a recent essay on spirituality and action, in two parts... - February 11, 2006
Spiritual Activism
Inside-Out Change For An Upside-Down World
Many times I have heard, discussed with friends, or read about the question of what it means to live spiritually. Does it mean that we attend regular services at a church or temple, light candles, sit in the lotus pose for an hour a day, eat only certain foods, revere our ancestors, or be nice to people we don’t like? Do we take meals at specific times of day, move to the mountains, wear certain clothing, practice hatha yoga, listen to uplifting music, sell homebaked cookies, or read a certain book? Must we try to convince others that our way is best? Do we tolerate exceptions to our self-imposed rules? Do the rules make us feel lighter, or do we follow them out of fear?
Pursuing a spiritual way of life is something probably billions of humans throughout history have aspired to, in community and alone. An infinite range of experiences can lead one to this path, but frequently people describe an awakening to truth, a vision or direct experience of God (Creator, Great Spirit, Consciousness, etc), an out-of-body experience, a deep feeling of one-ness with everything, or similarly non-linear episodes not easily understood by modern industrial thinking. Which is why the question of how to integrate this new perspective into daily life is so pervasive and compelling! If our culture does not recognize our experience, and we must, generally speaking, continue to live in our culture to some extent, how do we possibly reconcile this?
The new tagline of spirituality is “Mind, Body, Spirit.” We see this anywhere from beautiful, heartfelt letters to cheap scented candles. For an isolated seeker, it is very compelling. It speaks to our sense of alienation, and seems to cover everything within us, every level of our being. To some extent this has truth. But because it is so focused on the individual, it offers no guidance on issues like career or vocation, raising and educating children, caring for others, communicating with others, finding a home, etc. In short, it has nothing to do with external relationships, which is what our lives are actually woven of! Instead, these become the dirt we must try to scrub away in the refuge of solitary practice.
Also embraced by many is the idea of an Earth-based spirituality, in which soil, animals, plants, etc are seen as a Divine Mother. But for the millions of people living in densely populated and paved urban areas, this is abstract in the extreme—and even for those fortunate enough to have land, it can still be very incongruous with their lifestyle, although it may feel more truthful. Again the difference is interactive. Is it something you experience in quiet solitude, or does it reach out to your relationships in life, informing them and the actions they impel? From the perspective of a lone spiritual seeker, practicing and living in parallel universes, this question is like a philosophical Möbius strip—sounds cool but impossible in reality.
The idea of being in constant relationship with the universe and all of life is pretty hazy, and certainly hard to remember when we are stuck in traffic, having our buttons pushed at work or home, or just plain depressed by reading the newspaper. What does it mean, and what does it have to do with living spiritually? What responsibilities does it imply, and what does it tell us about how to meet them?
Luckily for us, some brilliant, generous human beings have thought extensively about this before, and offered many ideas on what it means to apply what is often an elusive idea— “Spirituality”—to our daily lives. Recently I was able to study the ideas of one great teacher, Mahatma Gandhi, in his native India, with three living teachers whose paths have been deeply inspired by his legacy: Satish Kumar, Samdhong Rinpoche, and Vandana Shiva. What follows is part summary, part evocation, part interpretation, and inevitably part fiction; an offering of ideas by which to live a fulfilling life, spiritual and otherwise, based on the lectures and conversations from this course as well as my own thoughts and experience.
The Foundation
Every set of beliefs must be guided by an idea that unites the whole. Without a thread to link the pearls, they cannot become a necklace.
Ahimsa
A: negative
Himsa: lion
Ahimsa is the guiding principle behind all of Gandhi’s teachings. It is the implicit motivation underlying every decision or action. Ahimsa is, literally, not being like the lion. More commonly it is translated as non-harm or non-violence. If violence is oppression, imposing a way of behaving onto someone else for your own profit, comfort or gratification, then non-violence is not imposing, not acting for your own gratification at the expense of another, and not accepting this treatment for yourself or others. Non-oppression. In this way, person by person, violence ceases to find refuge in the world. Through Ahimsa, we find compassionate, healing ways to communicate, settle grievances, meet needs, and experience relationships. Without it as an ideal to guide us, we cannot discover truth, and therefore we cannot evolve. People will sometimes argue for the use of violence in certain instances, saying that, “the ends will justify the means.” Given that we cannot control the outcome of a situation, this shortsighted way of thinking is quickly dispelled. There is no End! Fight it as we may, there is only the journey. We may never reach a state of perfect non-violence inside ourselves, our communities, or in society as a whole. Yet it is our north star, our guiding light, and the only absolute against which we must measure our actions.
Non-violence starts in the mind. Because violence is much more than beating or killing, non-violence is much more than “not war.” When we realize our connection to all of life, and we become unable to desecrate any other entity for our supposed benefit, then we have learned something of non-violence. At the same time, we begin to recognize the sacrifices that others make continually for us. A particle of oxygen sacrifices its life to nourish the blood of a mammal, dying and being reborn as carbon dioxide. A raindrop falls selflessly from the sky to nourish soil, rivers, trees, and the crops that sustain us by freely offering themselves as food. When the leaves on a tree have finished collecting and giving solar energy to the tree through the summer, they dry up and fall to the ground, slowly decomposing into the earth to become rich and fertile soil. Even a mountain will freely offer its ores for building cars! To fully realize Ahimsa we must strive to emulate the selflessness of oxygen, rain, leaves and mountains.
