TIBETSPACE

TENZIN TSUNDUE'S 'KORA' TO APPEAR AS A DRAMATIC PRODUCTION

I learned yesterday in the Times of India that Tenzin Tsundue's book, Kora, a series of poems and stories, will be transformed into a play by Quasar Thakore Padamsee.  The play will be done in English, which will secure a larger audience for the questions that Tsundue and Padamsee will address.  Central among these questions, according to Padamsee, is a very simple one:  "What happens when words aren't enough?"

It's a natural question for the Tibetans.

For Westerners, it is often difficult to know precisely how the Tibetan struggle is faring.  Our news agencies are largely oblivious to it because China has become the world's factory in many ways, and we are their customers, whose silence is purchased with Chinese-made goods. And unless we happen to be in regular contact with Tibetans who will talk about these issues with us, we are left to put together our impressions from the scattered reports we gather from the various media sources that we do trust.

That Tsundue and Padamsee are working together on this project should bring another and necessary perspective to the complex issues that Tibetans face every day, both in exile and in Tibet.  Art opens avenues of conversation that politics must, by definition, avoid.  My only fear is that I won't get to see it.  

Let us hope that it will be taped and made available to the larger English-speaking audience.  And thanks to Tsundue and Padamsee, for their continual efforts and good work.

WHEN CHAOS IS ENOUGH—MORE ON WHY IT'S KICKING OFF EVERYWHERE

Paul Mason's book, Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere, ought to be required reading for anyone interested in the recent social movements that have been agitating for democracy around the globe.  I made this clear in an earlier post. The book has had a generally favorable reception, and unless you're in the middle of one of these movements, I think Mason will give you a lot to think about as we face our rapidly unfolding future, or futures—if you buy the technological multi-faceted horizon that our exploding social media are busily preparing for us.  

The book has been gently chastised, however, for dropping the names of serious people—Jameson, Zizek—whose high purpose doesn't quite make it into Mason's prose.  Maybe.

But I don't really care what Jameson might think about Mohamed Bouazizi, for example, the Tunisian who set himself on fire and ignited the Arab Spring. There are, I realize, explainable economic reasons why Bouazizi was making $140 a month, and why he was trying to support his sister's college career with those minimal wages.  The ideological analysis, however, amounts to an asbestos shield against the man's flaming sacrifice, and while our economic and political theorists will weigh in with their abstractions, these abstractions have none of the power that social media brought to Bouazizi's action.  In fact, it turns out that there are segments of the human psyche on display in Tunisia that theory can't touch, and the attempt to understand it theoretically always arrives too late, often devours the event within its own conceptual apparatus, and most likely disgraces the essential and informing spirit that might otherwise define a compassionate citizenry. Mason has resisted the theorizing that will inevitably arrive later, after things settle down, when theory is once again possible.  He ought to be congratulated for that.

After all, theory can't exist in the moment, particularly the social-media moment, because theory requires stable phenomena that support extended analysis. As Mason points out, many of the occupiers and protesters resist ideology of any sort and move in a kind of serendipitous way from commitment to retreat to apathy to employment to attack, and all of these forms manifest over a matter of weeks.  A moving target.  

Does this signal a lack of commitment?  Naivete? Immaturity? Ignorance?  Who cares? Theoretical analysis is a form of intellectual targeting, and in this case, to get out of the line of fire, the protestors, either driven by the roulette wheel of Tweeted realities or by a loose concern for managing and publicizing social chaos, have withdrawn themselves from the theoretician's view.

Good for them.  Mason's book captures this perspective accurately, and for that alone, ought to be praised.

