SATURDAY MARCH 3, 2012

9:30 AM — 12:30 PM

ST. JOHN’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH 40 Fifth Street, Petaluma

In this half-day seminar we will explore critical insights on Jesus’ nonviolence with special attention to His practical relevance today.

Topcis incude the historical Jesus and the way of nonviolence, the meaning of sacrifice, forgiveness & atonement, selfless work, Christian spirituality and loving your enemy.

SPONSORS OF THIS EVENT

The Metta Center for Nonviolence

www.mettacenter.org

St. John’s Episcopal Church

www.saintjohnsepiscopalpetaluma.org

Suggested event donation: $10-$20 at the door. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. For more information contact Stephanie at 707-774-6299

Our primary aim at METTA is to explore this massive shift in cultural values, and help initiate a disarmament so thorough that it proceeds to the very attitudes and behaviors that call war into existence. We look first of all to Gandhi, who saw the individual as the primary instrument of historical change. In particular, we look to that same unanswerable power which Gandhi discovered in himself and roused in his 300 million countrymen, the power he called Satyagraha, “soul force.”  Primarily a spiritual force, it represents a commitment to draw upon what is best and most enduring in humankind, and to begin by developing it in oneself. Gandhi’s life and work persuade us that this force can help reform some of the most pervasive forms of violence–economic, social and political–that characterize our way of life.  Read the rest here.

We focus on the “long run” and look beyond traditional levers of political change (the policy makers, the mass outcry) to those local, self-reliant reform efforts–in neighborhoods, on the farms, in the schools, cities, towns, and countrysides–where people of all persuasions are working towards peace in the world at large, by reshaping the world at hand. It is a kind of “trickle up” approach. When millions of individuals become grounded in nonviolence, simplicity and self-reliance, Gandhi argued, our institutions will begin to mirror those values, just ast they now reflect the conscious and unconscious drives of our “imperial” culture. METTA begins then with the unexamined potential of the person, but we by no means end there. We would help others explore the conversion of violence within themselves and their communities to form a new basis for conducting the relationships of school, marketplace, family and society.

Our primary method is education, formal and informal, for it offers the means to challenge the assumptions of the old paradigm while it provides the tools to discover and create alternatives.

To read how this work has affected the lives of individuals around the world, click here. 

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Building the World We Want from metta center on Vimeo.

An interactive webinar about Gandhian constructive programme, spiritual activism and nonviolence. Begins with a short description of the work of Metta.

Q and A follows webinar. Please contact us: info@mettacenter.org with questions or suggestions.

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Please join us this Friday, January 27^th, for a special evening with renowned Nepalese Human Rights Defender Jit Man Basnet.

A human rights lawyer and journalist who has been working in human rights and transitional justice for 12 years in Nepal, Mr. Basnet was kidnapped and tortured by Maoist rebels in 2002, and then was illegally arrested by the Royal Nepal Army in 2004 and tortured while in secret custody for 258 days. He was instrumental in the release of 29 disappeared civilians despite threats from the army for being witness to army atrocity, torture, disappearances and killings. He has written a powerful book on his experience called 258 Dark Days.

Mr. Basnet has offered to spend an evening with friends of peace in San Francisco to share a bit of his story, discuss the political situation in Nepal, and engage in conversation about approaches to protecting human rights in times of crisis and upheaval.

He is a delightful, gracious individual whose acquaintance you will be very pleased to have made!

When: Friday, January 27, 7:00 – 9:00 pm

Where: 170 Capp St., Suite C, San Francisco (Offices of LFA Group: Learning for Action)

About the venue: 16^th and Mission BART stop is 1 block away; upon exiting the BART station, walk east on 16^th St. and take your first right onto Capp Street. 170 Capp Street is 2/3 of the way down the block on your right. Please be advised that there is a shelter on this block of Capp St. so there may be homeless people loitering about.

Wine and snacks will be served.

Please RSVP to hildy.alex@gmail.com

(please note, this event is not sponsored by METTA)

meditation for peacemakers

Date: March 17, 2012

Location:  Petaluma, CA
Conducted by:   Metta Center for Nonviolence
Course Instructors: Michael Nagler, Metta Center President and Professor emeritus and founder of Peace and Conflict Studies Program, UC Berkeley; Stephanie Van Hook, Metta Center Executive Director
Course fees: $125 general (We do not want to turn anyone away for lack of funds.  We invite those who can do so to offer more than the suggested fee so that others can attend for less.)

This special, 1-day workshop will provide an in-depth introduction to passage meditation and its applications to nonviolence and peacemaking. Participants will learn how to meditate along these lines (if they do not have another practice already), experience group practice, and explore the relationship between inner and outer peace. Participants will also be encouraged to discover their particular gifts as makers of peace, and create a strategy for expressing those gifts, as well as learning practical strategies for maintaining their enthusiasm in the face of stress and resistance.

Click here to register

Learning Goals

(1) Students will establish an effective meditation practice, and explore effective contexts for its application in peacework and activism. (2) Students will deepen their understanding of nonviolence as an inner and outer resource. (3) Students will gain insight into the nature of conflict and its creative resolution.

Core Knowledge

Positive peace, nonviolence, inner security, an understanding of spiritual growth and its applications to social change.

Core Skills

meditation, detachment, conflict analysis and resolution

Mike is teaching nonviolence and getting some help from Metta Center. Listen in . . .

