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Your Life Is Your Message

Conservation biologists call the elephant a “keystone” species. Just as an arch cannot stand without its keystone, many other species, and sometimes entire ecosystems, would be lost without the elephant. On the African savannah, the elephant’s foraging creates a mixture of woodlands and grasslands, making the savannah hospitable to many more creatures, from the zebra to the giraffe to the baboon. In drier climates, it provides water not only for itself but for all the other species by creating new water holes and even digging wells. Because of the elephant, a huge, hungry animal with gentle habits, the entire ecosystem flourishes.

I believe that we human beings are meant for no less a role. Today, because of our skills and technology, human society has assumed the position of keystone in the vast, delicately balanced arch of nature. Like the elephants in the forest, our lives affect all the other creatures, plants, and elements around us. They all depend upon us for support and protection.

In one way, our influence now is far from benign. Rather than supporting the rest of life, human beings often seem to be at odds with it. Scientists tell us that many of our social and business activities are not only driving other species to extinction but are threatening the water, soil, and atmosphere on which our own lives depend. We seem to have trouble relating even to our own species. The tension and alienation of our inner cities, the increase in poverty and homelessness, the drug abuse and high suicide rate among our young people all suggest that we lack the wisdom to protect ourselves, let alone the rest of nature.

Yet in another sense, there is great promise today. Around the world – even in some of the countries most troubled by poverty or civil war or pollution – many thoughtful people are making a deep, concerted search for a way to live in harmony with each other and the earth. Their efforts, which rarely reach the headlines, are among the most important events occurring today. Sometimes these people call themselves peace workers, at other times environmentalists, but most of the time they work in humble anonymity. They are simply quiet people changing the world by changing themselves.

The purpose of this book is to encourage those people and the changes they are making. In it, I hope to underscore the tremendous potential of such “tremendous trifles,” to use G. K. Chesterton’s phrase, for improving our lives and the world we live in, and I will be offering some practical suggestions on how to make those changes more satisfying and more powerful.

Through such unobtrusive, almost inaudible work, the changes we would like to see in the world around us can begin immediately in our own lives, making us more secure, more contented, and more effective. Each of us has the capacity to become a little keystone, a healing and protecting force in the family, with friends, at work, in the community, in the environment.

Such little changes can seem painfully small when compared to the kinds of crises we read about in the headlines, but through my personal experience I have become convinced that there is no instrument of change more powerful than the well-lived life. Having had the privilege of growing up in Mahatma Gandhi’s India, walking with him, studying his life, and trying to live by his example, I can say that his simple, loving life has done more to benefit the world than all the speeches and policies composed by politicians in this century – however eloquent, however well-meaning.

Once, while Mahatma Gandhi’s train was pulling slowly out of the station, a reporter ran up to him and asked for a message to take back to his people. Gandhi’s reply was a hurried line scrawled on a scrap of paper: “My life is my message.”

This is the message which all our children are waiting and hoping for. In the coming decades they face the daunting prospect of inheriting our world, with its debts, its national antagonisms, its injured environment. What they are often trying to express through anger or rebellion is a need to be loved – not through words or gifts, but through our personal example. “Say it with flowers” is not enough. We need to say it with our lives. How else will they know that living in harmony with each other and the earth is possible?

Taken together, these small daily efforts to improve our ordinary lives add up to a very powerful force that, in the years to come, can become a kind of spiritual revolution, providing a firm foundation for the kind of political, economic, and ecological improvements we need to make.

In the past two centuries, the world has seen several revolutions. Some of them have brought salutary changes, while others have brought only suffering, but I would venture to say that none of them has brought us the peace our minds are hungering for or the love our hearts are thirsting for. Without such a spiritual foundation, I don’t think any political or economic policy, however new, however brilliant, can fill the crying needs of humanity or protect the earth from the pressure those unfilled needs exert on it.

What I am referring to goes well beyond what we normally call social change. While I have the deepest respect for all those working selflessly to serve the world, many of the so-called “reformers” I have seen both in India and this country have an unpromising approach. They look down from the soapbox or pulpit and say, “Let me reform you, Diane, and you, Steve, and of course you, Bob.”

If Bob says, “What about you?” they reply, “Oh, that can wait. Let me start with Diane and Steve and you.”