IT'S KICKING OFF EVERYWHERE: FIVE THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND AS THE REVOLUTION GETS TELEVISED

If you're like me, and you don't work for the BBC or live in Cairo, you might have missed Paul Mason's important blog posting over a year ago, "Twenty Reasons Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere."  The "it" he refers to in the title are the democratic movements that have been sequentially kicking off throughout the Middle East, as well as the "occupy" movements that have popped up around the globe.  Mason has recently published a book on the subject that provides the back-stories for the twenty reasons he cites in his blog.  The book is called Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere:  The New Global Revolutions, and it's a necessary narrative of these movements, the personalities that drive them, and the social media that facilitate them.  Mason's a wonderful writer; he's a field journalist, and his prose bristles with the pressures of living in the field. 

As I was reading the book—which I'd recommend everyone do—I made some notes that ultimately pertain to what's happening in Tibet. Think China, think economic power, think oppression, and how it can be dissipated.

1. Free-market capitalism has gone South, and whenever it decides to return, it will do so badly damaged.  Few people trust it to solve our problems, even those who have profited most by its excesses.  The moment capitalism proves itself an unreliable system for acquiring more profit, the profit-makers will leave it behind.
2. The alliance between the emerging social technologies and the push for self-determination is not exaggerated.  The alliance is real, it's working, and it's undisciplined, so it has problems of implementation that lead to surprising, or unplanned, results.  This is why it seems, at times, chaotic.  But for those who are in the midst of the movement, the so-called chaos has a revisionary energy to it.  Regimes topple because the created chaos makes for a moving target of revolutionary bodies.  Regimes appear orderly in this model, and oppressive.  And they lose.
3. While self-determination and freedom, at least since Thom Paine's Rights of Man (1791), are regarded as natural human rights, the new social technology extends the dream of freedom and self-determination to populations that might previously have found that dream unattainable, unthinkable, or inconceivable.  The technology, in a very real sense, has become for political activists the Liberty-Making Dream Machine.  
4. Old folks, like me, think it's all about "the internet" because we've never gotten over the fact that we can read Tolstoy online, and because our eyes still sparkle when we think about the days before email. To the young people who are currently challenging these oppressive regimes, the internet is nothing more than a cup of coffee: always useful, almost always around, but always unreliable, because it doesn't do what a macchiato will do—focus, drive, and sustain at a very high bit rate.  For political change nowadays, you avoid the firewall by jumping over the firewall with texts, street art, graffiti, memes, music-sharing, and constant movement across the spectrum of expression available to the newly operative, political agents of change. A t-shirt with the right graphic, camera-phoned and messaged across north Africa, does more to promote social change and political reform than any sponsored bill in any deliberative house of duly elected officials.  "Due process" is now a mystifying phrase that in the current milieu has been relegated to a big, dusty dictionary that no one reads.
5. Knowledge is no longer a vertical proposition (except in universities) where you begin on the ground floor and work your way gradually upward through increasing complexities and an expanding network of relevance.  So authority no longer resides at the top, where in the penthouse are gathered those who have survived the trials and tribulations of traditional learning. Authority belongs now to those who most effectively use this text, or that song, or this picture, or that graphic to effect this change.  Period.  The knowledge base now has been levelled—it's a horizontal affair, and its relevance is judged by the changes it effects. If you decide to make the world a better place, most of what you want to read, hear, or see to bring about that betterment is readily available to you without being examined, tested, or credentialed.  Here's the kicker:  to a certain degree, this has always been the case (I'm thinking now about how many writers I love that avoided the American educational gauntlet . . . like, all of them?), but social media encourages visionary renovators to bypass the indoctrination of a standardized American university-think education.  This is a good thing.  And we have the new media to thank for it. So the old road is rapidly aging.  And if you're old like me you know the rest of the lyric. 
6. IMO.

IT'S A NO-BRAINER FOR WESTERNERS: SUPPORT TIBETAN SELF-DETERMINATION, BUT KNOW HOW TO DO IT

A recent article in Tibettruth argues that many Western Tibetan Buddhists have ceded to the Dalai Lama an infallibility that approaches the same sort of infallibility that has historically been given to the Pope.  This is a problem, the article points out, because these same Westerners not only take spiritual advice from the Dalai Lama, but they also accept his views on the future of Tibet.  They take his political advice as well.  As a result, they support autonomy, as opposed to independence, for the Tibetans who are currently living in Tibet.  Appropriating a phrase from the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, supporters of autonomy have branded this position as the "Middle Way."

