Welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast. I'm
John, Father John Deere, and today I'm speaking
with my friend Michael Nagler. This podcast is
a project of www .beatitudecenter .org, where
you can find many other podcasts and regular
Zoom programs on the nonviolence of Jesus and
practicing nonviolence and working for a more
just, more nonviolent world. So as usual, I like
to begin with a little prayer. So I invite the
listeners, wherever you are, just to take a deep
breath and just to relax and notice how you're
feeling today and recenter yourself and enter
into the presence of peace, the God of peace
or universal love, however you imagine your God
who loves you. And we welcome the nonviolent
Jesus here with us. And just take a moment to
ask for whatever graces and blessings of peace
and nonviolence we need. God of peace, thank
you for all the blessings of peace and life and
love that you give us. Be with us now as we reflect
together on your call to practice nonviolence
like the nonviolent Jesus. inspire us, heal us,
strengthen us, and send us out that we might
be your holy peacemakers and practitioners of
nonviolence, that we might do our part to help
end poverty and war, racism, greed, injustice,
nuclear weapons, environmental destruction, and
all forms of violence, that we might be the people
you created us to be, your holy peacemakers.
And we ask this in the name of peace, in the
name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. So it's, again, my
pleasure to welcome you, my friend Michael Nagler,
who's Professor Emeritus of Classics and Comparative
Literature at UC Berkeley. Michael co -founded
the Peace and Conflict Studies Program. at UC
Berkeley and the Metta Center for Nonviolence
in 1983, and continues to dedicate his life to
the values of nonviolence and spirituality and
meditation. He's the co -host of Nonviolence
Radio, a popular radio show and podcast on nonviolence,
and has great books on nonviolence, such as The
Search for a Nonviolent Future, A Promise of
Peace for Ourselves, Our Families, and Our World,
The Nonviolence Handbook, A Guide for Practical
Action, Looking for Light, and The Third Harmony,
Nonviolence and the New Story of Human Nature.
Welcome Michael Nagler to my podcast. Thank you
so much, John. What an honor to be here. It's
great to be with you. So I would like to begin
jumping right into the deep. and ask you to explain
all things about nonviolence to us. You've been
teaching this my whole life. I mean, in the 60s,
you were studying this and teaching it. So what
does it mean for you today, you know, the word
nonviolence? What are we talking about here?
And you can take that in any way you want. That
would be most helpful for people listening today
and the predicament we're facing today. Well,
I hope it will be most helpful for all those
good people if I just kind of unburden it right
out of my heart. I believe that nonviolence is
both the deepest core of our human being and
consequently also the destiny of the human race
and that all human progress. has been a progress
toward nonviolence. And that process, of course,
this will be not a controversial assessment,
that process is far from complete. But because
it is, if I may use a Hindu term here, if this
is our inner dharma, then there's a kind of health
and happiness and security and fulfillment. that
it brings to discover that dharma and make any
kind of contributions to it and that can also
be illustrated conversely by how destructive
violence is not just toward its victims but as
we are more and more aware now through the scientific
category of moral injury as we're more and more
aware Violence is a terribly destructive frame
of mind and practice to carry out against others.
Because really, really, really, if you get right
down to it, there are no others. We are all one.
And injury toward what seems to us to be another
person is actually injury to ourselves. We have
to kind of shudder for what is going to happen
to the people who are working such immense violence
in the world right now. But the main point is
to discover our nonviolent capacity and work
out how to implement that in the world. And there's
one very important guideline that I have to remind
myself about here. I'm going to lean on Thomas
Merton for this one. Namely, it's our job to
do it. It's not our job for it to work, to have
the desired result. We have to create something,
as Merton said, that God can make something out
of. So now if I were to look upon that from my
Hindu background, I would say, This is our sva
-dharma, our individual dharma that each of us
has to discover how to do. I believe that mine
is mostly an educational dharma, an educational
path, and so far I haven't had any indication
that that's a horrible mistake, so I'm staying
on it for the time being. Michael, that's so
beautiful. I listened to you for hours. You've
been teaching it and studying it for decades,
really your whole life. Let me put it to you
this way. What new things have you learned about
nonviolence over the years? Or has this always
been the way you've seen it? Like this is fundamental
to our nature. This is any progress is progress
toward nonviolence on the whole human race. If
you will, we're all headed to becoming nonviolent
human beings and working for a nonviolent world.