Christopher Hedges’s selection from “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning” puts war into a human context, rather than a romanticized one, and asks us to face the forces of war in the realms of culture, myth and crusade within our society.  It speaks of the power of war and how it can define us – has defined us – as a nation.  It is important to recognize the power and control that violence and war can have over individual and national psyches. Hedges, however, only leads us to question war and its tragic grip on us.  He doesn’t offer alternatives; indeed, he ends up also being lured into the importance of war by stating, “And tragically, war is sometimes the most powerful way in human society to achieve meaning.”  He fails to accept that there are alternative paths to find deep meaning in life.  If we don’t accept the forces of war, what can we – individually and collectively – replace it with?  That is where Metta Center is making such a valuable contribution with its materials, guidance and programs.

That is also where my Peace Studies course, offered to juniors and seniors, at Friends’ Central School, comes in.  At the current time, Peace Studies is offered every other year, this being an off year.  Last year, we began our time together with a study of many of the major terms in the Nonviolence Glossary available on the Metta Center website.  It was a helpful introduction to the conversations we had throughout the year regarding Gandhi, violence, nonviolence, theory and strategies applied during nonviolent freedom movements, and indeed the differences between Principled and Strategic nonviolence.  Little did I know that it would become much more than a simple, introductory unit for my students.

Over a period of about 3 weeks, we discussed two or three concepts from the Glossary each day, always seeking to find examples of how they played out in real life.  I would sometimes use a YouTube video clip to show how an incident exemplified the concept in a visual, historical context.  Through the year, we often returned to the Glossary concepts in our discussions.   It was amazing how, in responding to the assessment questions, the students would refer both to the articles we had read AND to the Metta Center Glossary.  Perhaps, it was because,over time, they became increasingly comfortable with the terms.  But, I also believe that those Glossary concepts became the solid foundation upon which the rest of my curriculum stood; they were the seed from which everything else grew.  The students found that they could not discuss and analyze important, historical, social events without referring to the Glossary.  

This fall, I have received a handful of emails from my students, who are now graduated and in college.  Some have told me how useful the course has been to them in their current studies.   Whether they be liberal arts, science, or business students, they now see the world differently.  Although many are not totally convinced that nonviolence is their calling, they recognize the wide range of nonviolent options available to them as individuals and to us as a world when conflicts arise, whether they be interpersonal in nature or at the level of war and its impact, so tragically described by Christopher Hedges.  Young people like my students give me great hope for our future, especially in a world where so many of them yearn for peaceful alternatives in the midst of violence.  It is, therefore, incumbent upon those of us who belong to an older generation to share such alternatives with them, so that they may improve upon what has been left to them.  I am delighted to work in tandem with Metta Center in fulfilling that mission.  

–Michael Crauderueff

Timo with Stephanie and Michael in Petaluma

Timo wrote explaining his work and life in Finland:

Since 1999, I have been working at Lapinjärvi Educational Center (LEC) (until 2008 as a full-timer, after that as a guest lecturer) and teaching Civil Service Men, i.e. conscientious objectors who refuse to do the military service. Finland is one of the few countries in Europe who still have obligatory military service (the others are Greece, Cyprus, Belarus, Swizerland and to some extend also Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Russia and Norway). In Finland about 65 % of the age group do military service, 7 % civil service (in schools, hospitals, universities, libraries, municipality offices, ngo’s etc.) and the rest don’t have to participate because of medical reasons. In LEC we give the men (aged 18-30) a one month training before they do their 10 months work-service. We give them lectures about fist aid, fire fighting, the system of obligatory military service, oil spill response, civil defence, democracy, history, nonviolence and many other things.

Even before finding the Metta Center from the internet I had visited India, “found Gandhi,” read his autobiography and other books about him, and watched the documentary “A Force More Powerful” (first time just by chance in a hotel room in Estonia). Inspired by the film (and the lives of Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, MLK, Aung San Suu Kyi, etc.) I started a lecture called Nonviolent Conflict Resolution, with the aim of introducing the young audience to new heroes and of inspiring them to find out more about nonviolence.

One day I found Michael Nagler’s lectures from YouTube and the Metta Center’s page and this has helped me in many ways. I got many new perspectives on the subject: the spiritual side of nonviolence, the difference between technical and principled nonviolence, about constructive program, the link between antimaterialism and nonviolence. Interestingly, I also teach about “life skills”, which is a lecture, or actually a discussion about values and about the meaning of life. Metta Center’s material (including The Search for a Nonviolent Future) made me realize how closely connected my two lectures were. Nowadays the name of the lecture is simply “Nonviolence,”  the emphasis is on the principle of nonviolence and if I don’t have a separate lecture about life skills to the particular audience, I start even the nonviolence lecture by asking them, in small groups, to list out their most important values. In that way we get into discussion about happiness, what it is, what do we need to be happy etc., before we go in to the principles of nonviolence. I visit Metta Center’s web site every week to get more materials and ideas for my lectures, but mostly to just get inspired, again and again. 

Besides my work (which includes giving those lectures at LEC and writting a travel guide about Sarajevo) I do voluntary work for Peace Union Finland and Finnish Christian Peace Association. I also organise Loviisa Peace Forum, which is an annual event in Loviisa every August, a meeting point of people, ideas, cultures and religions. The aim of the Forum is to lessen fears of humankind, find new ideas and celebrate life. We have seminars, theatre -performances, movies, exhibitions etc., and I try to keep the nonviolence -theme in the forefront as much as possible.

RETURN TO METTA’S HOMEPAGE

Starting a revolution is like lighting a match; it risks becoming extinguished as quickly as it was lit. Sustaining a revolution, however, is like starting a fire, and ensuring that it has the fuel to burn as long as necessary. As an agent of change, I need that fire for as long as it takes for results to emerge, otherwise, I risk burn-out. How can we tell if our flame will prevail? We can know by checking our hearts: either we are burning with hatred and blame or with compassion and love.

