The first lesson he taught me was understanding anger and being able to channel that energy into positive action. Anger is like electricity; it's just as useful and just as powerful, but only if we use it intelligently. But it can be just as deadly and destructive if we abuse it. So just as we channel electricity and bring it into our lives, and use it for the good of humanity, we must learn to channel anger in the same way so that we can use it for the good of humanity, rather than cause death and destruction.

He taught me to write an anger journal. He said, every time you feel angry about something, don't pour it out on somebody or something, pour it out in your anger journal. But write the journal with the intention of finding a solution to the problem, and then commit yourself to finding a solution to the problem. And that is really important.

A lot of people tell me they have been writing an anger journal for a long time, but it hasn't really helped them because every time they go back and read the journal it reminds them of the incident and they just become angry all over again. And we don't want the journal to remind us of the incident; we want it to help us find a solution.

He made this a cornerstone of his philosophy of nonviolence; that anybody who wanted to learn about nonviolence must first learn about anger management, how to deal with that very powerful emotion in a concrete and intelligent way.

He and my grandmother were 13 yrs old when they were married; and he said at that age he didn't know what the role of a husband was, and who was going to lay down the rules and who was going to enforce them. So he started going to the library and reading books on the subject, and obviously the books were written by male chauvinists, because they all talked about how the husband must lay downs the rules and enforce them strictly.

After reading this book, he came home and said to grandmother, 'As of tomorrow, you're not going to stir out of this house without my permission. No arguments about this; this is the law and you're going to obey me.' And grandmother quietly heard him and didn't say anything; she didn't retort, she just went to bed, got up the next morning and continued to do what she always did; go out and visit and never bothered to get grandfather's permission.

After a few days he realized she wasn't obeying him, so he confronted her again and said, 'How dare you disobey me? Haven't I told you you shouldn't go outside the house without my permission?' And at that point grandmother very quietly, without raising her voice or losing her temper, said, 'I was brought up to believe that we must always obey the elders in the house, and I believe the elders in this house are your parents, and if you're trying to tell me I shouldn't obey your mother but should obey you instead, let me know so I can go and tell your mother I'm not going to obey her anymore.' And of course grandfather couldn't tell her to do that so the whole matter was settled without anyone losing their temper or breaking up the relationship.

I'd like you to imagine if someone would say something like that to us. I would have blown up and said, 'Who do you think you are to tell me such things.' And that's natural, because we just get angry and blow up and say and do things that sometimes leads to really severe consequences; we break up relationships and all kinds of things happen because of lack of control over our anger.

And that's when grandfather realized how important it was to be able to understand anger and be able to channel it into positive direction instead of abusing it.

Even though we're peace activists, we have a lot to learn about nonviolence. It begins with each of us. We must become the change we seek in the world. Only when we understand our weaknesses, will we understand how we can improve ourselves and society as a whole.

A lot of people think of nonviolence in terms of absence of war and violence. But we commit violence in many different ways and we don't even realize it. He taught me this lesson with a three-inch butt of a pencil. I threw away this pencil when I was coming back home from school because I thought it was too small and I deserved a better pencil. And that evening when I asked him for a new pencil, instead of giving me one he subjected me to a lot of questions. He wanted to know how the pencil became small and why did I throw it away and where did I throw it away and on and on. And I couldn't understand why he was making such a fuss about a little pencil until he told me to go out and look for it. And I said, 'You must be joking. Surely you don't expect me to go look for a little pencil in the dark,' and he said, 'Oh yes I do and here's a flashlight.' And he sent me out with a flashlight and I must have searched about two hours for that pencil.

When I finally found it and brought it to him he said, 'And now I want you to sit here and learn two very important lessons. The first thing is that even when we use something as simple as a pencil we use a lot of the world's resources, and when we throw them away we are throwing away the world's natural resources, and that is violence against nature.

And the second lesson is because in an affluent society we can afford to buy these things in bulk, we over-consume the resources of the world, and because we over-consume them, we are depriving the people elsewhere of these resources and they have to live in poverty, and that is violence against humanity. And that was the first time I realized that all of these little things we do each day, all the things we waste and over-consume, consciously or unconsciously, it's become so much a way of our life that we don't even realize it. But every time we do one of these things we are committing violence either against nature or against humanity, and we have to become conscious of this.

