In the middle of the gentle Indian night, an intruder burst through the bamboo door of the simple adobe hut. He was a government vaccinator, under orders to break resistance against smallpox vaccination. Lakshmi Singh awoke screaming and scrambled to hide herself. Her husband leaped out of bed, grabbed an ax, and chased the intruder into the courtyard.
Outside, a squad of doctors and policemen quickly overpowered Mohan Singh. The instant he was pinned to the ground, a second vaccinator jabbed smallpox vaccine into his arm.
Mohan Singh, a wiry 40-year-old leader of the Ho tribe, squirmed away from the needle, causing the vaccination site to bleed. The government team held him until they had injected enough vaccine; then they seized his wife. Pausing only to suck out some vaccine, Mohan Singh pulled a bamboo pole from the roof and attacked the strangers holding his wife.
When two policemen rebuffed him, the rest of the team overpowered the entire family and vaccinated each in turn. Lakshmi Singh bit deep into one doctor’s hand, but to no avail.
When it was over, our vaccination team gathered in the small courtyard. Mohan Singh and his exhausted family stood by the broken door of their house. We faced each other silently across a cultural barrier, neither side knowing what to do next. Such an event—a night raid and forcible smallpox vaccination—was unprecedented.
Mohan Singh surveyed his disordered household, and reflected. For a moment or two he hesitated. Then he strode to his small vegetable plot and stooped to pluck the single ripe cucumber left on the vine. Following the hospitality creed of his tribe, he walked over to the puzzled young Indian doctor whom his wife had bitten and handed him the cucumber.
I had stood in the shadows trying to fathom the meaning of this strange encounter. Now I reached out to Zafar Hussain, a Muslim paramedical assistant assigned to me by the Indian government as guide and translator. What on earth was the cucumber for? Speaking in Hindi, Zafar passed my question along to one of the vaccinators, a Westernized Ho youth, who challenged Mohan Singh in the staccato rhythm of the tonal Ho language.
With great dignity, Mohan Singh stood ramrod straight. The whole village was awake now, people standing around the courtyard stage as the rising sun illuminated our unfolding drama. Measuring his words carefully, Mohan Singh began:
“My dharma [religious duty] is to surrender to God’s will. Only God can decide who gets sickness and who does not. It is my duty to resist your interference with his will. We must resist your needles. We would die resisting if that is necessary. My family and I have not yielded. We have done our duty. We can be proud of being firm in our faith. It is not a sin to be overpowered by so many strangers in the middle of the night.
“Daily you have come and told me it is your dharma to prevent this disease with your needles. We have sent you away. Tonight you have used force. You say you act in accordance with your duty. I have acted in accordance with mine. It is over. God will decide.
“Now I find you are guests in my house. It is my duty to feed guests. I have little to offer at this time. Except this cucumber.”
I felt numb and torn. For an instant, I wondered if I was on the wrong side. Mohan Singh was so firm in his faith, yet there was not a trace of anger in his words. I scanned my teammates’ faces, looking for someone to respond to Mohan Singh’s challenge. All stared at the ground, humbled by the power of Mohan Singh’s faith.
~
I have spent twenty-five years struggling against racism. Worked in the South, worked in the North, saw people beaten, saw people killed, won a few, lost a few. I’ve yelled and I’ve screamed, and I’ve stopped and I’ve prayed. And I’ve wrestled with one basic question all along. Can the spirit of social action bring about change? Not just what we do, but the way we do it.
~
The problem of social action raises a number of unique challenges. In our own personal lives, we may work to remember who we truly are, to open our hearts and quiet our minds, and to see through the illusion of entrapping roles and forms. When that’s really happening, we experience unity, suffering is eased, and all are nourished. For many of us, however, the instinct to help out finds expression in political initiative—so much of which seems based on opposition, not unity. It means encountering profound differences of belief, challenging institutions, struggling for power, risking casualties. How do we stay clear and conscious in the midst of all that? How do we maintain the integrity of Spirit on the battlefield of social action?
“I will not fight,” says Arjuna, the hero in the Bhagavad Gita, as he surveys the battlefield and sees in the opposing army his cousins, friends, teachers: members of the human family all. The prospect of battle (generally a metaphor for struggle in human action) is too much; Arjuna throws down his sword. Yet Krishna (the voice of higher wisdom, God incarnate as Arjuna’s charioteer) calls on him to face the world of conflict and confrontation. “Prepare for war with peace in thy soul,” he counsels.
