Rev. Danny Fisher

Our friend James Ishmael Ford reminds us that today is an important one in history: seventy-eight years ago, Mahatma Gandhi led the Salt March from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi in opposition of the British salt tax. The “Salt Satyagraha” was the first major act of civil disobedience that followed the declaration of independence from the Raj made by the Indian National Congress. When the marchers arrived at Dandi on April 6, 1930, Gandhi took a lump of salty mud and boiled it in seawater, thus producing salt illegally under British law. He then encouraged others to do the same.

James writes:

This event could be seen as the moral turning point in the world court of public opinion for Gandhi’s nonviolent campaign to win independence for the Indian people.

It was also a concrete example of the great circle where Henry Thoreau’s nonviolent resistance, at least in part inspired Mohandas Gandhi, who in turn would inspired Martin Luther King, Jr.

In honor of this sacred anniversary, I would like to share with you a collection of Gandhi’s quotes about satyagraha (which is usuallly translated as “truth-force” or “soul-force”). These quotes were organized by Sunanda Gandhi from a variety of sources, including private family documents. These and other statements of the Mahatma’s help me to make sure that my own activism never ceases to be a spiritual practice.

Satyagraha is a process of educating public opinion, such that it covers all the elements of the society and makes itself irresistible.

Satyagraha is a relentless search for truth and a determination to search truth.

Satyagraha is an attribute of the spirit within.

Satyagraha has been designed as an effective substitute for violence.

The fight of Satyagraha is for the strong in spirit, not the doubter or the timid. Satyagraha teaches us the art of living as well as dying.

Satyagraha, of which civil-resistance is but a part, is to me the universal law of life.

Satyagraha is a law of universal application. Beginning with the family, its use can be extended to every other circle.

Satyagraha can rid society of all evils, political, economic, and moral.

Satyagraha and civil disobedience and fasts have nothing in common with the use of force, veiled or open.

A genuine Satyagraha should never excite contempt in the opponent even when it fails to command regard or respect.

Satyagraha thrives on repression till at last the repressor is tired and the object of Satyagraha is gained.

Satyagraha does not depend on the outside [for] help; it derives all its strength from within.

The method of Satyagraha requires that the Satyagrahi should never lose hope, so long as there is the slightest ground left for it.

In the dictionary of Satyagraha, there is no enemy.

Since Satyagraha is a method of conversion and conviction, it seeks never to use the slightest coercion.

For a Satyagraha brigade, only those are eligible who believe in ahimsa–nonviolence and satya–truth.

Satyagraha is a force that has come to stay. No force in the world can kill it.

Satyagraha does not begin and end with civil disobedience.

A clear victory of Satyagraha is impossible so long as there is ill-will.

Whatever may be true of other modes of warfare, in Satyagraha it has been held that the causes for failure are to be sought within.

What I call the law of Satyagraha is to be deduced from an appreciation of duties and rights flowing therefrom.

A Satyagrahi turns the searchlight inward relentlessly to weed out all the defects that may be lying hidden there still.

A Satyagrahi has infinite patience, abundant faith in others, and ample hope.

A Satyagrahi has no other stay but God, and he who has any other stay or depends on any other help cannot offer Satyagraha.

A Satyagrahi cannot go to law for a personal wrong.

A Satyagrahi loves his so called enemy even as he loves his friend. He owns no enemy.

A Satyagrahi exhausts all other means before he resorts to Satyagraha.

In the code of the Satyagrahi, there is no such thing as surrender to brute force.

Also, be sure to take a look at James’ post. It includes the re-enactment of the Salt Satyagraha from Sir Richard Attenborough’s wonderful, Oscar-winning biopic Gandhi as well as actual newsreel footage of the march. Below you will find another collection of footage from YouTube.

Reuters offers a substantial report today on the mood among Myanmar’s monks:

Beneath the veneer of serenity and religious devotion, Myanmar’s maroon-robed Buddhist monks, the engine of the protests six months ago against the ruling junta, are seething with rage.