This does not mean we should immediately pack up our possessions and give them to the next passerby, or roll over and play dead when we are mistreated. It means we must carefully and honestly examine where we have an imbalance of giving & receiving in our lives, where we may be contributing to the oppression of another being through our ignorance or complacency (or experiencing oppression ourselves), and seek to rebalance our scales with courageous right action. If a plant gives us food, what are we giving to the plant? Mostly likely we are giving it air full of carbon monoxide from our cars (for which we also owe said mountains and the oil reserves), water loaded with heavy metals from industrial dumping, and soil saturated with toxic chemicals from pesticide and herbicide use. We cannot live without food, but in exchange for giving us life we give the plant a slow death sentence. From the perspective of Ahimsa, this is violence. To fully embrace the concept of Ahimsa means to release from worrying about meeting our own needs, since these are naturally met by the constant sacrifices of others. Instead we must focus our efforts on giving. When we fearlessly care for our land, our water, our families, and our communities with patience and love, we balance the cycles of giving and receiving that we exist through, and all can thrive.
The Four Basic Principles
Similar in nature if not exact expression to fundamental ideas from the Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutras, Bible, Torah, Qu’ran and other ancient scriptures, the four basic principles of Gandhi’s life and teachings are simple, somewhat circular, and available to us no matter what our commitment level as we begin the journey to fulfillment. The more broadly we apply them, the more we open our consciousness to the true impact of our actions. The deeper we go, the more we must challenge conventional notions and engage the full strength of our conviction.
Satyagraha
Satya: truth
Agraha: enthusiasm, resolution, insistence
Satyagraha is insisting on truth. Whatever the circumstances or consequences, truth is enthusiastically upheld and revered.
But what is truth? Truth is related to a confluence of ideas, events, lives, places, emotions, sensory information, personalities and other factors, which are in a constant state of flux. So how can we insist upon something that exists only to change?
In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “Truth is God.” We can begin to understand this statement through Ahimsa. Because God is equally present in every living being, truth does not accommodate for the oppression or abuse of one part of life by another. Thus action inspired by truth must not create or contribute to an abuse, and it simultaneously must work to expose and disempower untruth.
In the words of another wonderful teacher, J. Krishnamurti, “Truth is a pathless land.” Individual experience is finite; the universe is infinite. What we presume to know is exactly what undoes us, what unmakes us from inside out, because we take it as permission to judge others. To remain in inquiry, to patiently (even reverently) not have all the answers, is to remain with God, and thereby remain in relationship with life’s unfolding. If truth is God, as Gandhi teaches, then truth is infinite. It exists at all times and in all places, never taking the same form. It is for us to recognize it in everything, and to embrace and radiate its unique manifestation inside our own hearts. If I say a flower is purple, my eyes can no longer see the huge palette of colors actually present, or notice the way they change in the light. If I say that my mom annoys me, no matter what she says I will be impatient. “Knowing” cuts off possibility, the essence of mystery and of life.
Satyagraha is an essential tool for us not in judgment, then, but in helping to guide our response when others act untruthfully (their behavior creates or contributes to violence). Insisting on truth from ourselves in this instance demands non-cooperation with the untruth. Which is much more than resistance—it is actually removing ourselves as enablers of violence. If 1 million people are lined up to buy clothes made in sweatshops, now there are 999,999. If we publicize our reasons for not buying these clothes, others will be inspired to find alternatives as well, and the group of buyers will shrink further. The purpose is not to put the manufacturer out of business, although this may be a consequence of his actions, and he will probably feel threatened. It is the refusal to take part in oppression that is central here, so the manufacturer no longer finds people willing to help shoulder the weight of his violence by buying such goods.
But even this is not enough. To fully embrace Satyagraha, we must hold compassion and even respect for the perpetrators of violence, as it is easy and a common condition of humanity to lose sight of truth. To be proud of our clarity, again judging the missteps of others, is to create hierarchy, setting the stage for more violence. We must also embrace any consequences of our non-cooperation as a joyous sacrifice. Consequences are finite, like the body; truth is sacred and eternal, like the spirit. Compared to the burden of having participated in oppression, even if we must break social codes and laws to avoid it, whatever we face will have the lightness of true freedom. We should never be afraid of truth.
Sarvodaya
Sarva: all, whole
Udaya: well-being, arising, the rising sun
Sarvodaya is the well-being of all, the rising up together of all life as one. The ways that our lives intertwine with other living beings, with the planets, with the elements and with the entire universe is complex beyond our rational capacity to understand. However, within our relational capacity to feel, it is as simple as the love of a child for her mother. Trying to understand the web of life from the outside is impossible, but when we see ourselves as part of it, and release to its mystery, we become truly our Selves. Inside the web of relationships we do not learn about Nature, we are Nature. We belong to the land, not the land to us. To understand Sarvodaya, we must go from ownership of life to relationship with life. We practice ecological humility by default, experiencing directly the ways that we affect and are affected by Nature’s intrinsic wisdom. Though we may be at a loss to name these relationships, they are more real and vibrant than what we can quantify, so we simply let go control.
