Life On Earth Needs a Nonviolent Love Army Like None Before

This is an invitation to those who behold the horrific suffering and injustice that plague our world and yearn to cool the flames of pain. To those who believe that we need both a deep shift in culture and consciousness as well as in laws and material conditions. To those who sense that love, connection, compassion, and truth must be at the heart of the revolution our world needs so urgently.

Perhaps you are a student activist, a labor organizer, a nonprofit staff member, a volunteer community activist in a social movement, or simply a citizen who votes and yearns to do more. Or perhaps you are a devoted meditator or member of a house of worship who wants to help free others from suffering in ways that won’t happen simply by bringing them to the cushion or the church pew.

From whatever position, alongside the natural joy of life and the promise of this moment in history, you see that our precious world is in big, big trouble. From the hellish catastrophe in Gaza and the grotesque inequality of our global economy to the rise of new authoritarian threats to democracy and the maelstrom of addictive misinformation and heart-wrenching dehumanization online, you sense the overwhelming difficulty. You feel the weight of knowing that ours is an era seared by interlocking crises escalating amid a climate emergency that threatens the very future of human civilization even as it drives countless other species to the verge of extinction.

Yet you know that we cannot give up. The call of love moves us to try.

But how?

In the face of such entrenched and powerful obstacles, can we really overcome? Is it truly possible to move so many so quickly? To shift our civilization in the direction of love fast enough to restore a safe climate and protect it and life on earth?

From whatever position, alongside the natural joy of life and the promise of this moment in history, you see that our precious world is in big, big trouble.

The future is always uncertain. And with life comes hope. I believe there is a way.

And I believe that part of that path lies in writing a new chapter in one of the great experiments of human history.

Along the journey of Gandhi’s life—which he called “my experiments with truth”—the Mahatma dreamed of a “nonviolent army,” or shanti sena.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called us to build a movement that was itself an embodiment of that into which it would transform society: a Beloved Community.

Each of their lives was cut short by assassin’s bullets, but their service and the movements they helped build changed our world, advancing one of the most profound and powerful traditions that exists.

I call it the integral nonviolent liberation tradition: a legacy of spiritually-rooted nonviolent leaders and movements who cultivated the most radiant dimensions of human potential—the most radical love, the most embracing truth, the deepest wisdom, the most encompassing compassion, the most profound courage—and applied those great capacities in devoted service and struggle to benefit and liberate all people and beings.

We can see some of the roots of this tradition in the lives of Jesus of Nazareth and Gautuma the Buddha. They each articulated in different forms an ethic of universal compassionate love and nonviolent service, offering teachings and practices to embody it. Mohandas Gandhi was, according to Martin Luther King, “probably the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social force on a large scale.” In Gandhi’s case, he was drawing significantly on teachings and practices of the Hindu tradition and especially the Bhagavad Gita to inform his fusion of spiritual practice, service, and political action. Dr. King developed an approach rooted in the prophetic Christian tradition of the Black church. And many others like Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Thich Nhat Han, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, John Lewis, A. T. Ariyatne, Dorothy Day—and countless others less known to history—have made their own experiments in this profound field. All of them learned from each other or those who experimented before them.

Every moment is precious and every step a person takes on the path of a nonviolent spiritual warrior is a great and necessary blessing for us all.

There have been moments in history—like the visionary era of SNCC, Dr. King’s SCLC, and what the great Rev. James Lawson named “the nonviolent movement of America” that won the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts—when hundreds of thousands of everyday people were engaged together for years in these mass experiments in love and truth.

Looking back over this incredible history, I think we can identify several core elements to this tradition which are essential for us now.

These elements are:

1. Meditation and prayer to cultivate wisdom, balance, and compassion, to loosen or dissolve harmful, reactive conditioning, and to a create a shift in identity from the egoic separate self of fear, greed, and hatred to a greater identity experienced as all life, a divine communion, or being itself; and the cultivation of a community of practice that supports this growth and embodies it in relationships
2. A perspective that values truth and its continual pursuit over any fixed, partial, or instrumental view, that seeks to integrate complexity and as many perspectives as possible into a shared, inclusive understanding, and that holds all living beings as sacred, intrinsically valuable, and worthy of care as part of an interdependent cosmos
3. action to alleviate suffering and create well-being for all—including direct aid to help others, especially those who are suffering most, community with others who are suffering, building new alternative institutions (where possible and strategic), and using strategic nonviolent conflict to confront injustice, prevent harm, build accountable collective power, and transform and govern existing institutions, aligning them with love and truth.

We can practice this tradition in almost any field or arena of science, art, even business—by courageously and skillfully leveraging the resources available to us and working urgently to align the institutions we are part of with these values and vision.

In our time, the greatest need is for nonviolent organizing and action to shift policy and wield governing power to lead a society-wide emergency mobilization that restores a safe climate while establishing a planetary baseline of democracy, peace, and human rights.

Such strategic action looks like campaigns of nonviolent protest, civil disobedience, direct action, and noncooperation, running referendums or ballot initiatives, campaigns to organize or compel voluntary corporate policy changes, running for office or supporting candidate campaigns, building political parties or contesting for their leadership, organizing unions or other mass community or political organizations, forging governing alliances, and securing legislative and treaty agreements.