Those who profess a commitment to what is called strategic nonviolence know how to start a revolution, that is, in the same way that one would have to fight if one is the weaker party: you do what you your opponent is trying to prevent you from doing, you cast all or most of the blame on them, and you draw upon the sympathies of the masses—the “reference public”– to express your power. In this approach it’s acceptable to use threat, humiliation, and coercion to get what you want,  and you often accept short-term and short-lived “success” as your goal. Nonviolence in this approach is simply refraining from physical violence while one’s inner frustrations and pains continue to grow, or are left wholly unresolved. After lighting the match of revolution, a person using nonviolence by this definition can walk away from the responsibility to carrying it forward for the long run. So a people left their guns at home this round? Where will it get them when they decide to take them back out because a limited vision of nonviolence did not bring about the deep changes needed? Look at Egypt “post-revolution,” and Libya, for case by case examples.

If I truly cared about the people I want to serve, however, I take the whole human being, their entire humanity, into account. So, while certain individuals gained fame and recognition for their contributions to starting revolutions in 2011 for example, I wonder if that recognition was not premature, if not short-sighted: we should ask ourselves, is this kind of revolution going to last? Witnessing one too many “progressives” shouting their discontent at cheering, furious crowds, we need to step back: can hatred, blame and resentment continue to inspire a long-term struggle? I, for one, have never found this approach entirely inspiring, mature, or even entirely honest.

The revolution, as we often say at the Metta Center, is not about putting a different kind of person in power; it is about awakening a different kind of power in people. The kind of satisfaction that comes from hating another human being is nothing compared to the satisfaction that comes from transforming hatred into respect and consideration of the humanity of the other. The sense of security that comes from rejoicing in the death and misery of another human being is the absolute lowest form, and it is nothing compared to the joy of rejoicing in the happiness, and sharing in the sorrow, of other people. In South Africa during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, they called this ‘Ubuntu,’ the concept that I affirm my humanity by affirming the humanity of others, or it is through other people that one is a person. In other words, one of the first ways of sustaining ourselves for revolution is by an awareness that I cannot do harm to another without harming myself. Peace psychologist Rachael MacNair has coined this truth in social science as ‘perpetration induced traumatic stress,’ or PITS. Yet just as I cannot harm another without harming myself, fortunately, I cannot truly benefit another without deeply experiencing that benefit in my own life. This is the point: if we want to create a society that takes humanity into consideration, the revolution will sustain itself when we learn how to do it ourselves, within ourselves. In the words of the great Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi:

 ”The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation’s development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success.”

Don’t get me wrong—I am not suggesting that there is not an outward struggle to wage; there is. I am suggesting that how we wage the struggle matters, and thus how we define our nonviolence also matters. If we limit our definition to simply “not using (physical) violence,” we should be suspicious that such a reduction can lead to more violence down the road because it denies our humanity. Further, we should not feel insulted if our opponents fail to see us for something more than threatening masses who endanger their personal i.e., physical, well-being, provoking further violence and repression from them.  But is this who we are? Are we out there to pick fights or to make lasting change?  If we widen our view to encompass a higher image of who we are,  nonviolence means channeling and transforming violent thoughts, refraining from violent insults and language, as well as not using the body as an instrument of harm but an instrument of peace. Not only do we have a strategy, but we have a higher vision of what is possible and who we are as people. That, to me, is revolutionary.

A way to begin affirming this deeper commitment is by turning our attention inward (e.g. by unplugging from the mass media, which are grabbing our attention outward).  Inner awareness is a tool to understanding our thoughts and emotions. We can look at it on the personal scale as well as the collective, but let’s start with individuals. When anger, frustration and resentment arise, don’t immediately blame others or take it out on the person next to you, even if they did provoke you. Neuroscience shows that human beings will respond negatively to threats, whether real or imagined Take a walk, get exercise and give yourself detachment from the visceral response (which studies show take about an hour to pass through before we can begin to calm down, but experience tells me that this can take days and weeks).  Upon achieving detachment from the situation, if you realize that the threat is real and not imagined, make a strategy for solving the problem nonviolently and constructively. You are not repressing anger, you are simply harnessing it for its full effectiveness. Unharnessed anger is an unlocked gateway to violent behavior which never is a one time occurrence, it will happen again; when it is harnessed, you can look squarely at the problem and direct that energy directly to it and solve it permanently. As we often quote Martin Luther King referring to anger in the Civil Rights movement, “We did not cause outbursts of anger. We harnessed anger under discipline for maximum effect.” Included in this effect is a rerouting of the violent energy so it does not recur as such.

This turning inward is a turning away from our conditioned responses that we have developed over time to maintain some kind of order in our minds. It is time we moved away from cruelty and alienation, and refused to give it a place in our toolkits of revolution. We can challenge ourselves all day long, as a personal nonviolence training; every small victory in becoming kinder is fuel for the fire for the long-term struggle for freedom. It is much harder than strategic nonviolence, and realizes the true meaning of “civil” in “civil resistance.”

Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi reminds us, “Love is that fire which when kindled burns everything else away.”

After that revolution, what remains? It’s time we found out.

RETURN TO METTA’S HOMEPAGE 

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Turning Our Backs on Consumerism
By Eknath Easwaran

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world—that is the myth of the “atomic age”—as in being able to remake ourselves.
—Mahatma Gandhi

In one of my favorite Sanskrit stories from ancient India, an ambitious rat goes to the Lord and asks to become a human being. The Lord grants his wish, and the rat is born into the world of people. He spends several lifetimes as a human being; finally, after quite a bit of experimentation and a great deal of grief, he goes back to the Lord and implores, “Please make me a rat again. Being a human is too hard—I’m just not cut out for it.”