Tall order. We’re asked to enter into this volatile environment of division and separateness, but with as much consciousness of unity as possible. So King sets out for Selma. Gandhi begins the Salt March. Or any number of us join movements for peace and justice. Seeking to recruit others, experiencing divisions among ourselves, confronting opposing powers, wrestling with fear and anger, trying to keep a clear sense of our goals … there are plenty of places to get lost in the struggle. We need all the clarity and inspiration we can get in order not to violate, in our own behavior, the very principles and ideals we’re fighting for.
We look around, see injustice, oppression, the threat of war, war itself, and something inside grabs us: we’ve got to do something, it’s time to act. But what is the spirit of that resolve? The initial state of mind we bring to any social action can go a long way to determining its character and consequences, especially if we’re looking to move others to act.
~
I’ll stand up at a meeting of people who are a little unsure of how they feel about the nuclear issue, and I’ll see this basic, initial question in their faces even before I say a word: “Where’s this guy coming from?” It’s very instinctive, and very smart. People understand: First things first. So how do you come in? Do you come in, or do you come on? No small matter.
~
There’s one thing I’ve learned in twenty-five years or so of political organizing: People don’t like to be “should” upon. They’d rather discover than be told.
~
Sometimes it’s enough just to share information with others: the number of nuclear warheads deployed and poised; the wage rates of women compared to men; the unemployment statistics for minorities; how many children starve to death in a single day. We trust these situations to speak for themselves. Injustice will strike others as injustice has struck us. We’re appealing to collective understanding and compassion. It’s Us talking it all over, seeing what We need to do.
But much of the time we come into social action—knocking on a door with a petition, addressing a meeting, writing a pamphlet, showing up at a demonstration, or just talking informally—and we’re just a little self-righteous. We’re convinced we’ve got something to say, something we’re “correct” about. We’ve got our ideology and our scenario: here’s how the situation really is, and the facts to back it up, if you’d take the time to read them, and if we all don’t do this there’s going to be that, so you better get started, and right away, right now.
Some of the time this attitude is blatant; at other times it’s more understated. But at some level what we’re communicating is the feeling that we know, others don’t, and we’ve got to Change Minds. Changing Minds is a tricky game, especially when it’s being fed with urgency and self-righteousness. There’s often an air of superiority in what we say. People instinctively back off. They feel like they’re being told, being “should” upon. Social action, they understand intuitively, ought to be fully voluntary if it’s to have power and endurance. But we’re not quite leaving them enough room when we set about trying to change their minds. We don’t have the inclusiveness, the steadiness, the real willingness to listen that is critical at the outset of any action. It’s not quite Us—it’s this one trying to move that one.
In that environment, concerned as we are with results, we call on tactics of persuasion, appealing to states of mind that get people going. We begin to manipulate consciousness. Play to anger. Go for fear. There’s always guilt. These basic states of mind are always lurking about, looking to be fed. They find plenty of nourishment in the world of social action: anger at oppression, guilt at being “better off,” fear of violence and the greater power of others. They make a good case for themselves, pointing to all the provocation and evidence right here at hand.
Sometimes these feelings get us going—just the kick in the pants we may need. And we can keep them in check, in fact work with them. We can turn anger at injustice into cool, steady resolve. We can flip fear of war into greater reverence for life. We can find in feelings of guilt a call to greater moral sensitivity and alertness.
Yet left to themselves, fear, anger, and guilt are unwholesome states of mind. How many of us have them fully in control in our private lives? They pull us into a cycle of reactivity and feed on themselves. We begin to lose sight of the conditions that might have provoked them in the first place. In addition, they tend to be addictive and toxic. History is filled with examples of how these attitudes, which initially may have stirred people to action, went on to poison and destroy well-intentioned movements for social change. These are powerful states of mind we’re playing with. Intentionally set in motion, their effect is usually incendiary.
Moreover, these states of mind blur our judgment and blind us to tactics that might be more reliable sources of action. Caught up in these emotions, we lose our timing and make mistakes. Our hearts grow cold; we turn people off. We’re too worked up to hear our own inner voice, let alone trust anyone else’s. What benefit in that?
They also prevent us from calling upon deeper human virtues that often move us all to act. In anger, we may lose sight of love. In fear, we may sacrifice trust and courage. In guilt, we may deny self-worth and obstruct inspiration. Do we really want to lose access to all these? If we really care about social change, can we afford to sacrifice such sources of commitment and strength? Are we serious or not?