In a non-violent world, where each being takes joy in giving, Sarvodaya naturally exists. In a world where each person is responsible for their own personal success (or to blame for their failure), common resources like land and water are parceled out and “owners” have exclusive rights to use or abuse these resources as they see fit, individuals are encouraged to act in their own interest and for their own profit, the wealthiest people are revered and emulated, material goods produced in gas- and electricity-guzzling factories by children are cheap and disposable, corporations have the same rights as individuals but with greater access to government, humans have more rights than other species, men have more rights than women, whites than blacks, rich than poor… Sarvodaya seems like an impossible dream. Luckily inside the web we are literally surrounded by examples of how it functions, since it is an abiding principle of nature. Even the lion, when it dies after a life of killing, gives its body to nourish other mammals, birds, and insects. Whatever is uneaten then goes into the soil. What the lion took from the earth for energy during life is replaced in death.
As beings with the capacity for “rational” thought, we humans are faced with an especially grave responsibility to participate in the world through Sarvodaya. Nature gives us myriad examples of innate or involuntary service; ours is apparently optional. If it is easier to give in to consumption and violence in a moment, the pain we create for ourselves and the world ultimately requires far more time and effort to rectify. The longer we ignore this, the deeper the damage goes, blocking hope, wisdom and connection. Spirituality through Sarvodaya is focusing on joyful service. We acknowledge the sacrifices that sustain us in each moment, offer our own abilities in turn, and trust that the universe will provide amply for our real needs (not necessarily the same as our perceived needs).
Swaraj
Swa: finite & infinite self
Raj: king, ruler
Swaraj means self-rule, self-organization. It is the ultimate grassroots political system. In Swaraj, we do not accept top-down, trickle-down, or any other supposedly gravity fed system of rule. Instead the first unit of authority is a disciplined individual—someone who is willing to see herself as both a unique, distinct flavor, and as just another part of the stew. Swaraj is neither a “my way or the highway” nor a “someone else’s way or prison” form of governance. Swaraj, like Satyagraha, is fundamentally at odds with a system of imposed rule, inwards or outwards. It rests on each being having the right to decide the best way for him to serve the whole. From the individual this builds to a family, then a community, a region, and so on until the broadest collection of individuals that can be represented, to the benefit of all, has collected. Some examples of larger communities with common concerns would be all the people using a certain river along its length, or all the cells in your body.
In the human body, a happy liver helps create a glowing, healthy complexion. The same is true in reverse: taking excellent care of the skin contributes to liver vitality. So it is with Swaraj. An individual nurtured and empowered by Ahimsa, Satyagraha and Sarvodaya will not choose a path that undermines them. If someone else chooses your path for you, what could be the motive? Power, profit, gratification? But when a fulfilled human being willfully chooses her own way, she will only seek to increase the beauty and harmony of the world. And by acting from our inner guidance, we become mirrors in which others can recognize their own possibility. The more this happens, the more Ahimsa, Sarvodaya and Satyagraha are fed, and subsequently the more nourishment they offer us all.
Swaraj spirals outwards, incorporating more and more of life as it swirls. With respect and tolerance, it will expand to infinity. In a realistic human world, at least for the moment, it needs to be carefully bounded by the limit of our understanding. In Swaraj, no one seeks to gain power over another. There is no benefit other than service and fulfillment to be won by participating in governance. Instead it is like a call to life for every individual—“Represent yourself!” “Participate in the unfolding of being!” If a central government, like your body, is required to link smaller self-organized communities, like your organs, it must meet the needs of each community—or disease results. You cannot simply ignore the needs of your kidneys, just because they are smaller! Their contribution is not relative to their size. Majority rule is still imposition to the minority.
Swaraj requires patience, courage, and unflinching honesty. A good idea will become a great movement when supported by an entire community. On the other hand, a community that cannot find collective truth may have grown too large, or the governing body may have grown into a ruling body. An agricultural corporation cannot represent only its own seeds where they are grown—it must also allow for the expression of native and wild plants sharing the same soil, air, rain, and sunshine. Without profit or power as motivations, this idea would be too ridiculous to even bother mentioning. Clearly we have some distance yet to travel together.
Because the word Swa refers not only to our mortal, material identities, but also to our infinite and divine spirits, Swaraj is also divine-rule. Remembering this functions like a springboard for our minds, helping us think beyond our own comfort when we may otherwise lack the courage to act truthfully. It is easy to forget that our bodies are only vehicles for truth, not an end in themselves. Knowing that self-rule, and the intuitions which drive it, are gifts from God, helps us remain grounded in truth. Simply holding this in our collective consciousness is then a form of spiritual practice that leads to social evolution.
Swadeshi
Swa: finite & infinite self
Desh: place, area, country, native land
In order to live non-violently, to recognize and reject injustice, to rise up as one with all life, and to be truly self-organizing, we must commit to a place. How can we contribute to the life of a land if we do not know the land’s life? And if we are not contributing, do we know who is, and in what way? How can we maintain the water table if we do not know the cycles of rainfall? How can we claim to know the happiness and just treatment of laborers working thousands of miles away, yet providing our essential material goods, just because someone who profits by their condition tells us it is fair? We must see it for ourselves. The people who supply us with the essentials of our survival must be us. The people replenishing and thanking the soil for its gifts of food must be us.
Swadeshi is being connected to a place—to a certain piece of earth, sky and all that lies between. We do not study the place, we are the place, and through this we come to know it. We are the climate, because all our activities revolve around its seasons and fluctuations. We are the food, because it grows up from under our feet and onto our plates. We are the smells, because they enter and enliven our bodies with every breath. We are the wild animals, because we share the same land & water. We are the economy, offering the fruits of our labor in exchange for those of our neighbors. We are the dwellings, built from gifts of the land. We are the culture, creatively exchanging ideas and experiences. We are the government, listening carefully to each and every constituent, withholding judgment, allowing all to speak and be heard. We are the music, coming from each heart as a unique melody to join the joyous song.