I often think of this story when people tell me I am being idealistic about human nature. “It would be nice,” they say, “if we human beings could override impulses like fear, greed, and violence when we see that they threaten the welfare of the whole. But that’s just not realistic. Whenever there is a conflict between reason and biology, biology is bound to win.”

Arguing like this, some observers feel that we have passed the point of no return. Like lemmings, they seem to say, we must race to a destruction we ourselves shall have caused. I differ categorically—and for proof I have the living example of Mahatma Gandhi, who not only transformed fear, greed, and violence in himself but inspired hundreds of thousands of ordinary men, women, and even children in India to do the same.

When I was a student in my twenties India had been under British domination for two hundred years. It’s difficult to imagine what that means if you haven’t lived through it. It’s not just economic exploitation; generations grow up with a foreign culture superimposed on their own. When I went to college, I never questioned the axiom that everything worthwhile, everything that could fulfill my dreams, came from the West. The science, the wealth, the military power, all demonstrated unequivocally the superiority of Western civilization. It never occurred to most of us to look anywhere else for answers.

But then along came Gandhi, who was shaking India from the Himalayas in the north to Cape Kanniyakumari in the south. Everyone in the country was talking about Gandhi the statesman, Gandhi the politician, Gandhi the economist, Gandhi the educator. But I wanted to know about Gandhi the man. I wanted to know the secret of his power.

In his youth, I knew, Gandhi had been a timid, ineffectual lawyer whose only extraordinary characteristic was his big ears. By the time he came back to India from South Africa in 1915, he had transformed himself into such a mighty force for love and non-violence that he would become a lighthouse to the whole world. And I had just one driving question: What was the secret of his transformation?

My university was in Nagpur, a strategic location at the geographic center of India where all the major railways connecting north and south, east and west, came together like spokes in a wheel. Nearby lay the town of Wardha, a dot on the map thrown into international recognition as the last railway junction before Gandhi’s ashram. The rest of the way one had to travel on one’s own. I walked the few miles down the hot, dusty road to the little settlement that Gandhi called Sevagram, “the village of service.”

At Sevagram I found myself among young people from around the world—Americans, Japanese, Africans, Europeans, even Britons—who had come to see Gandhi and to help in his work. Whether a person’s skin was white, brown, or black, whether he or she supported or opposed him, seemed to make no difference to Gandhi: he related to all with ease and respect. Almost immediately, he made us feel we were part of his own family.

Indeed, I think that, in a private corner of our hearts, we all saw ourselves in him. I did. It was as if a precious element common to all of us had been extracted and purified to shine forth brightly as the Mahatma, the Great Soul. That very commonness was what moved us most—the feeling that in spite of all our fears and resentments and petty faults we too were made of such stuff. The Great Soul was our soul.

At that time, of course, there were many observers who said Gandhi was extraordinary, an exception to the limitations that hold back the rest of the human race. Others dismissed him—some with great respect, others with less—as just another great man who was leaving his mark on history. Yet, according to him, there was no one more ordinary. “I claim to be an average man of less than average ability,” he often repeated. “I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.”

The fact is, while most people think of ordinariness as a fault or limitation, Gandhi had discovered in it the very meaning of life—and of history. For him, it was not the famous or the rich or the powerful who would change the course of history. If the future is to differ from the past, he taught, if we are to leave a peaceful and healthy earth for our children, it will be the ordinary man and woman who do it: not by becoming extraordinary, but by discovering that our greatest strength lies not in how much we differ from each other but in how much—how very much—we are the same.

This faith in the power of the individual formed the foundation for Gandhi’s extremely compassionate view of the industrial era’s large-scale problems, as well as of the smaller but no less urgent troubles we found in our own lives. Our problems, he would say, are not inevitable; they are not, as some historians and biologists have suggested, a necessary side effect of civilization.

On the contrary, war, economic injustice, and pollution arise because we have not yet learned to make use of our most civilizing capacities: the creativity and wisdom we all have as our birthright. When even one person comes into full possession of these capacities, our problems are shown in their true light: they are simply the results of avoidable—though deadly—errors of judgment.

Gandhi formulated a series of diagnoses of the modern world’s seemingly perpetual state of crisis, which he called “the seven social sins.” I prefer to think of them as seven social ailments, since the problems they address are not crimes calling for punishment but crippling diseases that are punishment enough in themselves. The first—and the one we will focus on here—is knowledge without character. It traces all our difficulties to a simple lack of connection between what we know is good for us and our ability to act on that knowledge.

Knowledge Without Character

To me, the central paradox of our time is that despite our powerful intellectual skills and our ingenious engineering and medical achievements, we still lack the ability to live wisely. We send sophisticated satellites into space that beam us startling information about the destruction of the environment, yet we do little, if anything, to stop that destruction.

As Martin Luther King, Jr., put it, we live in a world of “guided missiles and misguided men,” where few technical problems are too complex to solve but we find it impossible to cope with the most basic of life’s challenges: how to live together in peace and health. In our lucid moments we see that we are doing great harm to ourselves and our planet, but somehow, for all our intellectual understanding, we cannot seem to change the way we think and live.

This is not to say we are bad people. The problem is simply that we have not yet completed our education. When Gandhi speaks of knowledge without character, he is not implying that we know too much for our own good. He is saying that because we do not understand what our real needs are, we are unable to use our tremendous technical expertise in a way that might make our lives more secure and fulfilling. Instead, we treat every problem as if it were a matter for technology, or chemistry, or economics, even when it has nothing to do with these things.

Every day, for example, dozens of new products appear, promising to satisfy our deepest desires. We are barraged with messages—subliminal and otherwise—on billboards and in magazines, on television and in the movies, telling us that everything we are looking for in life can be found in a car or a bowl of ice cream or a cigarette.