Side-note:  I don't know how anyone could ascribe to a radical thinker like the Buddha anything approaching a compromise with oppression, violence, lying, rape, mutilation, starvation, torture, and cultural genocide, but I will leave that discussion to the Buddhist scholars.  To call political  autonomy the "Middle Way" is, at least, a stroke of branding genius that ad agencies around the world ought to examine.

But to return to my main point:  I agree with this article in Tibettruth because I used to be one of those Westerners.  Many of us have at times gotten so involved with Tibetan spirituality that we have allowed its most able spokesman, the Dalai Lama, to influence our opinions about the political future of the Tibetan people.  And in that discussion, His Holiness represents one voice.

The moral of the story? Tibetans get to decide for themselves how they want their own futures to unfold.  

When I realized that I was an American who had grown up with the notion of self-determination as a national and founding principle, I also realized that if I were going to have an opinion about Tibet's future, I would have to understand first how Tibetans envisioned their own future.  And I would have to extend to them the same priviliges I would want extended to me—I would have to honor the notion of self-determination.

Many Tibetans have now determined that they want to be free and independent, and they have made that position clear.  Even if only one Tibetan, however, had articulated this position, I don't see how an American, or any Westerner, could do anything but honor and support that position. 

And we mustn't confuse discussions concerning the goal of freedom with those that address the possibility of achieving it.  Those are two different conversations.  The complexity involved with determining whether or not independence is a realistic goal does not compromise the determination that independence is still the desired goal.

The struggle for independence and freedom, wherever it occurs, deserves the unqualified support of all Westerners.  This is no less true of Tibet now than it was of the American colonies in the eighteenth century.  As Americans, we honor our past by recognizing that Tibet would envision its own future in a similar fashion.

THUPTEN JINPA, HHDL'S TRANSLATOR, SPEAKS OUT ON THE CURRENT SITUATION IN TIBET

On February 5th, 2012, Thupten Jinpa, the principal translator of the Dalai Lama, tweeted:  "Three more Tibetans have sacrificed their precious lives.  With these self-immolations, our struggle has probably crossed a threshold."  When I read this, I wondered specifically about the the word, "threshold."

What did he mean?

On March 8, he answered my question.  Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Jinpala said that "there is a growing recognition among Tibetans that Beijing lacks the political imagination and will to resolve the question of Tibet."  Jinpala also indicated that the Chinese leadership had only a narrow window of opportunity now to settle the Tibetan question, and if it missed this opportunity, then it would lose Tibet altogether.  Tibetans in Tibet, he reasoned, were crossing the threshold.

Many believe this has already happened.

Jinpala's statement is important not only for what it says, but perhaps most importantly, for the simple fact that he is the Dalai Lama's translator, and in many ways, is as close to His Holiness as anyone.  He has been a monk, and he understands the monastic perspective.  

And he is now sounding the warning signals about the serious nature of Tibetan unrest, and by implication, about the very real struggle in Tibet for nothing less than independence.

That is a statement of significance.  Or so it seems to me.

ESPNU GETS BEHIND TIBET!

The TEXT Program at the University of Arkansas is an oral-history project that Geshe Dorjee and I conceived in 2007 on our first trip together to India.  As I followed Geshe la through the Tibetan settlements across India, and as I spoke with the Tibetans I met there, I realized that the elderly Tibetans were, in effect, walking treasure troves of vital information concerning old Tibet.  After long conversations with Geshe la and my wife, we decided that these stories needed to be recorded and that our students at Arkansas should be on the front lines of gathering these stories.

We returned to India, with students, in 2008, 2009, and 2011.  The trips were hard, the learning curves were steep, and the footage we gathered was precious.  We are now finally bringing some of this work to fruition, and today, January 4, at 4:00 pm CST, ESPNU will air a brief segment on The TEXT Program.  