Citizens of a nation can know individual citizens of other nations, but we cannot all be present at the closed-door meetings where international trade policy is determined by nameless, well-paid government and industry representatives. So citizens do not help decide what constitutes fair trade, or “free” trade. We buy the goods, but at whose expense? Whose profit? Contractors may build houses locally, but purchase the materials at Home Depot. Whose forest was cut for the wood? Was it clear-cut? Were there landslides as a result? Were trees replanted? There are so many questions. Where was the cotton grown for the jeans we wear? Is it genetically modified? Did the farmer commit suicide by swallowing pesticide when his debts piled up, and he had grown no food for his own family to eat? Who turned the cotton into cloth, and the cloth into pants? Was it a child? Or a pregnant woman in Saipan, forced to have an abortion to keep her sweatshop job on US soil, while the politicians here doubly decry such acts “against God”? How much fossil fuel did the process of manufacturing and transporting the cotton, then the fabric, then the jeans require? Was a war necessary to insure the supply of this fuel? Were hospitals targeted and destroyed in the course of this war, eradicating hope for thousands upon thousands of citizens and soldiers wounded by illegal chemical bombs? Does the person who rang up your jeans at the store receive minimum wage? Health coverage? Obviously, in this era of intense corporate power, greed and globalization, this list can go on indefinitely. Swadeshi is about knowing the answers to all of these questions, and knowing that truth was upheld in each case, to the benefit of all, without imposition, and in a spirit of compassionate, reverent offering. Which is only possible in small-scale community economies.
This does not mean that there should be no exchange of goods, ideas or people between communities. Only that the arrangement of this trade should be determined by the same people and principles making up the communities, not imposed by large, central governments acting in the interests of corporations they profit from and therefore represent, often to the detriment of said individuals and communities. And trade must represent only a portion of any economy, as a true sense of place depends on having the majority of one’s needs met through relationships with the land and its inhabitants. As humans, our minds and our vision can only incorporate so much information. The larger the scale of an economy we depend on, the less likely we are to feel responsible or necessary to it, never mind understand it. Small scale economy, based on Swadeshi, gives us purpose, connection, a place in the universe, and allows us to honestly face ourselves in the mirror every morning, secure in knowing that our community, human and non-human, is cared for—or that we are engaged in the process of evolving to ensure that.
Transcendence
One of the most inspiring messages from Gandhi was the need to find spirituality in daily life. In India, the understanding for millennia was that you were either devoted to God and separated from society by monastery walls, or you were separated from God and trapped in the life of a householder. In many major world religions you reunite with God only through death. The principle is the same—everyday life and unity with God are parallel worlds. They cannot cross.
This perception follows us into modern spirituality. It is a common goal for practitioners of yoga, meditation and other popular spiritually based practices to seek transcendence. Believing in a higher state of being, and actively trying to reach it, easily becomes an obsession. Perfection is apart from daily life. The sacred texts from many religions seem to confirm this, describing various states of meditation, levels of being, supernatural abilities for the faithful, and more. But the point is only to introduce possibility, not create desire. To paraphrase the Buddha, “My teachings are a raft to the other shore. But people keep mistaking it for the shore.”
To Gandhi, spirituality was not about escapism. Alcohol abuse and recreational drugs are much easier and faster routes to disconnection from our bodies! Instead his teachings guide us to greater connection with our bodies, with our senses, with our physical experience. How can we fly before we even walk? How can we be all the time trying to leave our bodies, so sure there is a better option out there, when we have never fully experienced them to begin with? A seed does not become a fruit. It must first become a plant, the plant must mature, and then the plant bears fruit. Our physical lives are no less sacred than what may or may not follow them. In the moment of living, they are all we have. To know our spirits, to know our divinity, we must embrace the tools we have been given. We must learn, as scary or challenging as it may seem, to realize the full potential of our existing form in each moment allotted us. Believing in a spiritual hierarchy may be tantalizing, but it is not for us to know our place. We can only know our truth, which only exists in the context of our experience—our daily life.
So what does it mean to become more our selves? To be more connected to our physical bodies and senses? Here are some very simple examples to ponder. While reading this, did you stop breathing? Are you aware of what the place you are in smells like? What taste is in your mouth? What sounds are coming in? Is your skin cool? Do you feel it touching your clothing, or the air around you? Are you hungry or thirsty? Did you stop to acknowledge, last time you ate, the soil from which your food emerged, and how it is shaping your vitality? Are you aware of your feet touching the earth, even through the floor(s) beneath you? Are you aware of being composed of trillions of individual cells, acting in concert? Each one has its own role to play—how do they know what that is? Each of these questions is like a universe unto itself. By connecting to the sensory information flooding our systems in every instant, and how it affects us, we can begin to raise our awareness of who we really are.
Our existence is comprised of relationship and mystery. If our lives seem more built on competition and pride, it is only our minds that have made it so. Reality in nature and reality in our minds can appear quite different. This is the source of much pain and confusion. Only by ceding authority to nature, and listening carefully and openly to what is expressed, can we begin to unwind the knot of ego that isolates us, creating delusion. In this effort we are blessed with being part of nature, so no matter where we are, simply by tuning more closely to our own inner existence, we can begin that process.