The hidden message is that what we own or eat or smoke has the power to endow us with self-respect. Actually, I would say it is the other way around. Your car may be useful and comfortable, it may have a wet bar and a cellular phone, but that is not why it is dignified. You, a human being, are the one who gives dignity to your car by driving it. If it were not for you, that car would be only a hunk of metal.

Over the past fifty years, the automobile, like so many of our appliances and machines, has sped down the now-familiar psychological highway from desirable luxury to basic necessity to tyrannical master. We no longer choose to drive a car—we have to: there are so many things to do, so little time to do them, and so far to travel in between. We rush about from place to place, caught in a perilous game of catch-up, and the price is high: nearly fifty thousand Americans lose their lives in traffic accidents every year. The irony is, we are often in such a hurry that we can’t get anywhere. I have read that commute time in Tokyo and London now is often less by bicycle than by car; and to judge by rush hour on our freeways, our situation is not much different.

Worse than the loss of time, of course, is the threat to our health. In each of those cars, according to recent research conducted in Los Angeles, commuters are exposed to two to four times the levels of cancer-causing toxic chemicals found outdoors. And as it idles there on the freeway, the average American car makes a significant contribution to the greenhouse effect, pumping its own weight in carbon into the atmosphere each year.

These things are not secrets. We have all heard them many times before, but we find it hard to do anything about them. Our cities and towns have grown in such a way that we feel helpless without a car. And as our cities expand ever farther into the surrounding countryside, the situation promises to get even worse.

The problem is that the roots of our dependence on the auto go deeper than the desire for a convenient mode of transportation. There is a much more powerful force at work here—a force that characterizes almost every activity in industrial society: profit. Under the relentless domination of the profit motive, we have remade our country in the image of the automobile. As the political historian Richard Barnet writes, describing America in the middle decades of this century,

Buying highways meant buying motels, quick food eateries,…and the culture of suburbia….The highway system was the nation’s only physical plan, and more than anything else it determined the appearance of cities and the stretches in between. In choosing the automobile as the engine of growth, the highway and automotive planners scrapped mass transit.

Oil shortages and higher gasoline prices have led us to regret turning a blind eye toward such practices, yet we go on driving more and more, drilling new oil wells, making and buying more and bigger cars. In just one hundred years, urged on by the profit motive and the media conditioning that driving is entertainment and our car is an extension of our personality, we have used up nearly half of the world’s known petroleum reserves, fouled our air, and put our oceans and beaches at continual risk from oil spills.

Now, I have nothing against automobiles. I have a car, and I appreciate its utility. All I would say is, it is important to remember who is serving whom. If we were the masters of our machines—and our lives—we would have good, well-made cars and good roads on which to drive, but wouldn’t we also use them sparingly, so our children and our children’s children would have enough oil left to heat their homes?

Nor am I suggesting that there is anything wrong in a businessperson making enough profit to support his or her family in comfort—everyone should have this opportunity. But we have exaggerated the importance of profit out of all proportion to its natural place in business. We have become addicted to it, and that is a very dangerous situation.

Most addictions begin innocently enough. “Just one more helping, one more bowl of ice cream, one more cigarette, one more drink for the road.” That is how it starts—just one more: “Let’s sell just one more new car, make one more dollar, pump one more gallon of gas.”

When we give in to that desire repeatedly, with a second helping, a second smoke, a second drink, or a second sniff, it becomes a habit—not just one more but one every day: “The stockholders want to see this quarter’s profits rising above last quarter’s. Get the general manager on the phone and tell him to increase production, bolster demand, and heat up consumption. And do it yesterday.”

With a habit we still have a choice whether to give in or not, but when a habit continues long enough, we lose our power to choose. Our feeling of security becomes so closely attached to the thing we crave that we must have it, whatever the cost. The habit has become a compulsion, and we have become its servant. We will do anything for a profit, even if it means sacrificing our children’s precious seas, air, and earth. This is what Gandhi means by knowledge without character—a lack of connection between what we know to be in everyone’s long-range best interest and our ability to act on that knowledge. It has become the cornerstone of much of our business and our lives.

Transforming Our Character

Anyone who has tried to overcome a powerful addiction like smoking or drinking or overeating knows there can be a broad, dangerous chasm between what we know is good for us and our ability to act on it. Once a habit has been conditioning the nervous system for many years, beating a path to the refrigerator or the cigarette machine or the lotto counter, it has also carved a track far below the conscious level of the mind, in the hidden world of the unconscious.

When an addiction has established itself like this in the unconscious, it can have a devastating effect on behavior. No matter how much we are told about the dangers, we often find ourselves falling helplessly back into old habits. Once, while waiting for a friend at the hospital, I saw a paralyzed man in a wheelchair struggle for some time with a package of cigarettes. Despite the fact that he could hardly move, a powerful compulsion was telling him to get out a cigarette, lift it to his lips, and light it. Laboriously and painfully, he complied. It took him nearly a quarter of an hour.

Now consider another patient—ourselves.

Few people realize that many of the food items now sold in a typical American supermarket—from potato chips to tomatoes to frozen pizzas—need an injection of petroleum at every step of their production and marketing. Herbicide, fertilizer, insecticide, tractor fuel, processing fuel, plastic packaging, transportation to the supermarket, refrigeration: all these require fossil fuels in some form—usually petroleum. Why use all this oil, when we have managed to do quite well for millennia with only sun, water, and soil? As I understand it, the answer begins with a seed: not just any seed, but a seed created after years of research and development.

