I’ve read a lot of Gandhi..his actual writings, and I understand and identify with where he is (was) coming from, but the form a non-violent life takes has to be, is required to be, different for each person.
Gandhi understood, as I do, that technically, non-violence is impossible while living in a body. You walk to the mailbox, you kill something.
So, form-wise, each non-violent (good, I’d say) person has to find, or accept, the place where they operate, in regards to the technical aspect of self-defense/violence.
I am not you. I am not Gandhi. I am myself, Barry Bliss. I must find my place, my way, and maybe I have, but I do not want to admit it.
I have been training and rehearsing, though not at fighting per se, but I have been hiding too, perhaps, or just …… one can’t train forever, or hide forever, or stay invisible forever.
It makes me happy, the thought of living openly and going all out, but I feel very saddened about the reality of the world. If I could justify it, I’d be a monk, one that stayed in a cloister, and never …….you get it.
Gandhi said that if you didn’t believe in standing your ground and taking the blows without hitting back then the only other option was to stand your ground and fight all out. He said that while he thought the former was best, the latter, he said, was infinitely better than running away. He said running away was no option at all.
I wholeheartedly agree.