We need to explore ways to reach one another and get started that don’t set us off on the wrong foot. The handbill that announces the first meeting of a local parents group … the fund-raising letter that seeks support for famine relief … the mood of the crowd as it awaits the outset of the march … the way you phrase a question to a city councilwoman who’s a little astonished at all these people who’ve shown up at her office … these aren’t incidental moments or trivial matters of presentation or public relations. We’re communicating the spirit behind the initiative. That’s usually the message people react to first of all, if not most of all. What spirit will it be? How will we come forward? We can share information and conviction: here’s our passion, our sense of urgency. But if “people don’t like to be should upon, they’d rather discover than be told,” then our invitation will probably be most effective when it communicates trust and respect. And honesty as well: We have to stay conscious of the ways in which our own lives still lack integrity and consistency. We’re strongest when we act from what we have in common. We usually have to listen for that before we can really begin to act. Even the slightest bit of self-righteousness can get in the way.
~
We were standing at attention, just a bunch of ordinary guys called up for this situation: a major demonstration in Washington against the war in Vietnam. Our job was to protect the Pentagon, which was a ludicrous idea to most of us—about as ludicrous but not as funny as this group of people over to a side who were doing this magical ritual in which they were going to levitate the Pentagon. They had chants and dances and they were into it and having a great time. I liked it. One guy actually yelled, “I saw it rise, I swear.” It was hard not to laugh, even feel a part of it. I was rooting for it to rise too—why not? But I couldn’t really be a part of it, at least at that moment. And it wasn’t any easier because of how the rest of the demonstrators were treating us.
Anyhow, this girl approached me and placed this flower in my rifle. She didn’t even look me in the eye. I might have been anyone. Then she stepped back, and everyone applauded and congratulated her, and she looked pretty pleased with herself. And they had this “Make Love, Not War” poster, but it didn’t feel like love to me. It was like I wasn’t even there. But of course I was. Turned out there was a picture to prove it. Right on the front page of the paper, with me standing there looking like a stiff and her all angelic. The Associated Press got hold of it and it went out all over the world. I felt used. Thing is, I’d been coming around to feeling the war was wrong. But that experience just pushed me back. There was nothing among those people in front of me that felt like they were inviting me in. If anything, quite the contrary.
So I stayed kind of noncommittal for a while afterwards. A year or so later, I went down to Fort Benning to visit two Army friends who were getting ready to ship out to Vietnam. We hung out at this coffeehouse near the base. Very interesting place. New records, magazines, nice feeling, you could smoke a little out back, and just relax and talk among soldiers away from the base. I found out it was run by some antiwar activists, who had been setting them up at bases all around the country. Very simple idea. Just right. I talked to the guy who ran this one. He said, “Well, these guys are going to be doing the fighting.…”
So there was an atmosphere of frank talk among the soldiers. And I heard how most of them really questioned the war, how low morale was out there, how guys were basically ducking and staying low. One guy said, “You know where the real peace movement is? In the foxholes. The guys who are just keeping alive and not diving into this whole mess. That’s what’s going to end this war.” And it’s true. It’s still an unwritten story about Vietnam. That night, at that coffeehouse, was the moment I really decided to become active against the war.
I did some work with Vietnam Vets Against the War. That was when I went back to Washington for the first time since that demonstration when I was in the Guard. We went there to meet with congressmen and other officials and to establish this outside encampment which would be there as a statement in itself. It was quite something for guys to be huddled around fires again, only this time right at the foot of the U.S. Capitol.
For me it was ironic too, because the last time I had been guarding the government, and this time I was talking to it. “Sir, here’s what’s going on out there.…” And they listened. They had to. These were the guys who’d been there. And if the men aren’t really behind it, and they’re taking all kinds of drugs, and even potshots at officers, which was happening … well, they paid attention to us all right, and we just let the story speak for itself.
If people wanted to come by the encampment, we’d talk to them. If the media wanted to come by, we’d talk to them. The camp was a free zone for whoever showed up. And that was a powerful message: an army encampment open to all. I can’t tell you what the net effect of it was. Who knows? I will say this: Everyone I met seemed deeply moved by something about it. I felt we had real strength and power and self-respect and other people’s respect. There was truth in it. And I could see all that in the eyes of the officials. They recognize power when they see it. So we were a strong force just by our presence there.
Before leaving Washington I went over to where that demonstration at the Pentagon had been, several years before. I could see the whole episode like a movie … including that flower child. I didn’t have any bad feelings about her. She was just playing her part. The Pentagon still looked pretty solid, however. We haven’t levitated it yet, although I definitely think we should go on trying.
~
A coffeehouse. An encampment. A free zone for whoever shows up. We’re an environment, not an argument for social change. Our aim is to awaken together and see what follows, not to manipulate one another into this action or that.