Farmers and food processors have begun using seeds produced by sophisticated hybridization techniques and genetic engineering to grow fruit or vegetables to meet shipping and processing needs, like a potato that makes a perfect potato chip or french fry, or a tomato with the best shape, skin, and consistency for canning. The only financial drawback to such seeds is that they require a host of petroleum and chemical products to achieve the high yields they promise. Ingeniously, many firms have overcome that drawback by acquiring their own chemical, petroleum, and farm equipment companies. Some have gone so far as to acquire a genetic engineering firm that can design seeds to require just the products their companies manufacture. In this way, they can almost give away the seeds and still make a handsome profit.

From the consumer’s point of view, I am afraid there are other drawbacks. Most of the tomatoes grown today are bred for profit, not nutrition; these are not the juicy, delicious tomatoes, ripened on the vine, you might once have tasted in your mother’s kitchen garden. They are hard, almost square hybrids, ripened on a truck and often covered with dangerous chemical residues. They are genetically engineered for high yield, attractive color, disease resistance, and ease of canning or shipping. Only after these things has taste been considered, and nutrition hardly at all.

Then why do we buy them? Why not demand something better? I would suggest that the answer is to be found not in our economics but in our mental state. We have been conditioned to look to food for our inner fulfillment. Food can entertain us, we are told. It is exciting; it is romantic; it is adventurous; it is dignified. Vast sums of money are spent trying to get us to buy a certain brand of potato chip or to prefer one brand of frozen pizza over another. In the midst of this carnival atmosphere, it is easy to forget that the real purpose of food is to nourish our bodies.

Doctors remind us frequently of the consequences—junk food and heart disease, pesticides and cancer—but health is not just a matter between us and our physician. The health effects of industrial agriculture go far beyond what happens to us when we eat its products. They pose an even greater risk to the food supply our children will depend on in coming decades.

Consider the many different ways petrochemical products are used in producing a bag of agribusiness corn chips. First, because agribusiness farms are usually very large, a vast amount of petroleum is needed to run all the machines that plow and fertilize the field, that plant, spray, and harvest the corn, and then process, package, and ship it.

But that is only the machinery. Contemporary hybrid seeds are designed to produce greater yields than ordinary seeds, but they work best only when used with high-nutrient artificial fertilizers, manufactured in a chemical factory, using petroleum as an ingredient and as a processing fuel. Then, to control insects, large quantities of powerful insecticides are used—introducing hundreds of toxic chemicals never before found in nature.

Now, high-nutrient chemical fertilizers nourish not only the corn but all sorts of other plants and weeds that compete with it. At the same time, insecticides harm the birds and insects that feed on those weeds. The sensible response might be to use less chemical fertilizer and insecticide and to apply them only when needed, if at all. But this kind of care is impossible on a huge farm, where the chemicals are applied with large machinery or by airplane, hundreds of acres per day. The profit-oriented solution is to come up with yet another product that can be sold to every farmer who uses chemical fertilizers: herbicides. With tremendous ingenuity, agribusiness engineers have even begun to match specific herbicides to the crop’s genetic pattern so the herbicide will kill everything but the corn.

There is a hitch, though. In all this innovation, a great deal of attention is paid to the ratio of gross income to net profit, to the glamorous appearance of an ear of corn, or to the ease with which it can become a corn chip. Yet little thought is given to the topsoil, that fragile layer of minerals, organic matter, and insect life on which almost our entire food supply depends.

Although chemical fertilizers contain many of the nutrients a crop needs, they lack the humus and organic matter needed to nourish what is, after all, a living ecosystem. The topsoil’s earthworms and microorganisms depend on that organic matter. So does the topsoil’s capacity to hold water and prevent erosion. When chemical fertilizers are used continuously, the soil literally begins to starve. It loses its ability to retain water, and it needs ever-increasing amounts of irrigation. Then, as herbicides and insecticides are applied every season, year after year—eventually poisoning the microscopic life of the topsoil—the most important element in world agriculture is reduced to lifeless dust.

It does not make sense. Perhaps it might if the foods we ended up with were better—better tasting or better for our health—but they are not. It might make sense if all these chemicals and oil helped the individual farmer, or made the earth healthier, or saved precious resources. But they do not. Or it might make sense if they really did ensure the safety and abundance of our food supply. They do just the opposite.

Petroleum-dependent agriculture may begin with a seed and the desire for profit, but it ends with us, when we reach for an item on the supermarket shelf. Without our cooperation and support, none of this would take place. We have helped in every stage, almost unconsciously believing that our dignity, fulfillment, and happiness are to be found in food or possessions or profits. We have become servants to our own unintended greed, and it is not a benevolent master.

In Gandhi’s perspective, it is up to individuals like you and me to reverse this situation. Environmental abuse and exploitation are not “necessary evils”—no evil is necessary. In fact, Gandhi went so far as to say that evil in itself is not even real; it exists only as long as we support it. The moment we withdraw our support—the moment we make the connection between what we know and how we behave—it begins to collapse. As the eighteenth century British statesman Edmund Burke put it, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Nevertheless, in our current situation, good men and women have little time to lose. At a breakneck pace, knowledge without character is making drastic changes in our atmosphere, our agricultural resources, our forests, and our seas. The cost in life is immeasurable.

The Power of Salt

On March 12, 1930, when the British still had a firm grip on India, Mahatma Gandhi and seventy-eight of his disciples strode out of Sabarmati ashram toward the sea. In the twenty-four days that followed, they walked two hundred miles, picking up more and more companions as village after village turned out to cheer the Mahatma and raise the new Indian flag. By the time they reached their destination, the seashore at Dandi, the group numbered several thousand.

