NOVEMBER Jivamukti Focus of the Month - Ahimsa

Ahimsa, Nonviolence, अहिंसा
 

This month's Jivamukti Focus is Ahimsa. Read Sharonji's message here:
Ahimsa: The Foundation of the Yoga Practice

And since we are living in DC, here is a more "political" approach to ahimsa, or nonviolence, as it has been used and can be used to affect change on a tactical level: 

 

How Nonviolence Works
Nonviolence rejects the use of physical violence in efforts to attain social, economic or political change. It rejects both passive acceptance of oppression and armed struggle against it, instead offering a number of other tactics for popular struggle such as:

• education
• persuasion
• civil disobedience (it could be said that it is compassion in the form of respectful disagreement)
• noncooperation with political, economic or social authorities
• nonviolent direct action (NVDA) - "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored." --Martin Luther King Jr.

Central to any understanding of nonviolent strategic theory is the idea that the power of rulers depends upon the consent of the populace. Without a bureaucracy, an army or a police force to carry out his or her wishes and the compliance of key sectors of the population, the ruler is powerless. Power, therefore, depends largely on the co-operation of others. Nonviolence seeks to undermine the power of rulers through the deliberate withdrawal of this consent and co-operation.

Also of primary significance is the notion that just means are the most likely to lead to just ends. Gandhi said that "the means may be likened to the seed, the end to a tree." Proponents of nonviolence reason that the actions taken in the present inevitably re-shape the social order in like form. They would argue, for instance, that it is fundamentally irrational to use violence to achieve a peaceful society.

 

Nonviolent action generally comprises three categories.

1. The first, Acts of Protest and Persuasion , which include protest marches, vigils, public meetings and tools such as banners, placards, candles, flowers and the like;
2. secondly, Noncooperation, the deliberate and strategic refusal to co-operate with an injustice;
3. and thirdly, Nonviolent Intervention, the deliberate and often physical intervention into a perceived unjust event, such as blockades, occupations, sit-ins, tree sitting, truck cavalcades to name a few.

A useful source of inspiration, for those seeking the best nonviolent tactics to deploy, is Gene Sharp's list of 198 methods of nonviolent action, which includes symbolic, political, economic and physical actions.
 

Great nonviolence leaders and theorists who have thought deeply about the spiritual and practical aspects of nonviolence: Leo Tolstoy, Lech Wałęsa, Petra Kelly, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dorothy Day, Ammon Hennacy, Albert Einstein, John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, David McReynolds , Johan Galtung, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Ida Ford, Daniel Berrigan,Bacha Khan, Mario Rodriguez Cobos and César Chávez.