If You Have to Kill, Try Killing With Kindness

The Seven Social Sins, sometimes called the Seven Blunders of the World, is a list that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi published in his weekly newspaper Young India on October 22, 1925.^[1] Later he gave this same list to his grandson, Arun Gandhi, written on a piece of paper on their final day together shortly before his assassination.^[2] The Seven Sins are:

• Wealth without work.
• Pleasure without conscience.
• Knowledge without character.
• Commerce without morality.
• Science without humanity.
• Worship without sacrifice.
• Politics without principle.

To this list his grandson added Rights without Responsibilities.

In any conflict, both sides can get mighty righteous. That is why they embark on the destructive ugly road of conflict. Every act of violence sets the stage for future ones. We have to be idiots not to notice this. Lama Marut says that ignorance isn't not knowing. It is ignoring what you know. Wow.

When Gandhi wrote of these Blunders, he was trying to articulate the root causes of violence. My experience of bringing these ideas to friends has been a thunderous silence. For most of my friends, the very first point "Wealth Without Work" is already a deal breaker. What are some ways of getting wealth without work? Stealing. Using slave labor. Conquering. Stock market. Oops. Inheritance can put some distance, that's good.

Why do I keep bringing this up? I guess that I am stubborn and a bit pig headed. Or very pig headed. I am not shoving this conversation at you, dear readers, because I am righteous, but rather because I am struggling to figure out my life and the context in which I live.

Of course I am dismayed about the suffering that is happening right now in the world. But on a simple personal level, I am struggling between the act of turning the other cheek and that of standing up for myself. Great ideas both, but neither quite gets me out of a reactive mode.I need to find the root cause of my getting into the situation in which I have to react.

If Buddhism or Christianity has it right, the problem is my little ego. If  'I' was not attached to an outcome and let God's will enter the picture, 'I' couldn't possibly have a problem, could I? If I am one with the universe, then there is no Julie in any case so I can't possibly have a problem. I am confused.