Inside-Out Change For An Upside-Down World
Many times I have heard, discussed with friends, or read about the question of what it means to live spiritually. Does it mean that we attend regular services at a church or temple, light candles, sit in the lotus pose for an hour a day, eat only certain foods, revere our ancestors, or be nice to people we don’t like? Do we take meals at specific times of day, move to the mountains, wear certain clothing, practice hatha yoga, listen to uplifting music, sell homebaked cookies, or read a certain book? Must we try to convince others that our way is best? Do we tolerate exceptions to our self-imposed rules? Do the rules make us feel lighter, or do we follow them out of fear?
Pursuing a spiritual way of life is something probably billions of humans throughout history have aspired to, in community and alone. An infinite range of experiences can lead one to this path, but frequently people describe an awakening to truth, a vision or direct experience of God (Creator, Great Spirit, Consciousness, etc), an out-of-body experience, a deep feeling of one-ness with everything, or similarly non-linear episodes not easily understood by modern industrial thinking. Which is why the question of how to integrate this new perspective into daily life is so pervasive and compelling! If our culture does not recognize our experience, and we must, generally speaking, continue to live in our culture to some extent, how do we possibly reconcile this?
The new tagline of spirituality is “Mind, Body, Spirit.” We see this anywhere from beautiful, heartfelt letters to cheap scented candles. For an isolated seeker, it is very compelling. It speaks to our sense of alienation, and seems to cover everything within us, every level of our being. To some extent this has truth. But because it is so focused on the individual, it offers no guidance on issues like career or vocation, raising and educating children, caring for others, communicating with others, finding a home, etc. In short, it has nothing to do with external relationships, which is what our lives are actually woven of! Instead, these become the dirt we must try to scrub away in the refuge of solitary practice.
Also embraced by many is the idea of an Earth-based spirituality, in which soil, animals, plants, etc are seen as a Divine Mother. But for the millions of people living in densely populated and paved urban areas, this is abstract in the extreme—and even for those fortunate enough to have land, it can still be very incongruous with their lifestyle, although it may feel more truthful. Again the difference is interactive. Is it something you experience in quiet solitude, or does it reach out to your relationships in life, informing them and the actions they impel? From the perspective of a lone spiritual seeker, practicing and living in parallel universes, this question is like a philosophical Möbius strip—sounds cool but impossible in reality.
The idea of being in constant relationship with the universe and all of life is pretty hazy, and certainly hard to remember when we are stuck in traffic, having our buttons pushed at work or home, or just plain depressed by reading the newspaper. What does it mean, and what does it have to do with living spiritually? What responsibilities does it imply, and what does it tell us about how to meet them?
Luckily for us, some brilliant, generous human beings have thought extensively about this before, and offered many ideas on what it means to apply what is often an elusive idea— “Spirituality”—to our daily lives. Recently I was able to study the ideas of one great teacher, Mahatma Gandhi, in his native India, with three living teachers whose paths have been deeply inspired by his legacy: Satish Kumar, Samdhong Rinpoche, and Vandana Shiva. What follows is part summary, part evocation, part interpretation, and inevitably part fiction; an offering of ideas by which to live a fulfilling life, spiritual and otherwise, based on the lectures and conversations from this course as well as my own thoughts and experience.
The Foundation
Every set of beliefs must be guided by an idea that unites the whole. Without a thread to link the pearls, they cannot become a necklace.
Ahimsa
A: negative
Himsa: lion
Ahimsa is the guiding principle behind all of Gandhi’s teachings. It is the implicit motivation underlying every decision or action. Ahimsa is, literally, not being like the lion. More commonly it is translated as non-harm or non-violence. If violence is oppression, imposing a way of behaving onto someone else for your own profit, comfort or gratification, then non-violence is not imposing, not acting for your own gratification at the expense of another, and not accepting this treatment for yourself or others. Non-oppression. In this way, person by person, violence ceases to find refuge in the world. Through Ahimsa, we find compassionate, healing ways to communicate, settle grievances, meet needs, and experience relationships. Without it as an ideal to guide us, we cannot discover truth, and therefore we cannot evolve. People will sometimes argue for the use of violence in certain instances, saying that, “the ends will justify the means.” Given that we cannot control the outcome of a situation, this shortsighted way of thinking is quickly dispelled. There is no End! Fight it as we may, there is only the journey. We may never reach a state of perfect non-violence inside ourselves, our communities, or in society as a whole. Yet it is our north star, our guiding light, and the only absolute against which we must measure our actions.
Non-violence starts in the mind. Because violence is much more than beating or killing, non-violence is much more than “not war.” When we realize our connection to all of life, and we become unable to desecrate any other entity for our supposed benefit, then we have learned something of non-violence. At the same time, we begin to recognize the sacrifices that others make continually for us. A particle of oxygen sacrifices its life to nourish the blood of a mammal, dying and being reborn as carbon dioxide. A raindrop falls selflessly from the sky to nourish soil, rivers, trees, and the crops that sustain us by freely offering themselves as food. When the leaves on a tree have finished collecting and giving solar energy to the tree through the summer, they dry up and fall to the ground, slowly decomposing into the earth to become rich and fertile soil. Even a mountain will freely offer its ores for building cars! To fully realize Ahimsa we must strive to emulate the selflessness of oxygen, rain, leaves and mountains.