Because for me, I think I keep, you know, every
few years moving into deep levels of awareness.
And maybe that means of my own violence. I don't
know. What about you? Just in terms of your journey
of understanding nonviolence. Yeah, well, the
fundamental understanding of it hasn't. I just
enjoy discovering it here and there in ways that
I might not have expected. I'll just give you
kind of almost a comical example. I happen to
have an amateur interest in paleoanthropology,
where we came from way, way back. And I mean,
we all know where we came from originally. But
on this planet, you know, scientists have recently
come up with a plausible explanation of why the
Neanderthals went extinct. They were stronger
than us and better adapted in many ways. And
they had bigger brains. So what was the problem?
recognize that you have these little pockets
of small Neanderthal communities dotted all over
Europe and Western Asia and up in Siberia. And
on the surface of it, they're not too dissimilar
from early Homo sapiens communities. But there's
one profound difference that in caves, for example,
that were occupied by humans, homo sapiens, in,
let's say, France. You discover objects that
were traded for and ideas and innovations that
could have come from Siberia or what is now Turkmenistan
or something like that. In other words, there
were these very, very active... trade networks
which traded not only uh you know tools and weapons
and and stuff of survival but um interconnectedness
and um communication of ideas whereas in the
cave inhabited by neanderthals you might find
some flint object that came from far away but
it never It never went anywhere, never became
a whole culture. I guess to sum it up, Homo sapiens
sapiens were sociable. They interbred, they exchanged
ideas. We were, in a then remote sense, one community
across the globe. Whereas the Neanderthals, however
better they may have been adapted individually,
were not sociable. Relatively speaking. And this
seems to be the reason why those poor brutes
went extinct. And so far we haven't done that,
though we are, despite the fact that we're working
on it very hard. Thank you, Michael. I want to
talk with you about Gandhi. And as you know,
I've told you, one of my... Favorite books in
the whole wide world is Gandhi the Man, The Story
of His Transformation by Eknath Eswaran, which
you were very involved in. You have a beautiful
foreword to it. I remember in the 90s when I
was the head of the Fellowship of Reconciliation,
I think I bought 50 or 100 copies, and then I
had Daniel Berrigan and our other priest friends
buying copies, and we were just giving them out
to all our friends. It's still... One of my all
-time favorite books. I'm holding it in my hand.
Let me ask you first about Gandhi, and then I'm
going to ask you about the book itself, because
if you're listening, friends, I really do urge
you to get this book, Gandhi the Man, which has
beautiful pictures by the great Eknath Eswaran.
Gandhi did so much for us all, bringing nonviolence
to the whole world, lifting it up, drawing it
out of all the religions, and then modeling it.
You've been teaching Gandhi for decades. What
are some key aspects or lessons from Gandhi's
nonviolence that might be helpful or just to
lift them up for us to ponder? Yeah, well, I
would start back at the point where that I have
already mentioned, John, that in talking about
nonviolence, we're talking about the inner. core
of what it means to be a human being. And then
you look at every aspect of his life, which was
incredibly consistent. And you notice, for example,
his let's take just for one thing, his attitude
toward material goods. You know, he was worth
something like five dollars in material possessions.
at the time of his assassination. His happiness
came entirely from contributing to the happiness
of others. And that was a very, very deep happiness
that nothing can ever take away from us. And
he exhibited that to an extraordinary degree.
And I'm not the first one. to compare in terms
of his being and in terms of his impact on history,
I wouldn't be the first one to compare Gandhi
with Jesus. Well, Dr. King certainly did over
and over again, which is very helpful. Yeah,
so the difference being, of course, the vast
difference in historical time, which allows us
to see thoroughness and detail in the case of
Gandhi, which is now closed to us in the case
of Jesus. However, I do want to say, and I'm
going out on a limb here, some people may be
startled to hear this. They may not believe it,
but it's in my heart and I want to say it. And
that is that it is possible to have uh a direct
awareness of jesus i have not of course but uh
i know uh stories from two hindu sages actually
whom tell nothing but the truth and would have
no reason whatever to lie and their stories of
how they not just met but how they merged into
the being of jesus is like one of the most it
just it still raises hair on the back of my neck
to think about it it is it's just it's stunning
so how it at the very very least it reaches across
these artificial barriers between religions but
more than that it is how we know for a certainty
that Jesus is a living force in this world. And
he will pick anyone on us up if we lighten the
load. Amen. Well, so Gandhi was very intentional
about, you know, going as he used to say, the
goal is self -realization, to see God face to
face. And his whole life was the Bhagavad Gita
and the Sermon on the Mount, which is what I
teach. And so... You were part of this book with
your great friend and teacher, Eknath Eswaran.
