on Jesus and the Disenfranchised poses an interesting dilemma about valuing country over life. In his words: 

“During times of war hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.” 

Let us not become haters of one another–haters of our shared humanity– under any guise at all. July 4 is a time to remember that, to quote the late feminist-nonviolent activist, Barbara Deming, “We are all part of one another.” Or in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, “We are caught up in an inescapable web of mutuality.” 

Our mutuality, our belonging-ness with one another, our capacity to root out hatred in whatever guises it poses itself as “respectable” is a key part of the “inner significance” of nonviolence. We refuse to hate.

But what about “those angry people”? Or, what about my OWN anger, forget about those other people? Let’s be very clear: anger is not hatred. Anger is a form of energy, while hatred [of life, of people to be precise] is a form of consciousness entrapped by a fundamental delusion of pure division with *almost* no escape. Anger can go in the direction of hatred, most certainly, but it can also transform into love, a state where hatred cannot live because love is a fundamental awareness of our fullness through each other. Love, when properly understood, transforms hatred. 

Nonviolent energy hides in our emotional states. 

Passivity can–must– be roused into action
and action, while better than being merely passive–
can be directed into channels that build bridges
(to mix and use a metaphor from john a. powell of UC Berkeley’s Otherness and Belonging Institute). 

While we should not judge others at all, we certainly should not judge people–our ourselves– for feeling angry about injustice! Nor should we *fear* each other’s anger or our own, or conflate our expressions of anger in moments of escalation or just plain frustration at times–with hatred.

 Instead, let’s find ways of helping one another put fear and anger to good use, or show people who are passive that there are ways to get involved where their contribution can make a difference.

 If we stifle or waste this energy we lose a precious, raw resource that has the potential to do so much good for re-balancing our systems that are so weighted down in oppressive practices, biases, and broken relationships. 

How do we do this? We can *start* by listening. Listening to ourselves and knowing what we are feeling without judging it. We can also commit ourselves to learning. Learn about how people around the world have roused themselves from apathy or passivity and channeled their anger, frustration, or sense of worthlessness into nonviolent action. Learn their names, learn their stories, learn the lessons they want to share. 

Ask and attempt to answer: What roused them from passivity to a desire for action to a commitment to nonviolent action? What motivated them? 

And finally, let’s personalize and embed a true sense of dignity within all of our relationships: tell and show each other how we want to be treated, be firm about how we are willing and not willing treat others, and examine how to show our mutuality, our interconnectedness, our love for one another and of life itself through nonviolence from wherever we are right now. 

With Metta, 

Stephanie Van Hook, Executive Director