Some talk impetuously of revolution. Others even say they are ready to lay down their lives in a repeat showdown between the monkhood, the former Burma’s highest moral authority, and the raw might of the military.

But pro-democracy campaigners and even some monks admit the regime’s bloody crackdown on the September marches has broken the clandestine network that, albeit briefly, turned the country’s 500,000 Buddhist monks into a potent political force.

Even the approach of the numerologically auspicious August 8, 2008–the 20th anniversary of the brutally suppressed 8-8-88 anti-junta uprising–looks unlikely to precipitate another challenge to 46 years of unbroken army rule.

“There are no plans being made because most of the active monks are in prison or have fled,” a leading member of the pro-democracy underground told Reuters at a safe house in Yangon, the former capital.
Among the 80 people the junta says it is still holding after the protests are 21 monks, including 27-year-old U Gambira, a leader of the All-Burmese Monks Alliance which played a prominent role in the marches.

Human rights group Amnesty International said in January that 700 people arrested in the crackdown remained behind bars.

Despite the arrests, the southeast Asian nation’s monasteries, some of which are home to as many as 3,000 mainly young men at any one time, remain political tinder-boxes that could re-ignite at the slightest provocation.

[...]

No monks interviewed by Reuters in the religious centres of Yangon, Mandalay and nearby Sagaing said they had lifted their ban on accepting alms from members of the military junta or their families.

[...]

It can be rescinded at any moment if the perceived wrong-doers apologise and mend their ways–something the generals have steadfastly refused to do.

“If they do not apologise, we will start our movement,” a young monk from the coastal city of Sittwe told Reuters, claiming to lead a network of 1,000 monks and students wanting an end to falling living standards and galloping inflation.

“People are getting angrier and angrier. Their suffering is worsening day by day and they cannot tolerate it any more,” he told Reuters at a secret location in Yangon.

“If there is another uprising, the soldiers will shoot to kill and there will be another bloodbath. But I am prepared to go to prison or be killed.”

Others have no more stomach for a fight.

“I hope it doesn’t happen again. The country is peaceful now,” one Mandalay monk said.

Although many monasteries were closed at the height of the crackdown and thousands of monks disappeared either to prison or back to their home towns and villages, most have been allowed to reopen.

However, three dissident establishments in Yangon remain locked and in Mandalay, Myanmar’s religious heart, monks at several large monasteries said numbers were 20-30 percent lower than before the crackdown.

The junta has also called in scores of senior abbots, telling them to keep in check their young charges.

“Our abbot told us not to protest again. He told us that they’ll shoot and we’ll die. What can we do? We have no arms,” a 23-year-old at a large Mandalay monastery said. “But if we get the chance, we will do it again. This government is no good.”

In the central town of Pakokku, where heavy-handed treatment of monks by soldiers and pro-junta thugs in early September triggered the nationwide monastic revolt, the regime appears to be taking steps to ensure against a repeat.

Regime agents are undercover in the monasteries and a reviled local gang leader known as “Mr. 2 by 1″, after the 2-inch thick wooden baton with which he beat monks and protesters, is behind bars to avoid inciting protests, one resident said.

This from the Associated Press:

Hundreds of Tibetan exiles defied police and resumed their march Tuesday from northern India to Tibet to protest Beijing’s hosting of this summer’s Olympic Games.

Meanwhile, Tibetans around the world commemorated their 1959 uprising against Chinese rule.

Local police chief Atul Fulzele said an order banning the exiles from leaving the area near the northern Indian city of Dharmsala on Monday had been issued following a recommendation from the Indian government. Dharmsala is the seat of the Tibetan government in exile, where the marchers had stopped for the night.

Tenzin Tsundue, one of the march leaders, said Tuesday morning the protesters would ignore the police order and keep marching.

“This is the fun part now,” Tsundue said. “We are ready for any kind of obstruction. We will be very peaceful but when so many people are determined to give their lives up, no police can stop us.”

