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Today, April 4, marks the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the final day of the Season for Nonviolence. While the Season for 2022 is now ending, we hope that you will continue your own personal nonviolence journey. All of the postings over the past 64 days have focused on ways in which we can each contribute to a culture of peace and nonviolence on many levels. We are each called to practice nonviolence in our personal lives, at home, at school in the workplace and community and, in doing so, we will help move the world in the direction of peace.
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The Season empowers us with the awareness that we can help to counter the violence we see around us through our own daily
non-violent attitudes and actions. The heart of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy and teachings was “Ahimsa”, a Sanskrit word that has been translated into English as “nonviolence”. A more accurate translation is “to do no harm in thought, word or deed”. Gandhi dreamed of a world based on Ahimsa and this ideal has been passed on to great leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama, to name a few. It is through nonviolence that we will someday be able to co-exist in peace and prosper together in community. |
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We, at the Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation for World Peace, hope that you will join us next year for the 2023 Season for Nonviolence starting on January 30.
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We would like to end this year’s Season by sharing the Joint Gandhi-King Principles of Nonviolence:
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Nonviolence means to honor the inherent worth of every human being.
In Nonviolence we naturally seek to understand each other, build friendship and community. Nonviolence means believing that our lives are linked and that what we do impacts the lives of everyone we encounter. That we are responsible to and for one another. Nonviolence means dedicating ourselves to the fundamental rights of every human being for justice, equity and equality. Nonviolence is courageously choosing to practice compassion with our adversaries remembering that we oppose injustice, not people. Nonviolence means recognizing love as the power of the human spirit to triumph over injustice, inequity and suffering. It is a true hero’s journey of personal-social change. |
The Gandhi/King artwork used above was included with permission from the artist, Suraj Sadan, of the Fondation Nationale Mahatma Gandhi