We do so by recognizing the integrity of one another’s experience. “What have you been through? What did it look like to you?” The most effective political action often grows out of telling one another our stories. We’re out to share not to convince; action follows. So two policemen, talking off-duty, discover they both feel uncomfortable with racist jokes at the station; they agree to call people on them from now on. A group of women employees, chatting at lunch, find out they’ve all been sexually harassed by men with power over their jobs; they’ll raise the issue at the next union meeting. Parallels of private experience become the ground for common initiative. What’s been dealt with in solitude becomes the basis for solidarity.
It’s a politics of affinity. We don’t try to deny or manipulate individual differences. We honor them; in fact we seek them out—because we understand that before we undertake any serious social action, we need a strong sense of who we are. We have to move toward an initial state of unity, openly arrived at. The process can be painstaking. Decisions get delayed as we hear each other out and wait for consensus. Interminable dialogue … acting out … repetitions … boredom! And the time finally comes when what needs to be said (and we hope we hear it together) is “Enough already! How do we move? When do we act?”
Respecting one another’s freedom, listening into one another as we initiate action, is a demanding task. It forces us to stay in touch with principles we’ve come together to fight for in the first place. Peace? Compassion? Concord? Are these qualities among us here and now?
The basic social institution is the individual human heart. It is the source of the energy from which all social action derives its power and purpose. The more we honor the integrity of that source, the more chance our actions have of reaching and stirring others. But we must be whole-hearted, fully integrated as we set out. If we are not rooted in compassion, how will our acts contribute to a compassionate world? If we cannot move beyond inner discord, how can we help find a way to social harmony? If we ourselves cannot know peace, be peaceful, how will our acts disarm hatred and violence? “There is no way to peace,” said A. J. Muste. “Peace is the way.”
None of this means that we turn away from what is: oppression, hatred, fear. We have to look at it all head-on, without fantasy, denial, or selective perception: the brutal as well as the gentle, the ugly as well as the beautiful, the greed as well as the mercy, the death as well as the life. This takes guts, and judgment. But it can be the source of equanimity because we’ve pushed nothing away. We’re ready to take it all in and then move beyond it. So we can let our hearts be broken by the spectacle of cruelty and allow our anger to arise at the evidence of injustice. Yet we can be whole and expansive enough to retain a sense of compassion and quiet determination—a fuller heart, a deeper will. Others—those we would encourage to join us in action—will recognize in us the possibility of unifying genuine passion and quiet purpose.
When the time comes to get started, then, we’ll communicate a real sense of readiness. Our power will come forth from who we all are and know ourselves to be. It will be communicated in the quality of our presence, not just the substance of our message. We don’t have to announce it. We will just show up—like the former warriors encamped at the seat of government to protest the government’s war. We don’t have to force our convictions; people reach out to hear them. But whatever the reaction, we have endurance to persevere in our efforts, because the spirit of our action has been sound from the start.
It’s also critical to establish this more centered foundation for social action because conflicts are inevitably going to arise as we press our case, some anticipated, others unexpected. How, for example, will the cop who’s heard enough racist jokes call attention to the next one without provoking still more anger: “What are you, my judge?” How will the women office employees who make it clear that there’s been enough sexual harassment on the job deal with men’s likely effort to demean them: “Why are you so uptight? Can’t you take a little flirting?” When we’re free of self-righteousness, grounded in a kind of inner clarity and quiet self-assurance, we’re less likely to rush in simply to prove our point—only to contribute to a chain of reactiveness in which the issue gets lost and the polarization makes it harder even to start over again. We just don’t get sucked in.
We may have to wait and let those we’re confronting run through all their reactions. We are putting them up against themselves and their habits, after all. It is a little unexpected; sure, they feel they’re on the spot. But the point is not to force any change of heart; hearts usually don’t change under external pressure. What we’re doing, at least at this stage, is giving people a chance to hear for themselves. We’re looking to win a little space for our message to work on its own. So their reactiveness needn’t throw us. In fact, it gives us a chance to demonstrate that we ourselves are ready to listen. Conflict isn’t an obstacle. It’s an opportunity to move forward. You don’t push against it; you move to work with it.
As we take this attitude into the arena of social action, we’re preparing ourselves for the inevitable unexpected. Quieter, more assured, more interested in how the process is unfolding, we’re better able to size up new situations and sense when it’s better to lie back and when best to step forward. We can begin to hear what’s behind the struggles we encounter. We’re more skillful tacticians, nimbler, on our toes, ready for conflict if necessary, but always alert to possibilities for reconciliation—not just an end to conflict but a greater harmony than when it all began.