Geshe la and I, of course, are excited that the hard work of our students will get this kind of recognition, but most importantly, we hope that this show will further raise awareness among Americans concerning the plight of the Tibetans, both in India and in Tibet.  

It is important to realize that the Tibetans with whom we spoke represent, in effect, the six million Tibetans currently living in Tibet—the Tibetans whose voices have been severly compromised.  (They have not been silenced.)  We can all benefit from listening to what these individuals living in exile have to say; their voice, rising from a core of nonviolence, is a vital one as we move into the new millennium.  But most importantly, we are listening to the voices of self-determination, of freedom, and of endurance.

When His Holiness the Dalai Lama visited the campus of the University of Arkansas in May 2011, he had kind words to say about The TEXT Program, and we are deeply grateful to him for taking the time from his busy schedule to have a look at what we have done here on this campus.  None of this would have happened, however, without a supportive University:  from the staff in the Fulbright College Honors Program and our Office of Special Events, upwards through our Dean, Provost, Chancellor, and President . . . everyone came instantly on board with His Holiness's visit, and everyone has been supportive of the The TEXT Program.  

Geshe la, myself, and our students would like to thank everyone who made this day possible!  We all hope that it is the beginning of an enduring relationship with the Tibetan people as they work amongst themselves to secure their future as a free and self-governing people.

SO YOU'RE AN AMERICAN & YOU SUPPORT TIBET: HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

I wanted to write something today about Tibet and its fight for independence.  But most of my readers are Americans who know a good deal about Tibet, human rights, China, and democracy, and some of them have even seen the Dalai Lama, and so the more I thought about it, the more I felt I didn’t have a lot to say about Tibet that they didn’t already know.

But I did want to make a few points about being an American who supports Tibet—whatever in the world that might mean.

1.  Why Tibet?  It’s a fair question.  Why not, for example, Papua New Guinea?  There are many reasons, of course, why Americans are drawn to the Tibetan cause, but foremost among them is a person:  His Holiness the Dalai Lama.  Papua New Guinea doesn’t have a Dalai Lama.  Even the Queen of England doesn't cut it.  No one, aside from Tibet, has a such a figure now, and he has become a person of such authority that his opinions are rarely questioned—unless you're a member of the Chinese government.  Besides, until Papua New Guinea comes up with a remedy for what ails us Americans—I mean, rampant materialism and the accompanying misery—then many of us will take our medicine from the maroon robes.

2.  But therein lies the problem.  Because most of us became acquainted with Tibet through the admirable work of its monks and nuns, we’ve become acquainted with Tibet through one of the smallest minorities of Tibet’s population.  So now, as His Holiness and the Central Tibetan Administration publicly advocate autonomy—and not independence—for the six million Tibetans living in Chinese-occupied Tibet (a position, by the way, that many of the monks and nuns support), Americans tend to agree with His Holiness because they have agreed with everything else he has said about how Americans might become healthier, happier individuals.  So why wouldn’t we agree with him on politics?

3.  Of course you can agree with him.  You can think whatever you like.  But let me point to an inconsistency in my own thinking that I’ve recently clarified:  Democracy doesn’t recognize the infallibility of a single person’s opinion, so to agree with the Dalai Lama because he is the Dalai Lama, and because he has ramped up your spiritual life, should not make a lot of sense to an American.  The fact that His Holiness has taught me a great deal about compassion, nonviolence, and altruism should have little impact on my opinion of his opinion about Tibetan freedom.  And this is an opinion that His Holiness has embraced, of course.  Democracies privilege disagreement.

4.  Furthermore—How can we, as Americans, and given our history, our rhetoric, our founding documents, not wish to support the establishment of similar freedoms wherever and whenever a given group of people announce them as their goal?  And make substantial sacrifices toward realizing them?