And I just wanted to ask you to tell us a little
bit about him and the book. And let me tell you
what gets me and why the book is so good. You'll
forgive me, but I read the 100 complete works
of Gandhi. And I've read about 50 biographies
because I did my own anthology of Gandhi. And
this is still my favorite book because as you
write in the foreword, Well, this is what I'd
love you to tell. Eknath went, he was from India,
and then he ended up in UC Berkeley with you,
I think. But, you know, back in the day, he went
and met with Gandhi for a week. He wanted to
know where he got his power. And that's what
the book says that's so different, that Gandhi
was overflowing personality of love and joy.
As he's resisting the British Empire. Now, that's
the way I think Jesus was. And everybody, you
just want to be with this person because there's
nobody like him. And Gandhi was very intentional
about that. And that's what Eknath's book was
trying to get at. How do I share that? This is
a contagious power to this person who tapped
into the personality of Jesus. And Gandhi insisted
any one of us can do it. So tell me about Eknath
and the experience of that book to get at Gandhi
and for ourselves, how we can turn away all this
violence and darkness and go deep into truth
and universal love. We can do it, apparently.
We can do it. I've been working on it for decades.
It is working ever so slowly. And what it is,
is meditation. And I think that in India, as
far as we can tell, meditation has been practiced
for millennia. And they've worked out the technology
of how to do it. Now, in my case, the way it
works is we take an inspirational passage. So,
you know, like the attitudes, which I often use.
And when you sit in meditation, and what's important
is to sit with your head and neck and body in
a reasonably straight line. It doesn't matter
if you're on the floor or in a chair or somewhere.
And then you have set aside some time for this
every day. I do it a lot, but we don't need to
get into that. And you close your eyes and go
through the words of the passage as slowly as
you can manage it without distractions creeping
in. But they will. And so when a distraction
is pulling you away from the passage, the key
is not to fight with it. Because then, you know,
you've just magnified it. So just refocus, refocus
your attention back on that passage. And there's
nothing unknown in the Christian fold or among
Jewish meditators either, for that matter. I
mean, Simon Veil has one of the best descriptions
of how to meditate on the Lord's Prayer. Or,
for example, let's say if we take St. Francis'
prayer, you know, God. Lord, make me an instrument
of thy peace. You just go through those words
as slowly as you can. Let the meaning sink in,
but don't think about them. Don't worry. The
meaning of those blessed words will register
in your deeper consciousness. The slower you're
able to say it, the deeper they will register.
And that's the essence of the technique. It turns
us 180 degrees away from the frantic, external,
material world that we're surrounded by. And
it brings us in contact with very deep sources
of compassion. One of the first aha experiences
that I had. meditating in the early days, was
I had some kind of a good experience. It was
warm and reassuring. And simultaneously, I was
aware that what I had just touched upon was in
everyone. Indeed, in some form or other, in every
living being. And that is what makes violence
impossible. And so to put it in one very simple,
almost selfish way, if you're violent, it'll
disrupt your meditation like crazy. But more
importantly, in meditation, you will become intuitively,
deeply aware. of your unity with other beings,
primarily other human beings. And there's also
very good science on this now that wasn't there
when I started, you know, those were years ago.
