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VIII. FREEDOM FROM
REACTION (1)
LION.
It is my birthday today. I mention it only because you know it already. I begin the new year with a fresh resolve: “Development and still greater development of non-violence in my life!"
People want to know about my progress in life. They say, "How is it that you have been able to write so many books? How did you achieve such mastery over yourself?" I should like to tell them of a great maxim which has effortlessly permeated and transformed my life. That great maxim is : "Freedom from reaction".
There are two forms of violence- reaction and revenge. Killing, too, is violence, but no man is engrossed by a desire to kill all the time. Nor does he actually commit a murder everday. If he kills some one every day, he would himself go mad in course of time. Only rarlely does the spirit to kill overpower a man? It is only a hardened criminal who commits a murder. The other two forms of violence are more common, i.e., reaction and revenge. Even among these two, reaction is more frequent.
During the course of a single day, we react a hundred times; and a hundred times we indulge in violence. Many times it so happens that one's very breath, the ingoing as well as the outgoing, is thoroughly steeped in violence. Occasions for reaction are never wanting in life. Since childhood I have made it a rule not to react, so as to be able to do something in life. One who is caught in reaction, loses his creative powers; such a one can only indulge in destructive activity. He can accomplish no great work, for one can use one's energy this way or that, for construction or destruction. How you utilize your energy is for you to determine. You can use it for constructive purposes or lay it waste in acts of destruction. Each man must determine for himself if he is going to utilize his energy constructively or destructively.
I made a strong determination and I am happy to report that most of the time I have been free from reaction. I don't remember entertaining any malice towards others. The moment I found that some one intended to cause me harm, I told myself he was wasting his energy, that his powers declined. I see a man vomiting. It is not necessary for me to vomit also. In actual everyday living, it does happen that one man's vomit causes nausea to another and makes him vomit too. But if one's inorale is high, one does not succumb to the morbid inclination.
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