There are [UN] statistics to show the disparities between nations of the world... To buy a loaf of bread in the US, a person has to work for 6 minutes. In a third world country, one would have to work for 20 hours. To buy a cotton dress, an American woman would have to work for 4 hours; in a third world country, a woman would have to work for 4,500 hours. To buy a suit of clothes an American man would have to work for 38 hours; in a third world country, 11,660 hours. So this is the kind of disparities that exist in the world, and when we have that kind of disparity, and in our own country we have this kind of disparity, where more than a million people go to bed hungry every night. And when we have this kind of disparity, it's going to generate conflict and result in crime and violence. So however much we try to push that down with law and punishment, we are never going to be able to achieve that because we are feeding it on the one hand and trying to destroy it with the other.

To drive home the message, grandfather made me do an exercise, and I think it's one all of us need to do, with ourselves and our families, to make everyone aware of how we contribute to violence. He told me to draw a family tree of violence, on the same principle as a genealogical tree, with violence as the grandparent and physical and passive violence as the two offspring. And every night before I went to bed, I had to examine everything that happened during day; things I did to other people or they did to me, or experiences, or whatever it was, and everything had to be analyzed and put in the right place on that tree.

And if it was physical violence, the kind of violence where we use physical force against one another, like murder and killing and war and rape and all these things where physical force was used, that would go under physical violence. But if it was the kind of violence where we don't use physical force but yet we hurt people, by our actions or inactions, by our behavior or how we talk to them that hurts people, that would go under passive violence. Things like discrimination, oppression, suppression, economic, political social, cultural, religious; name calling, over-consumption of resources and all of these things that we do that hurt people, directly or indirectly that is passive violence.

And when I began to do this exercise every day, within a few months I was able to fill up the whole wall with acts of passive violence. And that's when I became aware of how much passive violence each one commits daily, consciously and unconsciously, knowingly and unknowingly, we indulge in this passive violence.

And then grandfather explained to me the relationship between the two. Because we commit passive violence every day, consciously or unconsciously, and that generates anger in the victim, and the victim then resorts to physical violence to get justice. So it is passive violence that fuels the physical violence. So logically if we want to put out the fire of physical violence, we have to cut off the fuel supply. And since the fuel supply comes from each one of us, unless we become the change we wish to see in the world, we'll never be able to work for peace. Because we are constantly feeding the fire with fuel and dousing it with water at the same time and it doesn't go out.

So we can take a new look at our way of life, the things that we do, the way we live with each other; all of these things, even our justice system, which needs to be renovated, because our justice system has come to mean revenge. We want an eye for an eye, and grandfather said that an eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind. Justice is not an eye for an eye or revenge; it's for reformation. It's recognition of the fact that somebody did something wrong because of certain circumstances, and unless we address these circumstances, we'll never be able to stop people from doing these things. So justice should mean addressing ourselves to those circumstances so we can eliminate crime. The whole concept that there are good people and bad people in the world and we can just eliminate the bad people and we'll have the good people - it's all wrong, because each one of us is good and bad, and it's only a question of which one we nourish that eventually emerges... If we nourish the evil in us it will dominate us; if we nourish the good it will dominate us. And that is in our hands to do. Not in other people's hands. And so we have to become that kind of change.

But grandfather's philosophy was also about relationship. And because of the circumstances in which we live, and the kind of lifestyle we enjoy, in capitalism, that has made us very greedy and selfish. We are constantly thinking about ourselves... What am I'm going to gain from this, and if I'm not going to gain why should I bother to cultivate a relationship. And each one of us has that kind of a selfish motive, and if we have that motive in relationship, there is the potential for conflict... This has gone beyond our relationships as individuals; it goes into politics, religion, all aspects.

[The] kind of relationship we should be working for, [is] not us and them; not creating more division in our society but bringing people together. Grandfather talked about building relationships on the four principles of respect, understanding, acceptance and appreciation. He said we have to respect ourselves, each other and our connection with all of creation.

...A lot of people have told me we are independent and we will do what we like. But we are not independent individuals. We are interdependent, interconnected, and interrelated, not only as individuals but as all of creation. And we have to respect that. Because when we are able to respect that, then we will understand who we are and what we are and why we are here on earth. We are not here by accident. We are here to fulfill a purpose, and we will be able to fulfill that purpose when we know what our role in creation is. But if we come here to live from birth to death and just exist in that period, then we're not going to achieve anything at all; we're not going to leave a mark in this life and nothing happens.

