Several years ago I had the honor of hearing Arun Gandhi speak at Marylhurst University outside of Portland, Oregon. It was a powerful and deeply moving experience. Dr. Gandhi is also among the countless courageous and deeply loving human beings whose wisdom has nourished and supported me in my awakening. I believe it is essential that we humans seek out as teachers, mentors, healers, authors, journalists, and other resources of information those who are grounded in integrity, courage, truth, wisdom, compassion, and love. They are the ones who awaken in us what we have forgotten and who illuminate a path of peace both within ourselves, with one another, and in this beautiful world we share. These are the stories which counter the toxic ones of our culture and instead nourish our hearts, minds, spirits, and souls such that we are increasingly empowered to act in ways which are in the highest good.
Bless us all on our journeys ~ Molly
Quotes by Arun Gandhi,
Grandson of Mohandas Gandhi
This
world is what we have made of it. If it is ruthless today it is because
we have made it ruthless by our attitudes. If we change ourselves we
can change the world, and changing ourselves begins with changing our
language and methods of communication.
Nonviolence is something very powerful, and the power behind it is not weapons, but the support of the people.
Nonviolence, therefore, can be described as an honest and diligent pursuit of truth. It could also mean the search for the meaning of life or the purpose of life, questions that have tormented humankind for centuries. The fact that we have not been able to find satisfactory answers to these questions does not mean there is no answer. It only means we have not searched with any degree of honesty. The search has to be both external and internal. We seek to ignore this crucial search because the sacrifices it demands are revolutionary. It means moving away from greed, selfishness, possessiveness, and dominance to love, compassion, understanding, and respect.
So many people around the world have used nonviolence as a way to resolve a conflict that they faced in their lives. And they continue to use it everywhere all over the world there. And I think, in a way, nonviolence is our nature. Violence is not really our nature. If violence was our nature, we wouldn’t need military academies and martial arts institutes to teach us how to kill and destroy people. We ought to have been born with those instincts. But the fact that we have to learn the art of killing means that it’s a learned experience. And we can always unlearn it.
People need to realize that they need to take the initiative.
The ultimate object of education should be, Gandhi said, to help create not only a balanced and harmonious individual but also a balanced and harmonious society where true justice prevails, where there is no unnatural division between the "haves" and the "have-nots," and where everybody is assured of a living wage and the right to live and the right to freedom.
Satyagraha is the pursuit of truth. My grandfather believed that truth should be the cornerstone of everybody’s life and that we must dedicate our lives to pursuing truth, to finding out the truth in our lives. And so his entire philosophy was the philosophy of life. It was not just a philosophy for conflict resolution, but something that we have to imbibe in our life and live it all the time so that we can improve and become better human beings.
...violence is destroying us. You know, we’re seeing violence growing every day in our streets, in our homes, in our towns, in our cities, in the world itself. Everywhere we turn, we see violence and hate and prejudice and anger and all of these negative emotions that are destroying humanity. And we have to wake up and take note of this and try to change our course, so that we can create a world of peace and harmony where future generations can live happily together.
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