This does not mean we should immediately pack up our possessions and give them to the next passerby, or roll over and play dead when we are mistreated. It means we must carefully and honestly examine where we have an imbalance of giving & receiving in our lives, where we may be contributing to the oppression of another being through our ignorance or complacency (or experiencing oppression ourselves), and seek to rebalance our scales with courageous right action. If a plant gives us food, what are we giving to the plant? Mostly likely we are giving it air full of carbon monoxide from our cars (for which we also owe said mountains and the oil reserves), water loaded with heavy metals from industrial dumping, and soil saturated with toxic chemicals from pesticide and herbicide use. We cannot live without food, but in exchange for giving us life we give the plant a slow death sentence. From the perspective of Ahimsa, this is violence. To fully embrace the concept of Ahimsa means to release from worrying about meeting our own needs, since these are naturally met by the constant sacrifices of others. Instead we must focus our efforts on giving. When we fearlessly care for our land, our water, our families, and our communities with patience and love, we balance the cycles of giving and receiving that we exist through, and all can thrive.
The Four Basic Principles
Similar in nature if not exact expression to fundamental ideas from the Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutras, Bible, Torah, Qu’ran and other ancient scriptures, the four basic principles of Gandhi’s life and teachings are simple, somewhat circular, and available to us no matter what our commitment level as we begin the journey to fulfillment. The more broadly we apply them, the more we open our consciousness to the true impact of our actions. The deeper we go, the more we must challenge conventional notions and engage the full strength of our conviction.
Satyagraha
Satya: truth
Agraha: enthusiasm, resolution, insistence
Satyagraha is insisting on truth. Whatever the circumstances or consequences, truth is enthusiastically upheld and revered.
But what is truth? Truth is related to a confluence of ideas, events, lives, places, emotions, sensory information, personalities and other factors, which are in a constant state of flux. So how can we insist upon something that exists only to change?
In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “Truth is God.” We can begin to understand this statement through Ahimsa. Because God is equally present in every living being, truth does not accommodate for the oppression or abuse of one part of life by another. Thus action inspired by truth must not create or contribute to an abuse, and it simultaneously must work to expose and disempower untruth.
In the words of another wonderful teacher, J. Krishnamurti, “Truth is a pathless land.” Individual experience is finite; the universe is infinite. What we presume to know is exactly what undoes us, what unmakes us from inside out, because we take it as permission to judge others. To remain in inquiry, to patiently (even reverently) not have all the answers, is to remain with God, and thereby remain in relationship with life’s unfolding. If truth is God, as Gandhi teaches, then truth is infinite. It exists at all times and in all places, never taking the same form. It is for us to recognize it in everything, and to embrace and radiate its unique manifestation inside our own hearts. If I say a flower is purple, my eyes can no longer see the huge palette of colors actually present, or notice the way they change in the light. If I say that my mom annoys me, no matter what she says I will be impatient. “Knowing” cuts off possibility, the essence of mystery and of life.
Satyagraha is an essential tool for us not in judgment, then, but in helping to guide our response when others act untruthfully (their behavior creates or contributes to violence). Insisting on truth from ourselves in this instance demands non-cooperation with the untruth. Which is much more than resistance—it is actually removing ourselves as enablers of violence. If 1 million people are lined up to buy clothes made in sweatshops, now there are 999,999. If we publicize our reasons for not buying these clothes, others will be inspired to find alternatives as well, and the group of buyers will shrink further. The purpose is not to put the manufacturer out of business, although this may be a consequence of his actions, and he will probably feel threatened. It is the refusal to take part in oppression that is central here, so the manufacturer no longer finds people willing to help shoulder the weight of his violence by buying such goods.
But even this is not enough. To fully embrace Satyagraha, we must hold compassion and even respect for the perpetrators of violence, as it is easy and a common condition of humanity to lose sight of truth. To be proud of our clarity, again judging the missteps of others, is to create hierarchy, setting the stage for more violence. We must also embrace any consequences of our non-cooperation as a joyous sacrifice. Consequences are finite, like the body; truth is sacred and eternal, like the spirit. Compared to the burden of having participated in oppression, even if we must break social codes and laws to avoid it, whatever we face will have the lightness of true freedom. We should never be afraid of truth.
Sarvodaya
Sarva: all, whole
Udaya: well-being, arising, the rising sun
Sarvodaya is the well-being of all, the rising up together of all life as one. The ways that our lives intertwine with other living beings, with the planets, with the elements and with the entire universe is complex beyond our rational capacity to understand. However, within our relational capacity to feel, it is as simple as the love of a child for her mother. Trying to understand the web of life from the outside is impossible, but when we see ourselves as part of it, and release to its mystery, we become truly our Selves. Inside the web of relationships we do not learn about Nature, we are Nature. We belong to the land, not the land to us. To understand Sarvodaya, we must go from ownership of life to relationship with life. We practice ecological humility by default, experiencing directly the ways that we affect and are affected by Nature’s intrinsic wisdom. Though we may be at a loss to name these relationships, they are more real and vibrant than what we can quantify, so we simply let go control.