That is a familiar refrain in international politics, international economics, international aid, even international education. But the great spiritual teachers of all religions – men and women who have devoted their lives to the art of living in complete harmony, like Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, the Compassionate Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi – say, “Oh no! You start with yourself.” There is not much purpose served by preaching to others or by talking at them. The only way to influence people for the better – your family, your friends, your club, your class, your clinic, your society, even your enemies – is through your personal example. Harmony with the environment – the alleviation of our environmental crisis – and harmony with others – the easing of our social, political, and economic difficulties – both begin with a third harmony: harmony with ourselves.

Even though they may not realize it consciously, people absorb something deep below the conscious level when they see a man who is at peace with himself, a woman who finds her happiness in making life a little better for the community. It is the same mental dynamic as advertisers use in their roadside billboards. While you are traveling on the freeway, you may not notice the billboards consciously, but a certain part of their message seeps into the unconscious, and influences you the next time you go to the store.

Similarly, when you are able to live with joy, giving your time and energy to improving the quality of life for all, you are not only fulfilling your highest destiny, you are also helping all those around you to grow to their full height. As you will see from the challenges outlined in this book, this is not an easy path. Self-transformation is arduous work, especially at first; but each tiny change brings with it the joyful awareness that your life is gradually becoming a force for peaceful change.

Nothing is more important today. Much effort is going into the search for substitutes for environmentally harmful products, like the chlorofluorocarbons which damage the ozone layer or the chemicals which pollute our groundwater, but what we need just as urgently is a substitute for the real culprit – a way of life which demands ever-increasing amounts of material resources while providing ever-decreasing satisfaction. To replace it, we need more than just a plan for efficient energy use or designs for solar-powered cars, although these are always welcome. We need a way of life which gives back more than it takes, enhancing the world around us rather than exploiting and polluting it. So, while the chemists search for substitutes for CFCs and the engineers seek to make solar and windpower profitable, the environmental crisis is challenging us all to undertake an even more important search: the search for a sustainable, fully satisfying way of life, based not on exploiting the external environment, but on taking full advantage of the riches inside us – the nobility, compassion, and desire for peace that lie hidden in every heart. This is not work that can be done for us by corporations or governments; we each have to do it ourselves.

Yet we do not have to do it alone. My grandmother, who was my spiritual teacher, always used the tamarind tree to illustrate the power of ordinary people. The tamarind is a big tree, with very small, thin leaves. On a hot day, the people of my old state of Kerala like to sleep in its shade. The leaves are so numerous and are packed so close together that they protect us from the tropical sun just as if they were one large canopy. “Little Lamp, you don’t have to look for big people,” Granny would tell me. “Look for little people like yourself, then band together and work together in harmony.”

So don’t be intimidated by position or power or wealth. If little people like you and me work together, we can do a great deal to transform the world.

Reading This Book

This book is meant as a companion for a gradual process of self-transformation, in which you can find and establish harmony with yourself, with the people around you, and with the earth. In it, I have tried to give short glimpses of a way of life both inwardly fulfilling and outwardly beneficial. Read these little pieces straight through or in any order that follows your needs. Come back to them as often as you like. Like flower seeds which reveal their true beauty only after they are planted and watered, the simple but profound truths of the world’s great spiritual heritage will release their transformative power only when you plant them in your heart through deep concentration and reflection.

For this reason, throughout the book, I often refer to a simple eight-point program of spiritual growth which I have used myself and taught for over thirty years. The eight daily practices it comprises are distilled from the mystical tradition sometimes called the Perennial Philosophy, which has found expression within all the major religious traditions of the world: Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist; Islamic and Zoroastrian; Jewish and Christian. They embody millennia of experience in the art of absorbing spiritual wisdom and making it an integral part of daily life.

In my eight-point program, I have adapted these traditional practices to the demands and opportunities of an active modern life. They can be used by all those who want to enrich their life by harnessing their deepest reserves of creativity and compassion. The program requires no particular religious beliefs, and can be practiced fully within your own religious context, or even if you are allergic to all religious dogma.

Basic instructions in the eight points, which I have discussed at length in my other books, are contained in the text of this book. A list of the eight points and an index for them is included here.