I believe that this crossroads in human history calls for us to carry this noble tradition forward by building a global army of millions of 21st century spiritual nonviolent warriors who will lead a surge of such efforts.

We... live in a time when millions of people worldwide are waking up to the mega-crisis we face and engaging in political and social action to confront collective suffering and injustice.

We must grow a fellowship of political bodhisattvas: people who commit our lives to cultivate deep, scientifically-informed spiritual wisdom and compassion and apply them directly—at an unprecedented scale and with a new clarity of intention—through strategic nonviolent action and leadership in the struggle to guide the dominant institutions of political and economic power that will determine our collective fate.

Where are the millions who can become this love army?

Thankfully, we live in a time when there is an explosion of interest in the teachings that cultivate the inner potential of a spiritual nonviolent warrior or political bodhisattva. Every day, new people begin learning mindfulness meditation and compassion practices rooted primarily in the Buddhist lineage, as well as contemplative practices of other traditions, including indigenous ones and renewed interest in the intentional, supported use of psychedelic medicines for spiritual growth—all informed and supported by burgeoning scientific research and insight. After many years of meditation, I’m training to teach mindfulness and compassion practices myself. Yet cultivating this heart and mind to confine it to the realm of personal peace and interpersonal harmony will not meet the challenge of our age. There will be a little less suffering as the ship of human civilization sinks in flames.

Thankfully, we also live in a time when millions of people worldwide are waking up to the mega-crisis we face and engaging in political and social action to confront collective suffering and injustice. Yet, our movements for justice and struggles against regressive, authoritarian forces are often plagued by currents of hatred, bitterness, cynicism, veneration of violence, hypocrisy, reductionist thinking, and dishonesty that repel countless potential recruits and cause debilitating internal conflicts. We are often severely constrained by our own unhealed trauma, reactive conditioning, and unhelpful and often deeply confused cultural legacies and contemporary tools, leaving us very vulnerable to opponents who would use deceit and manipulation to weaken us and our efforts. In my two decades as an organizer working to build nonviolent movements for peace, justice, and democracy, I’ve experienced and contributed to this dysfunction myself. I know well the pain, the challenge, and the possibility of healing through applying and integrating the medicine of the integral nonviolent liberation tradition.

The stark fact is the global progressive left is the only game in town for a mass political force to win an emergency climate mobilization and build a democratic, peaceful, just world. But we are beset by our shadows and struggling to self-regulate. If we can’t heal and correct, we will fail in our historic mission.

So these developments are great opportunities, but without integration they are unlikely to produce the kind of enlightened social force that is essential to intervene and enact the dramatic, rapid global shift our planet needs right now.

The stark fact is the global progressive left is the only game in town for a mass political force to win an emergency climate mobilization and build a democratic, peaceful, just world.

We must set about the work of intentionally recruiting, training, organizing, and deploying a quickly-growing fellowship of people who can effectively lead in political struggle from a strong spiritual foundation. That foundation must sustain loving, hope-affirming action guided by integrating intelligence through the inevitable tumult of ups and downs, conflict and suffering.

Our people are so hungry for real connection, peace, hope, and belonging. Hungry for a vision of a human life and society in which we can really imagine ourselves and our children and grandchildren—all of us—thriving in a healthy, sane world. For leadership that embodies real wisdom, integrity, service, courage, common sense, and genuine emotional and spiritual maturity. This is what leaders rooted in the integral nonviolent liberation tradition can offer.

Those who walked this path in history were not angels, gods, or superhuman beings. They were people, human beings just like me and you who devoted themselves to a path and grew in it.

They may have been exceptional, as LeBron James is a truly exceptional basketball player. But you don’t have to be LeBron to score a couple points, make some assists, or grab a few rebounds. Most of us can become decent neighborhood basketball players if we commit ourselves and work at it. And this “way of the political bodhisattva” requires no special physical talent nor even an able body. Instead it builds on the most basic capacities of the human body-heart-mind. To breathe, to be aware of our experience, to learn, to care, to help another through communication, presence, action. And like basketball, this path can be studied, practiced, and shared.

Now is the time.

Billions of years of the evolution of life on earth and tens of thousands of years of human cultural evolution have brought us to this precipice—and given us the tools to meet it. We must make a great leap forward as a species, as a civilization. And we need millions of political bodhisattvas to guide, encourage, and skillfully push us to make that leap.

Billions of years of the evolution of life on earth and tens of thousands of years of human cultural evolution have brought us to this precipice—and given us the tools to meet it.

If this vision resonates with you, there are many resources to explore it and find community in enacting it. One way to start is by learning about the lives and work of any of the exemplars I noted above, applying lessons that resonate with you in your life and work. Community with others on a similar path is so helpful. You can connect with aligned programs like the King Center’s nonviolence training, join love-guided movements like the new Poor People’s Campaign led by Bishop William Barber II and Rev. Liz Theoharis, or learn from spiritual teachers who encourage compassionate action like Tara Brach or Lama Rod Owens. One new opportunity is joining the inaugural fellows program of my organization, For All, a small group fellowship of study and practice in this tradition that we hope to expand from this pilot into a much larger force.

Whatever particular form or flavor you choose, begin or continue. There is no time to lose. Every moment is precious and every step a person takes on the path of a nonviolent spiritual warrior is a great and necessary blessing for us all. May millions of us walk it together and so help heal our planet and make our world a Beloved Community.