In a non-violent world, where each being takes joy in giving, Sarvodaya naturally exists. In a world where each person is responsible for their own personal success (or to blame for their failure), common resources like land and water are parceled out and “owners” have exclusive rights to use or abuse these resources as they see fit, individuals are encouraged to act in their own interest and for their own profit, the wealthiest people are revered and emulated, material goods produced in gas- and electricity-guzzling factories by children are cheap and disposable, corporations have the same rights as individuals but with greater access to government, humans have more rights than other species, men have more rights than women, whites than blacks, rich than poor… Sarvodaya seems like an impossible dream. Luckily inside the web we are literally surrounded by examples of how it functions, since it is an abiding principle of nature. Even the lion, when it dies after a life of killing, gives its body to nourish other mammals, birds, and insects. Whatever is uneaten then goes into the soil. What the lion took from the earth for energy during life is replaced in death.
As beings with the capacity for “rational” thought, we humans are faced with an especially grave responsibility to participate in the world through Sarvodaya. Nature gives us myriad examples of innate or involuntary service; ours is apparently optional. If it is easier to give in to consumption and violence in a moment, the pain we create for ourselves and the world ultimately requires far more time and effort to rectify. The longer we ignore this, the deeper the damage goes, blocking hope, wisdom and connection. Spirituality through Sarvodaya is focusing on joyful service. We acknowledge the sacrifices that sustain us in each moment, offer our own abilities in turn, and trust that the universe will provide amply for our real needs (not necessarily the same as our perceived needs).
Swaraj
Swa: finite & infinite self
Raj: king, ruler
Swaraj means self-rule, self-organization. It is the ultimate grassroots political system. In Swaraj, we do not accept top-down, trickle-down, or any other supposedly gravity fed system of rule. Instead the first unit of authority is a disciplined individual—someone who is willing to see herself as both a unique, distinct flavor, and as just another part of the stew. Swaraj is neither a “my way or the highway” nor a “someone else’s way or prison” form of governance. Swaraj, like Satyagraha, is fundamentally at odds with a system of imposed rule, inwards or outwards. It rests on each being having the right to decide the best way for him to serve the whole. From the individual this builds to a family, then a community, a region, and so on until the broadest collection of individuals that can be represented, to the benefit of all, has collected. Some examples of larger communities with common concerns would be all the people using a certain river along its length, or all the cells in your body.
In the human body, a happy liver helps create a glowing, healthy complexion. The same is true in reverse: taking excellent care of the skin contributes to liver vitality. So it is with Swaraj. An individual nurtured and empowered by Ahimsa, Satyagraha and Sarvodaya will not choose a path that undermines them. If someone else chooses your path for you, what could be the motive? Power, profit, gratification? But when a fulfilled human being willfully chooses her own way, she will only seek to increase the beauty and harmony of the world. And by acting from our inner guidance, we become mirrors in which others can recognize their own possibility. The more this happens, the more Ahimsa, Sarvodaya and Satyagraha are fed, and subsequently the more nourishment they offer us all.
Swaraj spirals outwards, incorporating more and more of life as it swirls. With respect and tolerance, it will expand to infinity. In a realistic human world, at least for the moment, it needs to be carefully bounded by the limit of our understanding. In Swaraj, no one seeks to gain power over another. There is no benefit other than service and fulfillment to be won by participating in governance. Instead it is like a call to life for every individual—“Represent yourself!” “Participate in the unfolding of being!” If a central government, like your body, is required to link smaller self-organized communities, like your organs, it must meet the needs of each community—or disease results. You cannot simply ignore the needs of your kidneys, just because they are smaller! Their contribution is not relative to their size. Majority rule is still imposition to the minority.
Swaraj requires patience, courage, and unflinching honesty. A good idea will become a great movement when supported by an entire community. On the other hand, a community that cannot find collective truth may have grown too large, or the governing body may have grown into a ruling body. An agricultural corporation cannot represent only its own seeds where they are grown—it must also allow for the expression of native and wild plants sharing the same soil, air, rain, and sunshine. Without profit or power as motivations, this idea would be too ridiculous to even bother mentioning. Clearly we have some distance yet to travel together.
Because the word Swa refers not only to our mortal, material identities, but also to our infinite and divine spirits, Swaraj is also divine-rule. Remembering this functions like a springboard for our minds, helping us think beyond our own comfort when we may otherwise lack the courage to act truthfully. It is easy to forget that our bodies are only vehicles for truth, not an end in themselves. Knowing that self-rule, and the intuitions which drive it, are gifts from God, helps us remain grounded in truth. Simply holding this in our collective consciousness is then a form of spiritual practice that leads to social evolution.
Swadeshi
Swa: finite & infinite self
Desh: place, area, country, native land
In order to live non-violently, to recognize and reject injustice, to rise up as one with all life, and to be truly self-organizing, we must commit to a place. How can we contribute to the life of a land if we do not know the land’s life? And if we are not contributing, do we know who is, and in what way? How can we maintain the water table if we do not know the cycles of rainfall? How can we claim to know the happiness and just treatment of laborers working thousands of miles away, yet providing our essential material goods, just because someone who profits by their condition tells us it is fair? We must see it for ourselves. The people who supply us with the essentials of our survival must be us. The people replenishing and thanking the soil for its gifts of food must be us.
Swadeshi is being connected to a place—to a certain piece of earth, sky and all that lies between. We do not study the place, we are the place, and through this we come to know it. We are the climate, because all our activities revolve around its seasons and fluctuations. We are the food, because it grows up from under our feet and onto our plates. We are the smells, because they enter and enliven our bodies with every breath. We are the wild animals, because we share the same land & water. We are the economy, offering the fruits of our labor in exchange for those of our neighbors. We are the dwellings, built from gifts of the land. We are the culture, creatively exchanging ideas and experiences. We are the government, listening carefully to each and every constituent, withholding judgment, allowing all to speak and be heard. We are the music, coming from each heart as a unique melody to join the joyous song.