From neuroscience and different angles, now that
scientists have decided to take the blinders
off and take a look at this stuff. There's excellent
evidence, even from the external world, from
the objective world. Though I don't need it anymore,
it's reassuring to know that it's there and I
can help the user with others. So that's the
essence of the technique. Meditation, otherwise
known as interior prayer, is always a question
of concentration. And while you're concentrating,
you'd be very foolish to concentrate on something
negative or something random. So you take something
inspiring like the prayer of St. Francis and
meditate on that and learn not to beat yourself
up when you have distractions and so on and so
forth. So that is the essence of the technique
and there's more information on it on the website.
www .ishwaran .org. Yeah, go ahead. And you've
been teaching Gandhian nonviolence, if you will,
and meditation, and you learned it a lot, I guess,
from Eknath Eswaran, that website. But, and what
the story you tell in your foreword to this great
book is that, so Eknath Eswaran goes to, you
know, Gandhi is at the height of his powers leading
his 300 ,000 people in prison, getting the British
to leave India nonviolently. And he's going to
go, how does he do it? And he gets there and
he's talking to Gandhi and everybody loves him.
And he's just this giant personality in this
very poor person. And then he sees him meditate
and he goes, oh, and he saw it. He said. Gandhi
changed in front of his eyes. And that's kind
of the impression I get from Jesus. Would you
conclude you can't be nonviolent, much less lead
or participate in nonviolent revolution or survive
really in this world today without meditation,
number one. And number two, in particular, Eknath
Aswaram was so moved and why the book is such
a unique story. that Gandhi meditated always
on Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita and Chapter
5, the Sermon on the Mount. And this one verse,
which he keeps returning to in your book, this
is from the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, that Gandhi
heard every single day, along with parts of the
Sermon on the Mount. It's just two or three sentences.
They are forever free who have broken out of
the ego cage of I and mine. to be united with
the Lord of love. This is the supreme state.
Attain thou this and pass from death to immortality.
So Gandhi's hearing that every single morning
and every evening for the last 50 years of his
life. The Lord of love, no more ego, and then
he's hearing some of the Sermon on the Mount.
I think you'd become Gandhi if you were doing
that every day. That's kind of what you're saying.
And you tap into... Oneness with all humanity
and with God. I mean, yes, let's not make any
mistakes. There's a vast degree quantitatively
between what he achieved and what the likes of
I have achieved. But I've taken many steps on
the same road. And it is, there's something.
self -reinforcing about it, so reassuring about
it that, you know, you just know, like, for example,
if you, conversely, if you start getting angry,
your mind is telling you, stop, stop, I don't
like this, I'm uncomfortable. Well, conversely,
when you slow your mind down and concentrate
on it, especially on a noble, higher image like
that. you get a sense of wellness that basically
doesn't come from anything else. You know, you
can run around in life, you can be charitable
and good -hearted and get rewarded with pheromones
and everything that goes on in our neurophysiology.
But there's something immediate and direct about
the... reward that happens when you are enabled
to deepen your concentration. The rewarding part
of it compensates for, but does not take away
the fact that it is awfully hard work. And you
wrote a book called The Search for a Nonviolent
Future, and that has always been a very important
theme for me. I see it in the work of Jesus.
He's basically saying we're all blind and we
need vision. And I see it in all the movements
from the abolitionists to Gandhi to Dr. King.
Literally, Dr. King, I have a dream. I have a
vision. And we have no vision today in this country.
No leaders who are – a real leader is a visionary.
And that's why Dorothy Day talked about we're
stuck with the blindness of the blind leading
us all over the cliff as opposed to what is our
future? What we need are people saying the future
is a nonviolent United States, a nonviolent Middle
East, a nonviolent world, a nonviolent environment.
Tell me then about your book and the importance
of envisioning a nonviolent future and a nonviolent
world and how ordinary folk can do that. Instead
of saying doom and gloom, but actually lifting
up the vision and then working to make the impossible
probable and then actual. Wow. Well, this is
so timely for you to bring that up, John, because
we are now, as we speak, working on a new edition
of Search for a Nonviolent Future. It has come
into our hands from the original publisher, Barrett
Kohler. The contract has come to that point where
the book is now ours, and we're designing a cover.
We're going through it. I have to say, I read
through it recently, and I honestly don't think
I need to make any major revisions. The only
thing that's different is an enormous amount
of resources and organizations and movements
and history and science that has come online.
Well, tell people about the basic thesis there
and your basic encouragements. I want to say
that whatever is positive and true and good in
human nature is real. And Gandhi was brilliant
about this using a quote from one of the scriptures
that such being or existence also means good.
And so it is only really the good that exists.