~
The train clanked and rattled through the suburbs of Tokyo on a drowsy spring afternoon. Our car was comparatively empty—a few housewives with their kids in tow, some old folks going shopping. I gazed absently at the drab houses and dusty hedgerows.
At one station the doors opened, and suddenly the afternoon quiet was shattered by a man bellowing violent, incomprehensible curses. The man staggered into our car. He wore laborer’s clothing, and he was big, drunk, and dirty. Screaming, he swung at a woman holding a baby. The blow sent her spinning into the laps of an elderly couple. It was a miracle that the baby was unharmed.
Terrified, the couple jumped up and scrambled toward the other end of the car. The laborer aimed a kick at the retreating back of the old woman but missed as she scuttled to safety. This so enraged the drunk that he grabbed the metal pole in the center of the car and tried to wrench it out of its stanchion. I could see that one of his hands was cut and bleeding. The train lurched ahead, the passengers frozen with fear. I stood up.
I was young then, some twenty years ago, and in pretty good shape. I’d been putting in a solid eight hours of Aikido training nearly every day for the past three years. I liked to throw and grapple. I thought I was tough. The trouble was, my martial skill was untested in actual combat. As students of Aikido, we were not allowed to fight.
“Aikido,” my teacher had said again and again, “is the art of reconciliation. Whoever has the mind to fight has broken his connection with the universe. If you try to dominate people, you are already defeated. We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it.”
I listened to his words. I tried hard. I even went so far as to cross the street to avoid the chimpira, the pinball punks who lounged around the train stations. My forbearance exalted me. I felt both tough and holy. In my heart, however, I wanted an absolutely legitimate opportunity whereby I might save the innocent by destroying the guilty.
“This is it!” I said to myself as I got to my feet. “People are in danger. If I don’t do something fast, somebody will probably get hurt.”
Seeing me stand up, the drunk recognized a chance to focus his rage. “Aha!” he roared. “A foreigner! You need a lesson in Japanese manners!”
I held on lightly to the commuter strap overhead and gave him a slow look of disgust and dismissal. I planned to take this turkey apart, but he had to make the first move. I wanted him mad, so I pursed my lips and blew him an insolent kiss.
“All right!” he hollered. “You’re gonna get a lesson.” He gathered himself for a rush at me.
A fraction of a second before he could move, someone shouted “Hey!” It was earsplitting. I remember the strangely joyous, lilting quality of it—as though you and a friend had been searching diligently for something, and he had suddenly stumbled upon it. “Hey!”
I wheeled to my left; the drunk spun to his right. We both stared down at a little, old Japanese man. He must have been well into his seventies, this tiny gentleman, sitting there immaculate in his kimono. He took no notice of me, but beamed delightedly at the laborer, as though he had a most important, most welcome secret to share.
“C’mere,” the old man said in an easy vernacular, beckoning to the drunk. “C’mere and talk with me.” He waved his hand lightly.
The big man followed, as if on a string. He planted his feet belligerently in front of the old gentleman, and roared above the clacking wheels, “Why the hell should I talk to you?” The drunk now had his back to me. If his elbow moved so much as a millimeter, I’d drop him in his socks.
The old man continued to beam at the laborer. “What’cha been drinkin’?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with interest. “I been drinkin’ sake,” the laborer bellowed back, “and it’s none of your business!” Flecks of spittle spattered the old man.
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” the old man said, “absolutely wonderful! You see, I love sake too. Every night, me and my wife (she’s seventy-six, you know), we warm up a little bottle of sake and take it out into the garden, and we sit on an old wooden bench. We watch the sun go down, and we look to see how our persimmon tree is doing. My great-grandfather planted that tree, and we worry about whether it will recover from those ice storms we had last winter. Our tree has done better than I expected, though, especially when you consider the poor quality of the soil. It is gratifying to watch when we take our sake and go out to enjoy the evening—even when it rains!” He looked up at the laborer, eyes twinkling.
As he struggled to follow the old man’s conversation, the drunk’s face began to soften. His fists slowly unclenched. “Yeah,” he said. “I love persimmons, too.…” His voice trailed off.
“Yes,” said the old man, smiling, “and I’m sure you have a wonderful wife.”
“No,” replied the laborer. “My wife died.” Very gently, swaying with the motion of the train, the big man began to sob. “I don’t got no wife, I don’t got no home, I don’t got no job. I’m so ashamed of myself.” Tears rolled down his cheeks; a spasm of despair rippled through his body.
Now it was my turn. Standing there in my well-scrubbed youthful innocence, my make-this-world-safe-for-democracy righteousness, I suddenly felt dirtier than he was.