Citizens of a nation can know individual citizens of other nations, but we cannot all be present at the closed-door meetings where international trade policy is determined by nameless, well-paid government and industry representatives. So citizens do not help decide what constitutes fair trade, or “free” trade. We buy the goods, but at whose expense? Whose profit? Contractors may build houses locally, but purchase the materials at Home Depot. Whose forest was cut for the wood? Was it clear-cut? Were there landslides as a result? Were trees replanted? There are so many questions. Where was the cotton grown for the jeans we wear? Is it genetically modified? Did the farmer commit suicide by swallowing pesticide when his debts piled up, and he had grown no food for his own family to eat? Who turned the cotton into cloth, and the cloth into pants? Was it a child? Or a pregnant woman in Saipan, forced to have an abortion to keep her sweatshop job on US soil, while the politicians here doubly decry such acts “against God”? How much fossil fuel did the process of manufacturing and transporting the cotton, then the fabric, then the jeans require? Was a war necessary to insure the supply of this fuel? Were hospitals targeted and destroyed in the course of this war, eradicating hope for thousands upon thousands of citizens and soldiers wounded by illegal chemical bombs? Does the person who rang up your jeans at the store receive minimum wage? Health coverage? Obviously, in this era of intense corporate power, greed and globalization, this list can go on indefinitely. Swadeshi is about knowing the answers to all of these questions, and knowing that truth was upheld in each case, to the benefit of all, without imposition, and in a spirit of compassionate, reverent offering. Which is only possible in small-scale community economies.
This does not mean that there should be no exchange of goods, ideas or people between communities. Only that the arrangement of this trade should be determined by the same people and principles making up the communities, not imposed by large, central governments acting in the interests of corporations they profit from and therefore represent, often to the detriment of said individuals and communities. And trade must represent only a portion of any economy, as a true sense of place depends on having the majority of one’s needs met through relationships with the land and its inhabitants. As humans, our minds and our vision can only incorporate so much information. The larger the scale of an economy we depend on, the less likely we are to feel responsible or necessary to it, never mind understand it. Small scale economy, based on Swadeshi, gives us purpose, connection, a place in the universe, and allows us to honestly face ourselves in the mirror every morning, secure in knowing that our community, human and non-human, is cared for—or that we are engaged in the process of evolving to ensure that.
Transcendence
One of the most inspiring messages from Gandhi was the need to find spirituality in daily life. In India, the understanding for millennia was that you were either devoted to God and separated from society by monastery walls, or you were separated from God and trapped in the life of a householder. In many major world religions you reunite with God only through death. The principle is the same—everyday life and unity with God are parallel worlds. They cannot cross.
This perception follows us into modern spirituality. It is a common goal for practitioners of yoga, meditation and other popular spiritually based practices to seek transcendence. Believing in a higher state of being, and actively trying to reach it, easily becomes an obsession. Perfection is apart from daily life. The sacred texts from many religions seem to confirm this, describing various states of meditation, levels of being, supernatural abilities for the faithful, and more. But the point is only to introduce possibility, not create desire. To paraphrase the Buddha, “My teachings are a raft to the other shore. But people keep mistaking it for the shore.”
To Gandhi, spirituality was not about escapism. Alcohol abuse and recreational drugs are much easier and faster routes to disconnection from our bodies! Instead his teachings guide us to greater connection with our bodies, with our senses, with our physical experience. How can we fly before we even walk? How can we be all the time trying to leave our bodies, so sure there is a better option out there, when we have never fully experienced them to begin with? A seed does not become a fruit. It must first become a plant, the plant must mature, and then the plant bears fruit. Our physical lives are no less sacred than what may or may not follow them. In the moment of living, they are all we have. To know our spirits, to know our divinity, we must embrace the tools we have been given. We must learn, as scary or challenging as it may seem, to realize the full potential of our existing form in each moment allotted us. Believing in a spiritual hierarchy may be tantalizing, but it is not for us to know our place. We can only know our truth, which only exists in the context of our experience—our daily life.
So what does it mean to become more our selves? To be more connected to our physical bodies and senses? Here are some very simple examples to ponder. While reading this, did you stop breathing? Are you aware of what the place you are in smells like? What taste is in your mouth? What sounds are coming in? Is your skin cool? Do you feel it touching your clothing, or the air around you? Are you hungry or thirsty? Did you stop to acknowledge, last time you ate, the soil from which your food emerged, and how it is shaping your vitality? Are you aware of your feet touching the earth, even through the floor(s) beneath you? Are you aware of being composed of trillions of individual cells, acting in concert? Each one has its own role to play—how do they know what that is? Each of these questions is like a universe unto itself. By connecting to the sensory information flooding our systems in every instant, and how it affects us, we can begin to raise our awareness of who we really are.
Our existence is comprised of relationship and mystery. If our lives seem more built on competition and pride, it is only our minds that have made it so. Reality in nature and reality in our minds can appear quite different. This is the source of much pain and confusion. Only by ceding authority to nature, and listening carefully and openly to what is expressed, can we begin to unwind the knot of ego that isolates us, creating delusion. In this effort we are blessed with being part of nature, so no matter where we are, simply by tuning more closely to our own inner existence, we can begin that process.