5.  I know what you’re thinking.  But to say that independence and freedom from China’s oppressive rule are impractical goals is to make a judgment that violates another of our cherished principles:  self-determination. Tibetans, like Americans, get to decide what sort of future they envision for themselves, and that should be the main focus of American support.  Whether the Tibetans want an oligarchy, or a democracy, or a plutocracy, it is their decision.  So I support Tibetan self-determination.  In all of its aspects, doctrines, and applications. [Aside:  Carole McGranahan has written an important book on the largely forgotten war waged by the Tibetan freedom fighters. It's called Arrested Histories, and the interviews alone are essential reading becasue they underscore the sacrifices made by these warriors for self-determination. I recommend the book enthusiastically.  It's also available on Kindle.]

6.  Finally, an observation and an anecdote.  Observation:  I don’t think the Tibetans who have recently self-immolated were doing so to draw the world’s attention toward their fight for a “meaningful autonomy” in Tibet; they were delivering focused strikes for Tibetan freedom and independence, in my opinion, and if anybody asks me, I choose to honor their heroic actions by supporting their call for Tibetan independence and the return of the Dalai Lama to this homeland.  Anecdote:  A Tibetan whom I admire deeply, who lives in New Delhi, and who is as respectful of His Holiness as any Tibetan that I know, said to me three years ago:  “Sidney, there is not a single Tibetan alive today, either in Tibet or in exile, including the Dalai Lama, who does not dream every night of a free Tibet.”

Obviously, I have never forgotten that statement, and it made a deep and native sense to this American.  But it’s not just an American phenomenon:  freedom and liberty are part of the human birthright, and I’m certain that my Tibetan friend spoke the truth.  So Tibetans deserve the opportunity to live in the free state that was theirs for centuries, and it is an opportunity that they are requesting now with every ounce of energy they can muster.

How can an American say no to that?

 

SHARP'S DICTIONARY OF POWER AND STRUGGLE, 2

I spent part of my Thanksgiving break going through Gene Sharp’s new book, Sharp’s Dictionary of Power and Struggle:  Language of Civil Resistance in Conflicts.  As I indicated in an earlier post, it’s a necessary book, for students and teachers alike, because it organizes the terminology and a few of the recent events that surround the field of nonviolence and civil resistance.  Some of the entries seem obvious, but all of them are useful, if only because they are given a place of residence between two covers.  We need more of these kinds of books as nonviolence matures, both as a subject and as a practice.  

I said in that earlier post that I would mention an entry or two that caught my eye.  Ever heard of “Collective Disappearance?”  Here’s how Sharp defines it:

The severance of all social contact with the opponents by the population of a small area, such as a village.  They remain hidden somewhere within the territory.  Hiding distinguishes this method of social noncooperation from protest emigration.  Not to be confused with the practice of extremely repressive governments physically “disappearing” resisters and their supporters.

I was drawn to this idea because I believe there are various ways that all of us can disappear whenever we find it helpful or necessary to do so, withdrawing our support from the mental habits as well as from the social and governmental practices that we don’t support.  Or that are actively harming us.  When I read Sharp’s definition, I thought about the Buddhist concept of renunciation, a distant and powerful cousin of “collective disappearance.”  

Here’s what I mean.  Renunciation doesn’t ask that we deny ourselves the vices we’d secretly love to indulge.  Denial won’t last, and if it does, frustration rises as a result of it.  Instead, we need to understand the abusive nature of the bad habits that manage our days (hatred, anger, jealousy, pride, greed, even nationalism and ideology—things like that), and then determine the nature of our own complicity with these corrosive habits.  (And complicity, remember, might amount to a silent tolerance of them.)  But once we’ve gotten some clarity about our involvement with these habits, we will see that they cause great pain both for ourselves and for others.  

At this point, we have some new information, and with it, we’ll find it easier to renounce these habits because we see clearly that they are destroying us by limiting our vision, by compromising our vast potential for happiness.  And we will take steps to remedy the problem; we will renounce these habits not because we think we ought to renounce them, but because we see that they are making our lives harder than they need to be—this is real renunciation. 

