From 2nd Elementary School of Paleo Faliro. GREECE.
Proposed by Mary Frentzou
marifrent@yahoo.com

The four essential principles of Gandhi's philosophy  are: Truth, Ahimsa, Trusteeship and  Constructive Action

By Arun Gandhi

While at the personal level the four principles are: Respect, Understanding, Acceptance and Appreciation.

The success in attaining enlightenment or finding the Truth depends on how honest we are and whether we can liberate ourselves from the attachments that tie us down.  Gandhi said being liberated politically or socially is not enough. He did not mean that we become careless or adopt a "don't care" attitude towards life and relationships. Freeing yourself of attachments means one must be willing to stand up for truth and justice and not be afraid of the consequences like losing your possessions, your job or even your life. It is only when we reach that level of spiritual power that nonviolence will become relevant.

When white racists humiliated Grandfather in South Africa because they did not want a "black" man traveling in a first class compartment of a train he tried to enlist the support of the non-whites in South Africa to stand up for their rights. Instead, he found that fear dominated their response. "What will happen to my family? My job? My home and possessions?"  The middle-class was content to submit to the white man's injustices rather than stand up to them and risk losing everything. That was when grandfather discovered the corrupting influence of materialism. 

This attitude persists everywhere. We still accept injustice because we are afraid of suffering and losing our possessions or our security?  True liberation comes when we can liberate ourselves of the FEAR that controls our lives.  In the final analysis that is the key. In reality, this is not something impossible that nonviolence demands.  When we are forced by law to sacrifice our lives to protect our country in war we don't ask who is going to take care of the family or what will happen to my possessions.  We just go with the knowledge that we may not come back again. This is a sacrifice that is forced upon an individual by a government. Then, why is it so difficult for the same individual to make the same sacrifice to stand up for justice, ethics and values?

"I am prepared to die but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill," Gandhi said.

However, to come back to the core principles of nonviolence. The meaning of TRUTH is, of course, obvious. We must remember truth has many sides and it is ever changing. What appears true today may not be true tomorrow.  Or what appears to be the Truth to us does not necessarily appear to be the Truth to others. We cannot therefore say that we possess the Truth and so our understanding or Truth is the right one. We must develop the ability to look at everything from different perspectives and have the humility to understand that we could be wrong.

AHIMSA, is the Sanskrit word for total nonviolence, that is, nonviolence in thought, word and deed.  Grandfather recognized the limitations of ahimsa. Living the way we do being totally nonviolent may not be possible for everyone. It may even not be possible for anyone.Yet, it must be the objective of every individual in the same way as getting an "A+" grade is the objective of every student who goes to school. If any student goes to school with the mindset that he/she will never get an "A+" grade then that student is in big trouble. That person has already discounted himself and will, therefore, only slide down into oblivion.

TRUSTEESHIP is a unique concept that needs to be properly understood.  .Each individual has the talent or the ability to achieve our goals. We exploit that talent or the ability for personal gains in the belief that we "own" the talent or ability. Gandhi said we don't own the talent but we are appointed. "Trustees" by God and so we must use the talent to help others, less fortunate or talented than us. But this "giving" or "sharing" or "helping" must not cripple the receiver.

There is a very thin line that divides "pity" and "compassion" and we often mistake one for the other.  Pity is degrading and oppressive while compassion is uplifting for both the giver and the receiver.  Pity is when we give a hungry person money to buy food or when we feed the hungry through soup kitchens.  When feeding becomes an end in itself then we are causing a problem. Feeding should be a means to constructive action.  By feeding the hungry we make them dependent on handouts.

On the other hand, compassion requires that we get involved in finding ways in which the unfortunate can be helped to become self-sufficient citizens. The help they receive should be such as to help rebuild their self-confidence and self-respect which are crushed by poverty and oppression.  

