Each night human activities recedes, and once again the trees breathe. Like a satisfying sigh that releases the stress of the day, the land grows quiet, sound replaced with silence. In the dark of night, there is rest, solace and comfort. As we sleep, the land heals from daily human activity; a life disharmonious with the laws of nature. In the dark of night, the earth absorbs the pollution of the day, breathing new life into what had begun to decay. A regenerative, life-giving gift born anew each day.
In the early morning, before the light of a new day has penetrated the dark, silence reveals the harmony of all that live here on earth. In the morning light of the forest, competition does not exist. There is no thought of greed, vice, or war. These thoughts live only in the minds of humanity. We must allow these thoughts to die in us to return to harmony. A transfiguration must take place deep within each of us for life to go on.
A sweet fruit is born of a sweet seed; yet sweetness in life can be born of something sour. This transformation is possible. If in nature a good seed bears good fruit, how then in humans, can seeds of dominance, resentment and anger become trees of love, truth, and peace?
The seeds of disharmony darken the mind. They are a corrosive element that brings decay, turmoil, and unhappiness. These disharmonious forces are made available to us for transformation. Our awareness is the spade with which we tend to our garden. Only when we tend to our garden can trees grow, flowers bloom, and good seeds fructify. What is the process of tending to our inner world? What does it mean to engage in conscious awareness of oneself? How does one begin this process? How can we learn to bring light out of darkness?
We can look for an example in the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. As a child, Gandhi lived trapped by a shyness so great he would run home from school, so as to avoid carrying on conversations with his classmates. As a father to his children, Gandhi left feelings of bitterness and resentment with his son. As a husband, he sought to dominate his wife, Kasturba. Her refusal to submit to his will was his great teacher of non-violence to this future man of peace.
“I lost no time in assuming the authority of a husband,” Gandhi later reflected of his early marriage. “[Kasturba] could not go out without my permission.” When Gandhi informed Kasturba of his new rules, and her duty to obey, she engaged in what might be called the household version of civil disobedience: She did nothing at all. The next day she continued to do as she had always done, including leaving the house to go to the market.
Later, Gandhi confronted her and angrily demanded to know why she had disobeyed him. Without raising her voice, says Arun Gandhi (Gandhi’s grandson), she quietly informed her husband that she was simply following the household guidance that his own mother had set out for her and that she was raised to respect the wishes of her elders. But, if her new husband wanted, she could inform his mother that she would no longer listen to her but only him instead. “And of course grandfather couldn’t tell her to do that,” says Arun Gandhi. “And so the whole matter was settled without any fights.”
In many ways, Gandhi lived in the midst of his own anger. And yet, he once wrote that his anger was what allowed him to do his work in the world.
For Gandhi, his journey of inner awakening came after his passage into adulthood. He was twenty-three, recently arrived in South Africa after studying law in London. One night, on a train from Durban to Pretoria, Gandhi was forcibly removed from his first-class seat at the complaint of a white passenger. He protested and refused, but was removed from the car, and spent the cold winter night in the station waiting room. This direct, personal experience of injustice and discrimination is the crucible of Gandhi’s transformation. Of this night, which Gandhi later called the most creative of his life, he wrote:
“The hardship to which I was subjected was superficial — only a symptom of the deep disease of color prejudice. I should try, if possible, to root out the disease and suffer hardships in the process. Redress for wrongs I should seek only to the extent that would be necessary for the removal of the color prejudice.”
This experience offer insight into our own transformation.
First, it was in darkness -- literally a cold, dark night -- where Gandhi touched a place of light. In this darkness, his conviction was born and grace was received. In difficult circumstances, new possibilities begin anew.
Second, Gandhi saw his means of transformation was to endure suffering, not extend it to those who wronged him. What others, like Dr. King, would later call “redemptive suffering.” In his own words, Gandhi writes:
“Suffering is the mark of the human tribe. It is an eternal law. The mother suffers so that her child may live. Life comes out of death. No country has ever risen without being purified through the fire of suffering... It is impossible to do away with the law of suffering which is the one indispensable condition of our being. Progress is to be measured by the amount of suffering undergone... the purer the suffering, the greater the progress.”
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“The conviction has been growing upon me, that things of fundamental importance to the people are not secured by reason alone, but have to be purchased with their suffering. … Suffering is infinitely more powerful than the law of the jungle for converting the opponent and opening his ears, which are otherwise shut, to the voice of reason. Nobody has probably drawn up more petitions or espoused more forlorn causes than I, and I have come to this fundamental conclusion that, if you want something really important to be done, you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must move the heart also. The appeal of reason is more to the head, but the penetration of the heart comes from suffering. It opens up the inner understanding in man. Suffering is the badge of the human race, not the sword.”
This is the key that Gandhi and other peace messengers have brought to us. The transformation of bad seeds into good fruit grows from one’s ability to suffer for others. The seeds of good take time in the dark to bring the fruit of life to light.
From his Pretoria experience, Gandhi’s shyness and rectitude vanished, replaced with ceaseless effort and passion. The force of his spirit began to grow and unite his fellow Indians in South Africa. He worked as an organizer, opened a school, created a functioning farm and factory cooperative. For twenty years Gandhi worked in South Africa. After a decade of work, he birthed his great contribution to the world, employing what he called truth- or soul-force, satyagraha, as a means for liberation.
In my own life, I have lived with, denied, and begun to transform my anger. I can feel it in my body, a marble size throbbing in my lower right rib, near the middle of my chest. My anger has ancestral roots. I live far from the land of my ancestors and my bones miss the feel of Bharat Mata. I still feel the anguish of land and culture lost. This anger lives in my father and my brothers.
My anger boils when I am unwilling to do the work in the world I am asked and feel called to do. The friction inside of me seeks release, and when I resist the anger grows hotter, until it pops, burning and scalding those who love me.
Despite his own failings, as a father and husband, perhaps as a man, I am learning from Gandhi. When I give myself to those around me, what was once anger transforms into action. And it is true action because I am choosing to give, to create harmony, and for my actions to do no harm. In this way, anger can become fuel for the good. And my anger no longer hurts me. I often hear myself repeating Gandhi’s advice: “The best way to lose yourself is to find yourself in the service of others.”
Our life is the crucible in which our actions gain meaning. Our hardships and difficulties are the crucibles in which peace is born. Conscious suffering offers a path of personal redemption and social reconciliation. Without difficulties, we would have no means with which to see ourselves. We would have no soil in which to grow. As Thich Nhat Hanh gently reminds us: “No mud. No lotus.”
In Gandhi’s life we see an expression of darkness transformed to light. With each step he put forth what was impure in himself and offered it in sacrifice to his country and the world. Ten days before his death, the messenger of peace revealed his message: “If I fall victim to an assassin’s bullet, there must be no anger from within me. God must be in my heart and on my lips.”
In this message we enter into the mystery. The transformation of bad to good is not of human doing. We are only the vehicle that can be made available to divine transmission. There is a clue in Gandhi’s words, which becomes more clear in the lives of others, preceding his and those later influenced by him. In each of our own lives, we are constantly presented with the choice to overcome the selfish desires and painful traumas each and every one of us holds.