satyagraha
Oct. 24th, 2010 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelI have been wanting to write of this all day, and stumbling over where to start and how to start it. Our church today had a visit from-- but no, that sounds like a random pop-in to say hi. One of the members of our church arranged for-- but she wasn't the only one.
So, the basics: Rajmohan Gandhi (one of the grandsons of Mohandas Gandhi) was here, to speak about peacemaking.
He talked about satyagraha, truth-force, and ahisma, non-violence; about the power of forgiveness, and the negative power of the choice to nurture resentment; about the need for silence, for listening, for seeking out the still, small voice, and about the need for speaking up when appropriate. About the human tendency to judge a group of individuals as a monolithic mass, whether by nationality or religion or race or class; how someone who lived through the German occupation of France in WWII might come to hate any German, or how an Indian might wish ill on a Pakistani government official, or how we might speak of the "Muslim world" as though it were any more cohesive than "the Western world" is.
It wasn't anything groundbreakingly new, for me, but it was somehow ... more profound than it should have been? I don't know. I can't really explain it, but it was something I needed to hear at a time when I was ready to listen.
So, the basics: Rajmohan Gandhi (one of the grandsons of Mohandas Gandhi) was here, to speak about peacemaking.
He talked about satyagraha, truth-force, and ahisma, non-violence; about the power of forgiveness, and the negative power of the choice to nurture resentment; about the need for silence, for listening, for seeking out the still, small voice, and about the need for speaking up when appropriate. About the human tendency to judge a group of individuals as a monolithic mass, whether by nationality or religion or race or class; how someone who lived through the German occupation of France in WWII might come to hate any German, or how an Indian might wish ill on a Pakistani government official, or how we might speak of the "Muslim world" as though it were any more cohesive than "the Western world" is.
It wasn't anything groundbreakingly new, for me, but it was somehow ... more profound than it should have been? I don't know. I can't really explain it, but it was something I needed to hear at a time when I was ready to listen.