Renunciation does not happen because we blindly follow ordained codes of behavior or dogmatic prohibitions, but because we wake up to the nature of our own attachment to and support of abusive practices.  This will come as a shock to us, but the shock will give us the urgent energy we need to make the changes we’ve envisioned.  These changes will be personal in nature, but they will have a political implication.  Whether the political implication becomes obvious or not we don’t always know, but the action is the same:  we understand the destructive nature of a specific habit of thought, and then take the necessary steps to break it.

Still, the outward change, the socio-political change, that might be visible to our friends has been occasioned by the inner change, the spiritual force of renunciation.  Which, in Sharp’s phrase, amounts to a kind of “collective disappearance” from these oppressive forces, whether they are personal or, as Sharp indicates, political.

 

SHARP'S DICTIONARY OF POWER AND STRUGGLE

Gene Sharp, the guru of nonviolence in America whose books were spotted throughout the Middle East during the Arab Spring, has recently published another book:  Sharp's Dictionary of Power and Struggle:  Language of Civil Resistance in Conflicts, and it's a useful primer and reference book for nonviolence.  Terms, movements, legislations, conflicts, principles, the book includes nearly 1,000 entries, and it will be immensely useful for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the rich history of this broad-based and cross-cultural movement.

As I go through the book, I'll post a term or anything that strikes my fancy, and maybe offer a comment or two on it.  Here's the first one that struck me:

Cultural Resistance—Persistent holding to one's way of life, language, customs, beliefs, manners, social organization, and ways of doing things despite pressures of another culture.  This resistance may protect a culture of indigenous origin or be directed specfically against a culture imposed by a military occupation or colonialism.

Cultural resistance may take very undramatic forms, such as teaching one's language to one's children.  This may be a form of microresistance.  Only rarely may such resistance be tied to political resistance or open struggle.  When it is, it usually becomes a form of defiance or noncooperation.

Such persistent holding to one's own culture may lead to cultural survival even in highly unfavorable circumstances.

Comment:  This is what I love about Gene Sharp.  He prosaically and thoroughly charts the ground of nonviolent resistance, and he leaves no stone unturned.  Here, he's made available our daily lives for the shaping of a resistance movement, even the lessons that we leave our children.  Maybe I'll start to teach my daughter about the deceptions of American advertising from an early age, and maybe she'll learn that buying certain products at a bargain prices causes real human suffering far away, and maybe some of the students in the Occupy Movement had parents who were part of the 60's protests, and maybe a little of their own sense of justice trickled down and is now returning when injustice seems on the verge of winning.

Cultural Resistance, an idea whose time has come because it's an idea that's always been with us. 

FOR GANDHI'S BIRTHDAY & MY STUDENTS WHO WOULD MAKE A LIFE OF CARING

On October 2, 1869 in Porbandar, India, Mohandas Gandhi was born.  When he was assassinated in 1948, he owned very little, although most of the civilized world could recognize his image instantly.  I once asked my mother, who is now 88 years old, whom she considered the most memorable or important figures of her life.  She named three:  Franklin Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, and Mahatma Gandhi.  For people of my mother’s generation, this would have been a typical answer.  She chose the architect of a revolutionary social program, a radical cosmologist and physicist, and a nonviolent activist who brought the world’s largest imperial power of the time to its knees.  Not a bad selection, I’d suggest.  I’m looking over my shoulder now to see whom I’d choose in case my daughter one day asks me a similar question.  But that’s another posting.

I would like to offer, in honor of Gandhi’s birthday, a few remarks,concerning his legacy.  Confession: just as I engineered that phrase, “remarks . . . concerning his legacy,” I realized that I’d immediately entered a large echo-chamber of after-dinner, or conference-attending, or scholarly-sounding disquisitions that none of us would willingly endure.  And after all, with the Arab Spring still unfolding into its autumnal update, what else could I possibly say that hasn’t been said about this man?  He was, in fact, kind of a big deal, and everyone knew it during his lifetime, and everyone knows it now (even his critics know it, and there are many of them), and everyone will continue to know it whenever anyone anywhere undertakes a nonviolent action.  Mahatma Gandhi’s reputation is secure.  And I’m not going to make it any less or more secure by anything that I say.