Earlier in March, Gandhi had sent a letter to the British viceroy protesting the Salt Act, which forbade Indians to make their own salt and left them dependent on a British monopoly for what is, in a tropical country, a necessity of life. The viceroy did not reply. To Gandhi, this was the “opportunity of a lifetime.” On the morning of April 6, before a huge crowd including reporters from around the world, Gandhi walked to the edge of the sea, picked up a pinch of salt, and set India free.

It was Gandhi’s genius to recognize that although the British had the power to establish a monopoly on salt, they could maintain that monopoly only with the cooperation of the Indian people. With his inspiration and guidance, millions of ordinary individuals changed their lives in a small but powerful way: they stopped buying salt from the British and began making it themselves. Almost immediately, Indians along the coast and across the country were making, buying, and using homemade salt. A hundred thousand were jailed, and many more suffered great hardships, but throughout the campaign, millions of Indians refused steadfastly and without violence to depend on the British for salt. This brilliant campaign, which restored India’s confidence in herself, was the turning point in her long struggle for independence. Afterward India knew she was free, and nothing the British did could halt her march toward freedom.

Today, in a modern industrial society like the United States, our most pressing need is not for salt or clothing or shelter. For most of us, all our basic needs have been met. But there remains a hunger for something more. We want to be somebody. We want to feel secure. We want to love. Without any better way to satisfy these inner needs, we end up depending on possessions and profit—not just for our physical well-being but as a substitute for the dignity, fulfillment, and security we want so much. Because we still believe happiness lies in remaking the world around us, we look for inner fulfillment outside ourselves, and this makes us easy prey for manipulation.

How, then, shall we free ourselves?

Let’s start in little ways, by trying to make the connection between what we know to be healthy for our planet and what we do in our daily lives. As many environmentalists have suggested, we could walk instead of taking the car, or carpool or use mass transit instead of driving alone—that would be a small salt march in itself, with the added benefit that the commute would not be so lonely or expensive or long. We could start buying organic vegetables; if possible, we might even grow them in our own backyards, using no pesticides or other harmful chemicals. That would be the modern equivalent of making salt. We would be healthier, and so would the topsoil.

Yet, even small changes like these seem difficult. We all have so little time to spare; and we ask ourselves, what good would it do anyway? This is understandable. Without Gandhi’s example, I think few Indians could have been persuaded that the British would be ushered out of India peacefully and gently and that a new independent nation of India would be founded—all by the power of salt.

The tasks facing us today are enormous, but it is the glory of human nature that there will always be those rare individuals who say, “Let there be dangers, let there be difficulties, let there be the possibility of death itself—whatever it costs, I want to live in the full height of my being, with my feet still on the ground but my head crowned with stars.” According to Mahatma Gandhi, this can be done only by facing difficulties that appear almost impossible. If that is so, our times offer an unparalleled opportunity.

Our hope for the future lies with these rare evolutionaries who are not content to wait for others to change before they throw themselves into this unimaginably difficult task. “Strength of numbers is the delight of the timid,” said Gandhi. “The valiant in spirit glory in fighting alone.” What is the satisfaction in drifting along with the current? True satisfaction lies in swimming against the current of conditioned self-interest. It is dangerous, of course, but that is why it makes you glow with vitality. It is strenuous, but that is what makes your will and determination and dedication grow strong, your senses clear, your mind secure, and your heart overflowing with love and the desire to give and serve.

Gandhi is a supreme example. He wanted so deeply to help the world that he dedicated his life to siphoning every trace of self-interest out of his heart and mind, leaving them pure, radiantly healthy, and free to love. It took him nearly twenty years to gain such control of his thinking process, but with every day of demanding effort he discovered a little more of the deep resources that are within us all: unassuming leadership, eloquence, and an endless capacity for selfless service.

In me, in you—in every human being—burns a spark of pure compassion: not physical or even mental, but deeply spiritual. Our bodies may belong to the animal world, but we do not. The animal, to a great extent, lives subject to the force of conditioning, going after its own food and comfort. But we have the capacity to turn our back on profit or pleasure for the sake of others—to rebel deeply and broadly against our conditioning and build a new personality, a new world. It is our choice whether to exercise that capacity, but we do have the choice.

Spiritual teacher Eknath Easwaran founded the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation in 1961. His books includePassage Meditation and translations of the Classics of Indian Spirituality.

From The Compassionate Universe by Eknath Easwaran, founder of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, copyright 1993; reprinted by permission of Nilgiri Press, P. O. Box 256, Tomales, CA  94971.

Nonviolence seen in the Occupy movement,

from concepts in Metta’s glossary

“Nagler’s law”

Nagler’s law is quite simple:

NV + V = V. (Nonviolence plus violence equals violence)

A small amount of violence can subvert the nonviolent character of a movement or demonstration, especially if, as is commonly the case, the violence is focused on in the media. An example of this was during the Occupy Oakland general strike held on November 2^nd with an astonishing, peaceful turnout. Several protesters left with tears of joy after its success, but the beauty displayed that day was replaced by a violent confrontation against the police in the early morning. After a day of an estimated 100,000 person nonviolent march, protesters started fires, swarmed vacant buildings and used homemade bomb launchers to fire M80’s at police. This incident carried about by a few protesters separate from the Occupy demonstration ruined the all day effort to remain nonviolent.

 Nonviolent Moment

A nonviolent campaign can build up to an open confrontation where its nonviolence is pitted against the violence of an oppressor.  Nonviolent actors actually welcome and sometimes plan for such a confrontation, confident that nonviolence will always prevail in the long run.

In Occupy demonstrations, UC, Berkeley students were beaten by police and UC Davis demonstrators were needlessly pepper-sprayed.  These cases actually served to point up the increasing militarization of the country, and raised the standing of the students, who remained nonviolent throughout the attacks.

