Nonviolence: Theory & Practice

Coming to the last post in the semester, I wanted to take some time to reflect on the things I’ve learned. I haven’t been comfortable to actually really share any of the things that I’ve written for this, and I kinda feel like they’re a personal expression of something that helps me improve as a person and better understand myself. I don’t really feel like that needs to be something I share with the world, especially because I find myself wondering what my personal anecdotes in the form of poetry would do to actually solve any injustices.

At the very best, the work I’ve done has made me want to strive to improve as a person. I know myself and I know that I need to do a better job of practicing what I preach, so when I look back on things that I wrote from the heart, and I can clearly see the many ways which I don’t live up to my own standard for the way I believe that a person should act if they seek a moral life. Identifying this has in turn helped me identify ways in which I can strive to improve. For one, I know that I need to be much better with political activism, even if it’s a slow buildup from things like writing letters to representatives and attending protests for causes I believe to be just. I think that my failures to do this are a result of my isolation and focus on my own immediate troubles in my own immediate bubble, and I think that stepping out of this bubble of self to actively strive to help others is something that can give life meaning.

This is the week I struggled the most with. I’d say that for better or for worse, I am a very opinionated person. I’d also say that for better or worse, I am a very passionate person. I can be argumentative and angrily dismissive of things when I disagree with them or involve viewpoints that I have a tendency to look down upon. Something I never want to do is virtue signal, but when I’m trying to express advocacy for social justice issues, it gets a little harder. It’s hard for me to advocate for these things without using my extreme frustration with the other side’s racism, sexism, and discriminatory/borderline sadistic policy choices. Even writing this, I get emotional and heated and want to use my negativity as my fuel. This is what made writing this week so difficult.

When it came down to it, I kind of realized that expressing advocacy for causes against injustice simply cannot be separated from directly opposing the source of the injustice. In retrospect, this should’ve been blatantly obvious, but I guess with writing this as a poetry project for a class that’s meant to be bipartisan shouldn’t be too politically charged, but I’m glad I’ve learned to more honestly and accurately represent my views and alliance with the marginalized.

In my international politics class, we talk a lot about humanitarian crises throughout the world, and it got me thinking a lot about how many of us are guilty of dissociating from the suffering of others across the world simply because it does not actively affect us and is so far away. I wanted to express this. I never want to strongly express things in the form of resentment and negativity when it’s possible to advocate for change. Of course, this is really difficult at times, but I think that’s a part of being human and trying to improve for the better.

When I started writing this time, I wanted to convey the positives. I wanted to provide examples of the truly amazing things we are capable of when we work together and show empathy for everyone around the world. Additionally, I wanted to express the conflict I felt on the matter and how it makes me feel. By trying to write honestly and realistically, I want to convey the message that failures to be always do the best thing are completely part of being human, and when we refuse to talk about these failures, we isolate from each other. I feel like this stigmatizes honesty about our shortcomings and makes it harder to outright admit weakness and ask for help to improve. I realize this kinda strayed away from the initial problem I wanted to tackle, but like I said, I want to write honestly. This is the direction that my brain veered into because it’s an issue that is very close to my heart, and tends to be at the forefront of my mind. I think all it really takes is learning to create a balance.

After some thinking, I decided that the poetry I would write would be more aimed with a social justice message or a message surrounding some advocacy for change. I figured it best to continue along the course of using it as an expression of some inner conflict regarding something in today’s world that frustrates me. I started by brainstorming a little, trying to think of the thing that bothered me most. This took a little longer than I had anticipated, but narrowing down a long list of grievances takes some time.

The first thing I wanted to express dissatisfaction with is the competitiveness of modern American society. I began to reflect on how we are conditioned from a very early age to compete against each other, and I believe that the modern school system actively encourages this. Not only do I feel like this creates a hostile environment for learning students, I think it seeps into every aspect of our society and makes us less empathetic as people overall. When we focus exclusively on competing with each other, we stop thinking about the feelings of others. While this doesn’t mean everyone you meet and all your friends and you are sociopaths, I think it just makes us more self-oriented as a society when in reality we should be lifting each other up and lending support to those who need it.

When I got writing, I didn’t have too hard of a time articulating this, but being anything less than explicit, even with dumb metaphors, was hard. It made my writing seem self important and pretentious when that was the exact opposite of what I’m trying to convey. In the future I’ll try to focus more on optimism to seem less like a pretentious edgy college teenager.

In my final weeks practicing meditation for my personal project, I decided to explore Chinese Qigong meditation. Qigong means “life energy cultivation” in Chinese. This kind of meditation is an exercise for both your body and mind, and is typically used for health, meditation, and martial arts training. It involves slow body movement, inner focus, and regulatory breathing. Qigong breathing methods can come in many forms. Different breathing techniques are specific to what the person wants to achieve; whether it be martial arts training, health, or meditation and spiritual cultivation.  I decided for my purposes it would be best to practice breathing to achieve meditation and spiritual cultivation.