But we have to understand that our role here is significant, and we have to play that role so we can leave this world as a better place than we found it, and if each one of us is able to do that, then we will make an impact on this world. And that understanding will lead us into accepting each other as human beings, and not identifying people by the labels we put on each other. Today we have so many labels for identifying people that we have forgotten that behind those labels there is a human being. We have religious, economic, social, cultural labels, you name it we have a label. And every time we put a label on somebody, we are building a wall between that person and ourselves. We have to remove those labels and look at each other as human beings. When we are able to do that, then we will be able to appreciate our humanity. And that would extend even to our philosophies and our religions.

Today we have reached the point in the world where we are killing each other in the name of God. And no god has ever taught about death and destruction. There is only one God, but we call God by different names. That doesn't make God a different person. Grandfather used to say religion is like climbing a mountain. We are all going up the same peak, so why should it matter to anyone which side of the mountain we choose to climb up from. And if we have that perspective on religion, when we are able to accept and respect each other and their way of belief, then we won't have all this strife, but the moment we introduce competition in religion, when each one of us thinks that ours is the best religion and we need to convert the whole world into that religion, then we create problems. And that's what happening today. Everyone is competing to convert the whole world, and that competition is conflict leading to wars and killings.

So it's a question between those who think we possess they truth and those who believe we can only pursue the truth. And the subtle difference between the two is, when we think we possess the truth we have a closed mind. And we're not willing to look for truth anywhere else at all. We have the whole truth. But if we think we can pursue the truth, then we have an open mind and we are willing to look at all the different philosophies and different ways of worship and take a little bit of the truth from each one of them.

Grandfather used to explain this in terms of the beautiful Upanishad stories: how there were six people who were born without sight, and they were asked to describe the elephant by feeling the elephant. And they had never seen an elephant before so they didn't know what one looked like. So each one of them was placed at a different angle. The one feeling the legs of the elephant felt this was like a huge pole; the one who had the trunk said this is like a huge snake; the one who was feeling the body said it feels like a huge wall.

Each one had a different perspective, but they were not all wrong nor were they all right. They just didn't have the complete perspective. And grandfather said that's where we are in our religious beliefs. That all of us have a little bit of the truth but we think that is the whole truth and so we latch on to that and close our minds to everything else and we live in that ignorance, in that distorted view of the elephant. But if we are willing to look at all the other religions and take from them their little beautiful experiences and incorporate that into our own, we will not only enhance our own understanding but we will have a much more effective religion, or more effective belief.

It doesn't mean we disown our religion or give up our way of worship. It just means that we respect all different ways of worship and work together and learn about each other together.

I've been involved in interfaith work in this country for the last several years, and I've been disturbed by the fact that we haven't moved beyond dialogue in many places...We now need to go beyond this and stop talking and put it into action. And that's where all of us come into play. It's our responsibility to take the first step; let's take the action. You know that beautiful bumper sticker that says, When the people lead the leaders will follow. I think the time has come when the people must take the lead and let the leaders follow us.

So these are various concepts that grandfather talked about in his philosophy of nonviolence, so you can see how broad it is and how many aspects of life it covers. If we begin the process of creating the peace within ourselves and helping our families and friends achieve that peace, then it will ripple out into the world and then bring peace in the world. Otherwise we can go on working for peace indefinitely and never achieve anything at all because everyone is waiting for others to take the first step and nobody's taking it. And that's why we feel frustrated today...We have to live what we want others to learn. It hast to begin with ourselves.

I want to share with you how we have been perpetuating violence unconsciously, but we perpetuate it generation after generation. We live in this culture of violence... Every time we punish our children for misbehavior, we are telling our children that punishment is right; that anybody who does anything wrong deserves to be punished, and that's where the whole culture of violence begins and perpetuates itself. In a culture of nonviolence, punishment is not important. Penance is important.

I remember when I was growing up wit my two sisters, and whenever we did anything wrong or misbehaved at home, our parents never punished us; they did penance. Depending on how serious our offense was, they would either one or both of them would fast, for one meal or the whole day, again depending on how serious the offense was. They would cook, feed the children, sit at the dining table, feed us, sit at the table and not eat. And they would tell us why they were not eating. That they were not good parents; they didn't teach us the right way. That we did this thing that was wrong and so they needed to do penance for that. And I tell you that that hurt us so much that we never did that ever again.

And I think about that very often and I wonder if they had punished us it would be so simple; we could have just suffered the punishment and gone on doing the same thing over and over again, only making sure the next time we don't get caught.