Then the train arrived at my stop. As the doors opened, I heard the old man cluck sympathetically. “My, my,” he said, “that is a difficult predicament, indeed. Sit down here and tell me about it.”
I turned my head for one last look. The laborer was sprawled on the seat, his head in the old man’s lap. The old man was softly stroking the filthy, matted hair.
As the train pulled away, I sat down on a bench. What I had wanted to do with muscle had been accomplished with kind words. I had just seen Aikido tried in combat, and the essence of it was love. I would have to practice the art with an entirely different spirit. It would be a long time before I could speak about the resolution of conflict.
~
Conflict in social action comes in many forms: brute force, implacable institutions, internal divisions among one’s comrades. If there’s an opening in the situation, a way through toward resolution, we’re going to have to be very quiet so as not to be at the reactive mercy of each passing thought. We have to listen very carefully: for the uniqueness of each individual, including ourselves and all the various levels of our being; for the way in which fear and polarization outside reflect what is within us all; for ways in which, as Kabir says, we can “do what [we] do with another human being, but never put them out of [our] heart.”
It takes the split-second timing of the quiet mind, working in harmony with the open heart, to know just when and how to say “Hey!” to a potentially dangerous opponent. So we work to be clear enough to seize the time. If you’re a union leader in a tough collective bargaining session, for example, you’ll want to catch that moment when it’s best to yield a little, or when to shake your head “No deal.” If you’re working in a peace movement, timing will be crucial: when to call a national action, when to concentrate on local efforts; when to work on legislative opinion; when to confront the central government. With so much at stake, we need to strengthen that spacious awareness which allows us to take in all the elements of a political situation.
This applies particularly to one’s opponents. We can’t afford to get lost in reactivity and polarization. Quite the contrary, in fact. To hear the best possible labor settlement, you somehow have to be “in” the corporate negotiator opposite you at the bargaining table: what’s it like to have to worry about chief executive officers, stockholders, the hierarchy and narrow options of corporate life? To hear the best possible strategy to bring about disarmament, you have to understand the mentality of those who plan for war: what fears, what models of mind, engender and support planning for nuclear destruction? Ultimately, you must somehow know your opponents as you know yourself in order to deal with them most effectively as opponents.
These insights don’t come easily. It takes a great deal to detach ourselves from our vested interests and opinions long enough to take in and really feel the views of those arrayed against us. It’s hard to find a place where we can meet other than as opponents. As fellow sake drinkers, parents, football fans? Hawks and doves—we’re both birds? Perhaps, but it’s not always that easy in the midst of a struggle. Finally, it’s the work of that natural human compassion which comes into play only when the mind isn’t so busy reacting and justifying itself. We can’t fake it, we’ve got to feel it. And that’s possible only when we’re quiet behind it all—engaged and active where necessary, but rooted in a greater appreciation of concord behind all the immediate evidence of confrontation. We reach for that state because we’ve an obligation not to miss whatever possibilities there may be for reconciliation. We also do it to make sure that if the battle must be waged, we’ll be most likely to win, and with the fewest possible casualties.
~
The secret of Aikido is to harmonize ourselves with the movement of the universe and bring ourselves into accord with the universe itself. He who has gained the secret of Aikido has the universe in himself and can say, “I am the universe.”
When an enemy tries to fight with me, the universe itself, he has to break the harmony of the universe. Hence, at the moment he has the mind to fight with me, he is already defeated.
Winning means winning over the mind of discord in yourself.… Then how can you straighten your warped mind, purify your heart, and be harmonized with the activities of all things in nature? You should first make God’s heart yours. It is a Great Love Omnipresent in all quarters and in all times of the universe. “There is no discord in love. There is no enemy of Love.”
UYESHIBA MORIHEI
~
There’s a way to oppose and still be beyond opposition. There’s a way to express viewpoints but remain outside the destructive clash of opinion. There’s a way to call for justice but not get lost in constantly judging. And there is harmony beneath discord. From such a perspective we’re more able to recognize what’s appropriate. When an action is appropriate, when it’s in the Way of Things, it has great power, the power inherent in the Way. This is the practice of what Don Juan refers to as “the Impeccable Warrior”—the one to whom appropriate action and skillful means simply become apparent after quieting and harmonizing his or her thought. In this work, we must not only include ourselves and our opponents. We need “to harmonize with the movement of the universe.” As we weigh concrete choices, we must step back to see the total landscape with a perspective spacious enough so that every possible factor is accounted for.