Protesters rallied Monday in the Indian capital of New Delhi and in Katmandu, Nepal, where hundreds of activists clashed with police and 10 activists were detained. Pro-Tibet demonstrations also took place in San Francisco and Olympia, Greece, birthplace of the ancient Olympic Games.

The march in Dharmsala got under way on the anniversary of the failed uprising that forced the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, into exile in 1959.

In Tibet, Radio Free Asia reported that as many as 300 monks marched five miles from a monastery outside the capital Lhasa to the city’s center on the 49th anniversary of the uprising.

The monks were demanding the release of monks detained last October when the Dalai Lama was given a Congressional Gold Medal in Washington, an honor that infuriated the Chinese government.

Authorities detained between 50 and 60 monks, according to the private broadcaster funded by the U.S. Congress.

The India-to-Tibet march was to be one of several protests around the world before the Aug. 8-24 Beijing Games, Tibetan exile groups said.

The exile groups say China is attempting to stamp out Tibetan Buddhist culture and increase the government’s presence in Tibet. Beijing maintains that Tibet is historically part of China.

Fulzele, the local police chief, said the march goes against an agreement between New Delhi and the Tibetan government in exile.

None of the groups taking part in the march are affiliated with the government in exile; neither the Dalai Lama nor the government has issued an official statement on the march.

India, which had been sympathetic to the Tibetans’ cause, has clamped down on public protests in recent years, fearing they could embarrass Beijing and damage relations between the two Asian giants.

The Dalai Lama, speaking in Dharmsala, said that for nearly six decades Tibetans “have had to live in a state of constant fear, intimidation and suspicion under Chinese repression.”

In New Delhi, more than a 1,000 protesters marched and some wrapped themselves in bandages covered with fake blood and wore cutouts of the Olympic rings around their necks.

The bandages were meant to show that the International Olympic Committee “has done a great injustice by giving the permission … the right to China to hold the Olympics,” said Jigme Yeshi, a member of the Tibetan Youth Congress.

Police fired tear gas and beat up hundreds of Tibetans who threw bricks and stones at police in Katmandu, the capital of Nepal, officials said.

At least 10 protesters were detained near Boudhanath, one of the biggest Buddhist shrines in Nepal, said a police official who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

In San Francisco, demonstrators unfurled a Tibetan flag over the steps leading into City Hall and held up a portrait of the Dalai Lama and banners saying “Olympics in China, Torture in Tibet,” and “Truth is our only weapon.”

In Olympia, Tibetans lit a Freedom Torch to start a relay intended to course through 50 cities and finish inside Tibet the same day Beijing will hold the opening ceremonies, Aug. 8.

Thanks to Phil for sending this along to us.

Princeton University’s Jacqueline I. Stone offers a useful post for Buddhist caregivers and chaplains, as well as those interested in death and dying, at The Buddhist Scholars Information Network (H-Buddhism) this week:

I would like to introduce four recent essays on death in Buddhism, for the benefit of anyone interested in this topic. All four appear in Phyllis Granoff and Koichi Shinohara, eds., Heroes and Saints: The Moment of Death in Cross-cultural Perspectives, ed. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007). They are:

• James Benn, “Spontaneous Human Combustion: Some Remarks on a Phenomenon in Chinese Buddhism,” 101-33.

• Kurtis R. Schaeffer, “Death, Prognosis, and the Physician’s Reputation in Tibet,” 159-72.

• Koichi Shinohara, “Writing the Moment of Death in Biographies of Eminent Monks,” 47-65.

• Jacqueline I. Stone, “Dying Breath: Deathbed Rites and Death Pollution in Early Medieval Japan,” 173-246.In addition, while not specifically focused on Buddhism, Phyllis Granoff’s essay in the same collection, “Fasting or Fighting: Dying the Noble Death in Some Indian Religious Texts,” 73-100, contains some illuminating Hindu and Jain parallels.

Find out more about Heroes and Saints: The Moment of Death in Cross-cultural Perspectives here.