My family calls me Pancho and I'd like you to know that I love you all.
Immersed in the context of the recent bill sb1070 passed in Arizona that allows racial profiling, and before the launching of satyagraha in this part of the Planet, I was delighted to participate in another Wednesday's SOULar charger. These were the three points that I shared that night at the Kindness Temple:
1. A deeper understanding
2. Satyagraha (touching the heart of opponents)
3. Depaving the mind
1. A deeper understanding
From my point of view, compassion is the deepest form of understanding, because when you look with the eyes of compassion you "wear the shoes" of the other person, only to discover that there is no "other" person. We are one. And when one understands one loves, and when one loves one naturally acts in a way that can relief the suffering of "others". In reality, we are releasing our own suffering to heal as a family.
That is why injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
When injustice happens we must act, not to exacerbate the fractures in our communities with more violence but to embrace love and truth. And for that, we require courage. This is collective dignity. To be nonviolent requires way more courage than to resort to physical force but are we brave enough to be nonviolent?
2. Satyagraha (touching the heart of opponents)
Satyagraha (or clinging to truth or soulforce) is a matter of the heart. Gandhi invented this term with his people in South Africa to refer the positive and spiritually based form of resistance that starts in the heart of the resister and inevitably produces creative action. A satyagrahi tries to hold to the truth in every situation.
Some times rational argumentation between opposite points of view tend to get stale until one of the parts resorts to force (usually the part with more physical power). That's why one has to go beyond the mind. Gandhi explained:
“Things of fundamental importance to the people must be purchased with their suffering. You must be able to appeal not only to reason, but to the heart also.”
He added:
“What Satyagraha in these cases does is not to suppress reason but to free it from inertia and to establish its sovereignty over prejudice, hatred, and other baser passions. In other words, if one may paradoxically put it, it does not enslave, it compels reason to be free.”
During the performance of satyagraha one tries to win the heart of the opponent by liberating his mind, by converting an enemy into a friend, into a brother.
3. Depaving the mind and the heart A child has a pure mind. A child's innocence has no conditioned thoughts. As we get old, we build up prejudices and rigid ways to process the information surrounding us. The traditional education systems, especially in the so-called West, pave our minds with a thick layer of the concrete of materialism, consumerism, scarcity, competition and isolation. We pave our minds with useless thoughts of having more and more, greed and violence at its best, that impede us to grow fully as human beings. We pave our hearts with apathy and indifference to the suffereing of "others".
To be in receptive silence, especially here on Wednesdays, is a way to depave the mind and the heart to see again, now with the lens of experience, reality as it is. One needs intelligence to convert data into knowledge, but one needs experience to convert knowledge into wisdom.
On Jun 24, 2010 Pancho wrote :
My family calls me Pancho and I'd like you to know that I love you all.
Immersed in the context of the recent bill sb1070 passed in Arizona that allows racial profiling, and before the launching of satyagraha in this part of the Planet, I was delighted to participate in another Wednesday's SOULar charger. These were the three points that I shared that night at the Kindness Temple:
1. A deeper understanding
2. Satyagraha (touching the heart of opponents)
3. Depaving the mind
1. A deeper understanding
From my point of view, compassion is the deepest form of understanding, because when you look with the eyes of compassion you "wear the shoes" of the other person, only to discover that there is no "other" person. We are one. And when one understands one loves, and when one loves one naturally acts in a way that can relief the suffering of "others". In reality, we are releasing our own suffering to heal as a family.
That is why injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
When injustice happens we must act, not to exacerbate the fractures in our communities with more violence but to embrace love and truth. And for that, we require courage. This is collective dignity. To be nonviolent requires way more courage than to resort to physical force but are we brave enough to be nonviolent?
2. Satyagraha (touching the heart of opponents)
Satyagraha (or clinging to truth or soulforce) is a matter of the heart. Gandhi invented this term with his people in South Africa to refer the positive and spiritually based form of resistance that starts in the heart of the resister and inevitably produces creative action. A satyagrahi tries to hold to the truth in every situation.
Some times rational argumentation between opposite points of view tend to get stale until one of the parts resorts to force (usually the part with more physical power). That's why one has to go beyond the mind. Gandhi explained:
“Things of fundamental importance to the people must be purchased with their suffering. You must be able to appeal not only to reason, but to the heart also.”
He added:
“What Satyagraha in these cases does is not to suppress reason but to free it from inertia and to establish its sovereignty over prejudice, hatred, and other baser passions. In other words, if one may paradoxically put it, it does not enslave, it compels reason to be free.”
During the performance of satyagraha one tries to win the heart of the opponent by liberating his mind, by converting an enemy into a friend, into a brother.
3. Depaving the mind and the heart
A child has a pure mind. A child's innocence has no conditioned thoughts. As we get old, we build up prejudices and rigid ways to process the information surrounding us. The traditional education systems, especially in the so-called West, pave our minds with a thick layer of the concrete of materialism, consumerism, scarcity, competition and isolation. We pave our minds with useless thoughts of having more and more, greed and violence at its best, that impede us to grow fully as human beings. We pave our hearts with apathy and indifference to the suffereing of "others".
To be in receptive silence, especially here on Wednesdays, is a way to depave the mind and the heart to see again, now with the lens of experience, reality as it is. One needs intelligence to convert data into knowledge, but one needs experience to convert knowledge into wisdom.
Let's depave our minds and hearts!
Let's join the learning (r)evolution! The ahimsa (r)evolution!
Let's Planetize the Movement.
May all become compassionate, courageous and wise.
Pancho