I was 16 years old; we had just come back from India where I had those two years with grandfather and had learned such wonderful lessons from him. We were living in South Africa, in a community that my grandfather had started when he was there, between 1897 and 1915. And this community was outside the city of Durban, in the midst of sugar cane plantations, 18 miles away from civilization. And so when my two sisters and I were growing up we didn't have anyone our age to relate to and we would be fond of going and seeing a movie and playing and all that, and we had to go into town to do that, so we looked forward to going into town.

One Saturday I got the opportunity when my father had to go to town to attend a conference and he didn't feel like driving, so he asked me if I would drive him into town and I jumped at the opportunity and said yes. And since I was going into town my mother gave me a list of groceries that she needed and on the way into town my father reminded me of all the little chores that had been pending for a long time, and said, 'Since you have the whole day to yourself, would you please attend to all these chores, like getting the car serviced and oil changed and all that.' And I said, 'Okay,' and when I dropped him off at the conference venue, he said, 'At five o'clock this evening I will wait for you outside this auditorium. Pick me up and we'll go home together,' and I said, 'Okay.'

I rushed off and I did all my chores and bought all the groceries and left the car in the garage with instructions to do whatever was necessary, and being a 16 year old I went straight to the nearest movie theater and I got so engrossed in a John Wayne double feature that I didn't realize the passage of time. The movie ended at 5:30 and I ran from there and got the car and rushed to where my father was waiting for me and it was almost 6:00 when I reached there.

Naturally he was anxious and was wondering what happened to me, and the first question he asked me was, 'Why are you late?' And instead of telling him the truth, I was so ashamed to tell him I was sitting there watching a John Wayne double feature, I decided to lie to him and I said, 'The car wasn't ready; I had to wait for the car;' not realizing he had already called the garage. When he caught me in the lie he said, 'There's something wrong in the way I brought you up that didn't give you the confidence to tell me the truth and you had to lie to me.' And he said, 'I'm going to walk home; I'm not coming with you in the car.'

There was absolutely nothing I could do to make him change his mind. It was after six o'clock in the evening; it was already getting dark. Much of the 18 miles were through sugar cane plantations, late night; no lights. I couldn't leave him in the road, so for five and a half hours I was crawling behind him in the car, watching him go through pain and agony for a stupid lie I uttered, and I decided then and there I was not ever going to lie again.

I think that was a very powerful lesson in nonviolent parenting. If he had punished me, I would have just suffered the punishment and made sure I don't get caught. But by taking the responsibility on himself by doing penance for something I did wrong, he taught me such a powerful lesson that remains with me to this day. This is the power of nonviolence - it has to begin with us, in our homes, with our children, and with our friends...it's only this way we'll be able to bring peace in this world.

[Once there was] an ancient Indian king who became very curious about the meaning of peace. He invited all the intellectuals in his kingdom to come and explain the meaning of peace, and everyone came and did their best, but nobody could satisfy the king. And there was an intellectual from another town who came on a visit and the king asked him to explain the meaning of peace, and he said, 'The only person who can give you a satisfactory answer is an old sage who lives outside your kingdom. That he is so old that he cannot come to you, so you will have to go to him to ask him.

So the next day the king went to the sage and asked him the meaning of peace, and the sage quietly went to the back of the house and came back with a grain of wheat. He placed that grain of wheat in the king's palm and said, 'Here is the meaning of peace.' Of course the king didn't know what a grain of wheat had to do with the meaning of peace. So he quietly clutched the grain of wheat and went back to his palace, found a little gold box and placed that grain of wheat in the box. Every morning he would open the box and look for an answer, but he couldn't find any answers.

A few days later the intellectual came back on a return visit, and the king asked him to explain. 'You sent me to this sage and he gave me this grain of wheat and I don't know what this grain of wheat has to do with peace.' The intellectual said, 'It's very simple. As long as you keep this grain of wheat in this box, nothing will happen. It will eventually rot and perish and that will be the end of the story. But if you allow this grain of wheat to interact with all the elements; if you had planted it outside in the soil, it would sprout and grow and very soon you could have a whole field of wheat.'

And that is the meaning of peace. If one has found peace and keeps it locked up in his or her heart for his or her personal gain, it will perish with that person. But if that peace is allowed to interact with all of us, it would sprout and grow and soon we could have a whole world of peace. So I have come here this morning to give you the grain of wheat that I got from my grandfather, and I hope that you won't let it perish but let it interact so that all of us together can transform this world and make it a better place for future generations.