Once, for example, when Gandhi’s supporters were stymied as to what action to take next, Gandhi went off to listen. He listened for three months, much to the impatience of his supporters, and then he set off on the Salt March. He’d heard what this could mean to the Indian “salt of the earth.” He’d heard how close salt was to their daily lives, how it came from the sea itself, nature’s provision, and yet was taxed by the British. He’d heard that the masses would be moved by so simple a gesture as claiming the salt of God’s sea. He’d heard that the British were vulnerable, public opinion at home was turning, labor unions were already sympathetic to the struggle. He’d heard that if he set out, alone or with a few followers, people would join, and joyfully. He’d hear that all he had to do was to start walking.… And people started following, more and more. And when they arrived at the sea, Gandhi bathed and purified himself, then took a handful of salt from the beach and just held it up. Within one month, seventy thousand Indians had been jailed for mining their own salt, with more ready to follow their example and no room in the jails. Gandhi had heard that there would be nothing for the British to do except back down, and they did. Just the right action, at just the right time, coming from the mind “harmonized with the activities of all things in nature.”
But “The British must leave as friends,” said Gandhi. There must be freedom for oppressor and oppressed alike, taught King. “Sit down here and tell me about it,” said the old Japanese man to the violent drunk. What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated? Another turn in an endless cycle of victors and vanquished; power to this one, then to the other; different players, same game? Do we just want to be right, or do we all want to be free?
We seek to initiate political action openly and consciously from the outset. As we encounter opposition and conflict, we try to find ways to disarm it or pass through it as skillfully as possible. But what are we looking for as the final effect of our efforts? What place for reconciliation?
Obviously, at one level, there’s no guarantee that there can be a battle without winners and losers. There’s no assurance, especially in social action, that what divides us won’t seem most real; it’s almost always how the game gets defined. So we fight hard for our views; there are important victories to be won, against opponents.
On the other hand, if we’ve not been driven by anger most of the way, we also may feel a little uncomfortable at seeing someone else either diminished or still polarized when some kind of outcome has been reached.
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We had fought for several years, and on the night the Equal Rights Amendment passed in our state, I saw one of the women who had opposed us at the election headquarters. We were both monitoring the count. When the result became clear, she looked at me. I wanted to reach out to her. She was just another woman—equal rights for her too. She gave me this very determined look, without anger, but you knew she wasn’t all that happy.
So I tried, “Well, back to the kids for a while?” She said, “Oh yes, homework has completely deteriorated in our house.” And I said, “Mine too. Equal rights for dummies.” She sort of laughed. And it was nice there for a moment. Then she said, “You know, it isn’t over yet. We’re going to win. You’re not going to be able to get enough states to ratify.” And that’s where it got left. That thing about homework … it just evaporated. She walked off; I walked off. And that took a little off the victory celebration for me.
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What’s likely to be left in the wake of a political struggle is rarely clear. All too often it falls short of any fundamental kind of reconciliation. The carpetbaggers come down from the North to exploit defeated Dixie. The “war to end all wars” turns out to sow the seeds of the next one. Struggle and conflict, then, are no longer necessary evils entered into as a last resort. We’ve come to live that way. Polarization has become a kind of habit, always looking for new circumstances to feed on, almost an end in itself. When moments of potential resolution arise, we are, tragically, not strong enough to seize the opportunities.
Reconciliation is not some final tactic, a way to tie up loose strings. Reconciliation is not a peace treaty signed on a battleship. Reconciliation is a continuous state of consciousness. What Lincoln had in mind throughout was to save the Union. What Gandhi had in mind throughout was to free both colonized and colonials. What King had in mind throughout was to liberate everyone from the scourge of racism.
The only way it seems possible to achieve such goals—extraordinarily difficult as they are—is to remember, again and again, who we all are behind our terrible conflicts. Somehow we must be able to encompass the paradox that we are, in these battles, both enemy and friend alike. We may be humans with deep differences, but we are all humans, all God’s children. In that, we are One. Perhaps we must fight … but we must never forget.
We can take hope that this essential truth is so deep that it can somehow be revealed even in the midst of conflict. The fire can sometimes be so intense that it burns its way through to a place where we suddenly remember, “My God, how did we get lost in this? This is all wrong. This is hell.” A searing realization can set us free.
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It was a simple raid on a village: “Suspected VC.” Most of the time you don’t see who you’re shooting at. At best, maybe some scurrying little figure. You see the fire, but you don’t see the people.
But this one time, I saw the guy. I mean, I saw him. He was that guy, that person. I didn’t shoot. I didn’t even think not to shoot. I just didn’t shoot.
The guy next to me shot. And he dropped him. Then I looked at the guy next to me and I saw him. He didn’t know whether to be proud at what he’d done or not. I just nodded; he could take that any way he wanted.