CONSTRUCTIVE ACTION is the natural corollary to trusteeship.  It means getting involved in finding constructive solutions to problems.  We are usually so pre-occupied with the Self that we don't have time for anyone or anything. We usually want to hang the responsibility on someone's shoulders.  Usually the Government's shoulders yet they have severe limitations. Bureaucrats or paid social workers don't always have the compassion needed for this kind of work. In 1970 six young people in Mumba City in India, each working for a livelihood and committed to raising their children, decided to find a solution to the overwhelming homelessness in the city that is growing rampantly.

The four principles of nonviolence to be practiced by individuals begin with RESPECT.  We must respect ourselves, respect others and respect our relationship to all of creation.  A myth persists, especially in the West, that we are independent individuals with no responsibilities towards others. A cohesive society cannot be built with each individual pulling in different direction.  To achieve harmony and cohesiveness we must accept the fact that we are inter-dependent, inter-related and inter-woven working together to build a human society.

It is not enough to respect individual human beings.  We must also respect different cultures, different ways of life and different belief systems.  Danger lies in our becoming competitive, in believing that ours is the only way and the best way and attempting to impose our way on others.  To assume that our way is the best is to say that we "possess" the Truth.  When we accept that others could also be right then we join others in an honest search for Truth.

Religion, Grandfather explained, is the beginning of a spiritual journey. When we come to understand Religion properly we reach an understanding of spirituality, that is the acceptance and respect for different ways of worship. Salvation is when we reach the mountaintop.When we become one with creation and creation becomes one with us.

UNDERSTANDING is reached when we learn who we are and what is our role in creation. In our arrogance we believe that humans are not a part of nature.  We are here to conquer nature.  In our attempt to conquer nature we are destroying our habitat and cannot expect to survive for very long.

ACCEPTANCE is reached when we accept the differences - physical and philosophical - between human beings.  When these differences begin to melt away then we accept each other as human beings and can dispense with the labels that keep people apart.

APPRECIATION of our humanity is achieved at this stage.

The best way, however, to understand Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence is to first understand the extent of violence that we practice, consciously or unconsciously, every day of our lives. Grandfather made me aware of the violence in society, including the violence within myself, by asking me to work on a family tree of violence on the same principles as a genealogical tree. He said: "Violence has two children - Physical and Passive.  Now, everyday before you go to bed I would like you to write under each heading everything that you experienced during the day and the relationship of the violence with each other” I had to be honest and write about my own acts of violence during the day.  This meant that every night I had to analyze my actions and if I found them to be violent then the act had to be put down in its appropriate place. It was an excellent way of introspection and acknowledgement of one's own violence.

We generally deny our own violence because we are ignorant about it or because we are conditioned to look at violence only in its physical manifestation - the wars, fighting, killing, beating, rapes etc. where we use physical force.  However, we don't consider oppression in all its forms, name calling, teasing, insulting, disrespectful behavior etc. as passive forms of violence.

The relationship between passive violence and physical violence is the same as the relationship between gasoline and fire.  Acts of passive violence generate anger in the victim and since the victim has not learned how to use anger positively the victim abuses anger and generates physical violence. Thus, it is passive violence that fuels the fire of physical violence, which means if we wish to put out the fire of physical violence we have to cut off the fuel supply. The choice before humanity, to quote Gandhi's words, is quite simple: "We have to be the change we wish to see."  Unless we change individually no one is going to change collectively.  For generations we have been waiting for the other person to change first. A change of heart cannot be legislated, it must come out of conviction.

Is nonviolence relevant for the 21st Century?  Nonviolence is always relevant because it is the natural response of any civilized human being. Violence is unnatural, a learned behavior.  If violence is human nature then we would not need martial arts institutes and military academies to teach us how to kill.  We should be born with the instinct and the ability to kill.  The question that we need to ask is, therefore, not whether nonviolent is relevant but whether we are willing to move away from greed, selfishness and all the negative attributes that govern our lives to the more positive attributes of love, compassion, understanding and respect.

The choice is ours to make.