And it is by definition available to every one
of us. Yeah, so we're very happy that when I
say we folks at the Meta Center, we're a very,
very nice team these days. We're very happy to
have all of these resources that we've contributed.
But there's also, as I was just mentioning, resources
out there like the Global Nonviolent Action Database.
That's housed at Swarthmore that has well over
1 ,200 episodes of nonviolence that have taken
place in the last, I don't know, I think a couple
of hundred years. And those resources are priceless
because we get into arguments and people will
say, yeah, but it never worked. And you say,
oh, really? What about the Rosenstrasse prison
demonstration? And they would say, huh, never
heard of it. Because we have absolutely no non
-violence education in our culture. What was
the Rosenstrasser non -violence? Well, this was
at the end of February 1943. The entire 6th Army
of the Wehrmacht had just been defeated at Stalingrad.
It was a very bad propaganda moment. There were,
at that point in time, about 6 ,000 Jewish men
who were married to Aryan wives. And they had
not been arrested because of that Aryan connection.
But they arrested them. And so they were all
brought to the Jewish Community Center, a former
Jewish Community Center, number 12. Rosenstrasse
in Berlin. Ironically, it means Rose Street.
And they were processing them to be sent to Auschwitz
and wherever. But unexpectedly, shockingly, the
women folk, the wives, the sisters, the daughters
of these men showed up in the street. And the
Gestapo came out and said, this is unlawful assembly,
or you know, whatever they said in German. And
they said, we're not going. And they stayed there
for the whole weekend. It's interesting to note
that the Fuhrer himself, Hitler was paralyzed.
He said, I can't, I will not make this decision.
And he handed it down the line to other people.
At the end of the weekend, those men were released.
So this was a demonstration, not just a demonstration
in the sense that they're waving a placard and
saying, I don't like this, but a blockage, obstruction,
and the willingness to do it unto death, which
gives it tremendous power. coming from women,
which gives it, again, tremendous power. And
it shows that nonviolence worked brilliantly
against Hitler when it was tried. So we ought
to never again be caught in the situation of
not having it on hand, not having the trained
people, not having the techniques to mobilize
it instantly. When this kind of authoritarianism
happens again, no names, please. No particular
countries, of course, that I'm talking about
here. But of course, nonviolence is much better
developed now. We have institutions like Nonviolent
Peace Force that are carrying out interventions.
And really, there's about 20 organizations doing
this kind of thing. And I think they're probably
operating in probably about 60 countries around
the world. I'm not sure about that. But what's
happening is we're building up steadily a trained
cadre of volunteers or, you know, participants.
They're not always required to volunteer. who
are trained to go into conflict zones and defuse
conflict without violence. And so we have the
history, we have new institutions, we have the
science, we have everything we need to really
turn this around. What we have to buck or we
have to go against is the cultural conditioning.
telling us the exact opposite of the truth. Well,
thank you so much for all your good work teaching
nonviolence and reminding us. That is one of
my favorite stories. And we could talk about
so many others of the nonviolence resistance
in Denmark and Bulgaria and Norway to Hitler.
But as you say, what we need is all of us to
do our homework now and to go out and organize
now here in the U .S. and wherever we are in
the world. And as Jesus to Gandhi to Dr. King
and all the great peacemakers of history have
taught us. Michael, is there anything else? We're
out of time, but anything else you want to mention
before we close? Oh, I guess the last thing you
said, John, makes me want to say that, you know,
just as King, in a moment of despair, actually
heard Jesus tell him, I will be with you. In
a more remote way, unfortunately, because of
our obtuseness, all of those greats are there
as personalities in addition to all the resources.
Yeah, and I suppose I should plug our website,
the Meta Center. Meta with two Ts, metacenter
.org, and our biweekly podcast. It is becoming
very, very popular. And we would love to hear
from you folks. What can we do for you? What
stories would you like to contribute? And so
forth. Oh, that's great. God bless you all. Thank
you so much, Michael Nagler, for speaking with
me today. And yes, do check out metacenter .org
and all the good work that Michael and his team
are doing. So thank you, friends, so much for
listening to this edition of the Nonviolent Jesus
Podcast. You can hear more podcasts and find
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the God of peace bless you all and keep on following
the nonviolent Jesus. See you next time.