Beloved Old Books: Gandhi on Nonviolence

New Directions, 1965

How my heart thrilled at the sight of those black and white New Directions paperbacks! New Directions communicated the essence of a certain mid-century vibe, melding avant garde, romantic, and Beat voices in serious yet inviting publications. The New Directions website says that ND was "intended 'as a place where experimentalists could test their inventions by publication,'" and that "ND anthologies first introduced readers to the early work of such writers as William Saroyan, Louis Zukofsky, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Kay Boyle, Delmore Schwartz, Dylan Thomas, Thomas Merton, John Hawkes, Denise Levertov, James Agee, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti."

The book above is interesting for how it combines literary and spiritual impulses. It was edited and introduced by author Thomas Merton, who left the New York cultural scene in the early 40s to become a Trappist monk, thus entering into a "contemplative" practice. He continued to write at an amazing clip. His work portrayed his own spiritual seeking at a time when such seeking was becoming widespread. Consider me one of those seekers. Among many other achievements, he became one of the foremost Western writers on the Zen tradition.

Mr. Gandhi you know. However, Merton makes clear that Gandhi wasn't an absolutist when it came to nonviolence. He quotes Gandhi as believing that injustice must be resisted. "No doubt the nonviolent way is always the best," said Gandhi, "but where that does not come naturally the violent way is both necessary and honorable. Inaction here is rank cowardice. ... It must be shunned at all cost." Merton says that Gandhi's nonviolence was meant to be "the highest form of bravery," and never a cover for passivity or surrender.