But some of my students, who have become concerned about this world that we’re simultaneously desecrating and saving, want to know how they can be like Gandhi.  It all seems, finally, too much, and they ask a simple question:  if you’re trying to figure out your career, and if you’re aware of the deforestation of the Amazon, the oppression of the Tibetan people, the injustices dealt to Bradley Manning, and the horrors of chicken production in this country, how can you decide on a socially responsible career without that empty feeling of having done nothing, while thinking, all the while, that you have done . . . something?  

Here’s how one student put it: 

But shoot. Militarism. Consumerism. All the ways that the few wealthy divide and exploit us, and manage to keep us dividing and exploiting one another, neighbor vs. neighbor and nation vs. nation, I don’t know where to start, and I won’t be satisfied treating symptoms, despite how worthy it is to free Bradley Manning, end the war on drugs, free Tibet, stop fracking in Arkansas, and the rest.  So what do I need to do?

It’s a good question.  And I can’t answer it.  But I can give you some ideas about what Gandhi did when he was young, and what he kept on doing as he got older.  

Gandhi monitored stuff.  And what he didn’t monitor, he inventoried. And what he didn’t inventory, he classified.  He made himself become aware of his surroundings, from the British military to the goat in his garden.  He was obsessed with what went into his mouth and what went into his mind.  When he was in England studying law, he read everything he could get his hands on concerning vegetarianism and religion (mouth and mind, his perennial obssessions).  He ate his vegetables, and he monitored his health; he read his Bhagavad Gita, and he monitored his soul.  And he did this with everything that crossed his path, including his friends and his enemies.  He monitored the effect that the incoming data had on the person he was becoming.  And  on the person he wanted to become.

And then he made decisions, some of which he kept all of his life, and some of which he abandoned as soon as the results he wanted stopped appearing.  And he said things, like: “nonviolence is impossible without self-purification.”  Or:  “my greatest weapon is mute prayer.” Or: “If we remain nonviolent, hatred will die as everything does, from disuse.”

These brief statements, these annotations really, read as if they were lab notes, or observations made in passing as an experiment unfolded.  Remember:  Gandhi titled his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, and these are the notes made on that experiment.  They read, in fact, like aphoristic literature, and it’s clear that Gandhi was a gifted aphorist.  But he was a gifted aphorist because he was interested in the tiniest detail that would reveal the largest truth, and these tiny details only reveal themselves to the most obsessive self-observer, which Gandhi undoubtedly became.

The larger point here, however, concerns Gandhi’s relentless project to understand his place in the world.  He wanted to know what he ate, why he ate it, and what effects these foods had on his body.  And to whom these foods indebted him.  He wanted to know what he thought, why he thought it, and what effect these thoughts had on his personality.  He undertook this project of self-understanding, or of “self-purification,” as he called it, to understand his place in the world as revealed by his impact on the world. And he considered this personal inventory to be the preface to any concerted social action.

But he undertook this inventory because he believed that until you know precisely where you stand in the world, you will be unable to chart a meaningful course through the world.

And besides, while Gandhi might not have been able to feed everyone who needed feeding in Bombay, he could in fact understand the implications of everything that he fed himself, both literally and figuratively.

And that is the beginning of authentic social action because it will guard us against charges of hypocrisy when we do become socially engaged, and it will give us the foundation required to present to the world a coherent identity that has been examined, re-examined, and honestly constructed.  

Our opponents will find us a more formidable adversary when they discover that what we expect of the world, we have first expected of ourselves.  

And that’s where all of us can start.  We can learn what we might reasonably expect of ourselves. 

It would be immodest, at least, to expect more of anyone else.