A few articles below explain the effects a nonviolent moment can have:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/uc-davis-pepper-spray-incident-reveals-weakness-up-top-20111122

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2011/11/25/what-is-nonviolence/

Person Power

In contrast to “people power,” where the emphasis is on numbers, we can use this term to describe the core energy at the heart of a movement, which is the nonviolent commitment of the individuals (or individual) within it.  A million people marching in streets will not confer nonviolent power if they lack discipline and are harboring violence.  The Occupy movement, by teaching nonviolence and allowing individuals to adopt its methods, has provided good examples of person power.

Integrative Power

In order to offset the common misconception that nonviolence is a ‘non-something,’ peace theorist Kenneth Boulding developed the model of “three faces of power:” threat power, exchange power, and integrative power that comes into play when one is authentic and truthful, having the long-term effect of bringing parties together.  When a large group of students at Davis were confronted by a small but threatening group of police the students offered them a “moment of peace” to peacefully withdraw, which they did.

Trusteeship 

Trusteeship was proffered by Gandhi as an alternative to outright ownership.  Not only donations of money but cooking utensils, “the peoples library,” and technological equipment are good examples of things held in trust and used for the common good on the camping sites.  Importantly, talents and capacities that occupiers make freely available to the movement also exemplify trusteeship.

In Zuccotti Park a young woman called “ketchup” was given a laptop for her work.  Some occupiers complained, but she explained that the computer was not hers but rather a tool for her use on the site.

Boulding’s First Law

Because of the prevailing paradigm, most people find it difficult to believe that nonviolent events have happened even if they’ve seen them at first hand.  Out of frustration with this obtuseness Kenneth Boulding coined this law: “If something has happened, it’s possible.”  Many did not believe that a large number of Americans could gather in protest as they have done, turning their back on consumerism to such a degree and remaining largely nonviolent in the face of serious provocation ­­– and some may not believe it yet.   But it is here (and as occupiers often say, is not going away).

“Work” vs. Work

Principled nonviolence will always have a beneficial effect on its surroundings even if it does not “work” in the sense, get what it wants in the short run.  It may seem that the Occupy movement did not “work” in the sense that it failed to change financial structures and even lost physical ground on most of the sites they tried in vain to occupy, but it has drawn badly needed attention to a serious wrong and shown a path to change.  It has also shown, of course, that people can organize spontaneously and maintain nonviolent witness to get things done.

Return to OccupyNonviolence

SEPTEMBER 10-12, 2011 (and beyond)

We intend to create beloved community as an alternative to the fear, anger and grief surrounding the events of 9/11. This will be a campaign to lift the human image and restore human dignity through nonviolence. As a nation-wide (or wider) campaign, “Love Your Enemy” is designed to create a community of partners who are both moving in their own lives toward what MLK called a “people-centered civilization” and working out a long-term strategy to reverse the war system.

“Love Your Enemy” is:

• not a ‘one-off’ event but an ongoing project
• not limited to the symbolism of 9/11 though it builds on a conversion of the attention paid to that date
• not a partisan event but open to all who long for real security

That said, it is also a campaign that will grow organically, attracting people and groups with various capacities (this is what Gandhi called “the law of progression”).  Therefore it is not possible to specify all the ways that the ‘lift off’ of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 will ramify and develop.  Satyagrahis are creative people flexible enough to take advantage of opportunities as life offers them and imaginative (and bold) enough to come up with strategies of their own that accord with their basic principles.  Here, for those who would like to participate, we place before you suggestions for two types of activity: training and acting.

1. Training

• There are various ways to get grounded in the basics of principled nonviolence. We have found that two good ways for serious activists are Michael Nagler’s classic book, The Search for a Nonviolent Future, and the webcast of his year-long course at UC, Berkeley, PACS 164 A and B.  Both are available through the Metta website.  For the book, an extensive study guide is now offered on the same site; for the course, a set of learning tools will be furnished shortly.
• For those who wish to try the experiment, read Chapter 22 of Mahatma Gandhi’s classic work, Satyagraha in South Africa and see how many of the basic principles covered in the book and the course you can identify.  Tell us what you have come up with, and we will send you a certificate of completion (not to imply that we then stop learning!);
• Participate in nonviolence trainings that will be available through Metta’s nonviolence retreats and workshops.

In other words: Non-cooperation alone is not adequate. There must be a positive emphasis on implementing what we want to see. We can use non-cooperation when those exercising threat power seek to intimidate and harm us. In this way, we realize that the focus of our movement is not a series of police confrontations; it is building a new world based on respect and dignity.

Here is an example of constructive programme in action in Brazil. Keep in mind that they need to incorporate aspects of obstructive program when confronted by the government.

Return to OccupyNonviolence page

• Statistics show that even if violence “works” in the short run, in the long term, it never makes a situation better.  As Gandhi said, “violent revolution will bring about violent self-rule.”
• The more comprehensive our nonviolence, the greater effect it can have. This means that instead of focusing all of our efforts on outward change, we can learn to deepen our awareness of how nonviolence works, not only on the level of the deed, but in our words and thoughts.
• Nonviolence is a form of persuasion and dialogue, not a one-sided form of coercion. Respect the escalation curve model and always try to deescalate a conflict; avoid using the wrong strategy at the wrong time (this is where a strategic overview is essential).

• Satyagraha is a last resort strategy for a discussion  (looking for a win-win outcome) and can lead to the need for self sacrifice at the highest degree possible. Do not make this sacrifice before it is necessary e.g. promises of fasting unto death without first a willingness to try other strategies are always ineffective. Satyagraha is a method which “compels reason to be free.” We must be reasonable ourselves to awaken the reason of another; we must be willing to take risks and sacrifices (even to our ego) to open the heart of another.