Then I realized that … how can I say this?… that I saw everybody. I mean, the VC, and this guy next to me, and myself. And at that point there was no way I was going to be able to go out and fight anymore. I was going to be dangerous to my outfit, in fact; I wasn’t about to be shooting.
So I went to the chaplain, and he talked to a shrink, and I did, and it went through some kind of channel, and I got sent to the rear somehow. Don’t know how it all got through. But it did. And that was the end of shooting.
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But we can’t always wait for such moments. The recognition of our unity which prevents us from getting lost in our divisions is something we have to have a strong grasp on from the outset. Any of us who choose to enter the arena of social action must go deep to the place where we are One. And that vision must be profound and all-inclusive, an affirmation of heart and soul. It must be strong enough to stay alive, often under the worst of conditions.
PLEASE CALL ME BY MY TRUE NAMES
Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply; I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope,
the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly.
I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond, and I am the grass-snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.
I am a member of the Politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
My joy is like spring so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills all four oceans.
Please call me by my true names, so I can hear
all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion.
THICH NHAT HANH
When this vision is strong and durable—when it moves us, when we truly love it—then we can take it with us wherever we go. It becomes our practice. We remember the bottom line: We’re here to awaken from the illusion of separateness. As we meet, as we plan, as we speak out, as we march … a consciousness of unity is quietly there, at the heart of our action. We call on it, in fact we look for it, in whatever comes up. And we do so not because it’s useful, or generous, or conciliatory, but because it’s true. Unity has to be what’s most real in consciousness if it’s going to have full power in action. Ultimately, it’s got to be what we “are.”
Then we do what we do, and what happens happens, and there’s no ultimate certainty as to how it will all end up. We’re engaged and active; but we’re watching the process unfold as well. And it can indeed unfold lawfully.
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The soul force is indestructible and it goes on gaining power until it transforms everyone it touches.
MOHANDAS K. GANDHI
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I do not want to give the impression that nonviolence will work miracles overnight. People are not easily moved from their mental ruts or purged of their prejudice and irrational feelings. When the underprivileged demand freedom, the privileged first react with bitterness and resistance. Even when the demands are couched in nonviolent terms, the initial response is the same. So the nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them a new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage that they did not know they had. Finally, it reaches the opponent and so stirs his conscience that reconciliation becomes a reality.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
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In other words, “We Shall Overcome” means all of us.
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And so time came for the big antinuclear demonstration in New York City, June 1982—the largest in American history. There was your usual politicking in preparing for it: who the speakers should be, the text of the call, the banner at the front of the march itself, relations with the media—all of that. But it became very clear, very early on, the whole thing had a life of its own. People were realizing intuitively and independently that this was just the right thing to happen now, and they just joined up. You’d get these reports: five thousand from Cleveland, seven hundred from Tulsa, like that, but from all over the country. A woman in the Midwest called and said, “I’ve gone ahead and rented this bus, but I’m not sure anyone in town even knows about this march yet. Could you send me a few posters?” It was great. She just knew the bus would fill up.
The day before the march itself, we held a religious convocation at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. It was the largest gathering of the greatest variety of spiritual traditions ever held, so they said. It was wonderful. And very funny too … watching everyone trying to get into the cathedral and seated before all of us, presumably, were to ascend. You had Japanese Buddhists bumping up against Hopi elders bumping up against classy Anglicans. The devotional people looked all mooshy and heartfelt. The meditation squads were all cool and mindful. There was a tough Islamic contingent, and long Jewish Orthodox beards, and long Russian Orthodox beards. And assorted motley good souls of no particular affiliation at all. Ecumenicism Unleashed—God help us! You had to laugh. And it was the most beautiful ceremony I ever attended.
Total harmony of spirit. One pure statement after the next, and from the most senior and established and respected leaders of the planet’s religions and faiths. One after another, now from this corner of the cathedral, now from another; you weren’t sure what you’d hear next, or from where.
The next day, when we gathered for the march itself, there were so many people crowded into the side streets, waiting to join the main route, that it took four hours for the march to get going. What was most extraordinary, however, was the way in which people stayed in place right where they were. For four hours. “Here we stand.” You had only the ground you were standing on—it was that close. You’d think there would be great impatience, restlessness, irritability, but none of that. It was patient joy.
People seemed to understand that the way we were standing our ground—in place, in peace—was as much a statement as the march itself. Maybe more. It wasn’t just something we were doing. It was the way we were being. The power and potential of that was tangible. Everyone felt it. It was really happening. Having felt it, it was not anything you were likely to forget—for whatever actions are going to be called for on the longer march ahead.
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