To imagine nonviolence in its singularity is to imagine a nonviolent community united by the principles it holds in common. And when a group of people holds commonly the values that arise from nonviolence, when they embody the ways of being associated with an authentic nonviolent practice, change occurs.
This should surprise no one because commonly held values, whether they are violent or nonviolent, typically give rise to change. It is more difficult to embrace nonviolence only because the default setting in most cultures is “violence,” and so embracing nonviolence involves rewriting some inherited software. And as we shall see, that is not an easy thing to do. But those people who have most obviously succeeded in doing so turn out to be highly respected for a very long time: Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thich Nhat Hahn, and the Dalai Lama.
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