The way to practice Qigong meditation is to start out by sitting in a comfortable position, making sure your body is centered . Relax all muscles, nerves, and inner organs when in your position of choice. Next, regulate the breath, making sure to be taking long and deep inhales, and soft exhales. While focusing on breathing, calm the mind so all thoughts are on the breath. After this is achieved, place all your attention to your lower dantian. Dantian is a word used in Daoist meditation referring to the energy centers and focal points for meditation exercises. In my exercise, I focused on the lower dantian, which is the area of the stomach below the bellybutton. The two other focal points are the middle dantian  which is at the level of the heart associated with strong spirit and health of internal organs. The second focal point is the upper dantian which is located at the forehead in between the eyebrows (the third eye), and is associated with refining the spirit into emptiness. The lower dantian, which is my focal point, is the center of gravity for the body. Focusing on this point will help build and solidify he qi. Qi is the vital energy, where my mind and energy is. By focusing my qi on the lower dantian, I am allowing my qi to flow through my body by gathering my energy in a natural reservoir.

I was intimidated by this kind of meditation because at first read it seems slightly intense and more advanced. It took me a couple days to really put these steps into effective action. Once I did, I felt more in tough with myself, and was able to center myself when stressed and increase my focus.

After a semester of practicing the art of mandala of making, it is now the end of this assignment, however for me my personal project is not over. I hope to continue the practice of mandala making because it has been very relaxing and to my surprise has had an impact on me. I am going to continue to make mandalas and create a portfolio to gather my designs in one place.

During this project I struggled to find meaning within each of my mandala designs. While I do not think there was a theme throughout all of my designs, I think the meaning of each mandala was oriented around finding a deeper significance of what true peace really means. Throughout the course of our FYS, we explored the reasons as to why nonviolence works and why, in comparison to violence, it is the better choice. Prior to this class, I thought that the possibility of the end of war was not practical nor feasible. After exploring different perspectives surrounding this theory, I still believe in my initial thought that war can not be completely eliminated from society. However, while I do not believe war will come to a complete end, I do believe that it is possible for us towards a more peaceful and safer society. I think mandala making help me come to this conclusion because as I drew each mandala I thought about what peace really means and thought about ways in which society can change, so that we can move closer to a society that we all want to live in. At first I was not sure what I would get out of my personal project, however I can happily say that I am satisfied with the results.

For my fourth round of meditative/analytical art, I felt inspired to completely switch up the medium and artistic style of my work. Previously I have stuck with creating a series of gel pen sketches that are all connected by similar themes, then compiling them into a collage. However, I wanted to challenge myself this time to create one piece/a singular image that encompasses all of my ideas. I decided to switch to watercolor, which is a particularly challenging medium but whose flow I thought would be very conducive to the meditative aspect of this project. Comparing the two, I found that the sketch collages allowed me to easily follow and convey a flow of consciousness because sketching comes easily to me. However, this watercolor made me spend much more time analyzing exactly how to convey my thoughts into a single image. For this watercolor I found myself still focusing on Jean Zaru’s Occupied With Nonviolence. I spent a lot of time focusing on the anatomy and shading of the lips on this piece, as Zaru seems to speak her personal truth very directly, and the authority she has over her own speech is her main source of power. In many of my previous collages, flowers showed up as a common theme to symbolize unity and life amidst chaos and violence. In this, the flowers on Zaru’s face were meant to show how the struggles she has faced in her life may have left scars, but it is from this that she draws beauty and empowerment. Her empathy and understanding of the human condition as informed by her religion are very beautiful qualities to me, and I see these qualities in the flowers that adorn her. However, I did not want to downplay the trauma that her involvement in this conflict has caused her, so I painted bloodshot and teary eyes. This was by far the most enjoyable artistic practice for me, so I plan on using watercolors again in my next round.

The last step of my project is to continue in the direction i’m headed in. I have learned a lot during my journey and I think I have all the mental tools needed to be effective,in due time.  With the end of the physical project near, I will continue to meditate throughout the rest of the school year to relax and decompress from the day, think about how I can better my nonviolent mindset. Through meditation, I have had a clearer mind and can focus of the things that are important in moving forward with the end goal of my project and school work in general. It was through meditational practices that I thought of ways to nonviolently communicate better.

I have discovered that there is a way to communicate that insures no one is offended by what you say. Further more, I have found that offeering an observation is more efficient than phrases of accusation, especially when something needs to change for the better.  There is a problem on the football team that is “hidden” and not talked about, but encouraged to change. I cannot guarantee that it will change within a year of the start of the project because of adversity faced this semester, but I can guarantee that it will change! A collective conversation will be had, and the first phase to my project was building a relationship with those on the team on a personal level first. Second, making observations of the many things that need to be addressed, and the conversations and actions will be the third and and forth steps to this project. The work has only begun, I am grateful that I had the chance to begin this project. I am excited to see where it goes and all the new things Lafayette Football will be able to accomplish because of nonviolent forms of communication.

As finals are approaching I find myself finishing up the first semester of my college experience. Over the weeks spent here, I was exposed to a variety of new topics in my classes regarding Spanish culture, environmental impacts of energy production, classical philosophical problems and arguments, and of course, FYS 158 Nonviolence: Theory and Practice. During these classes, I was challenged to read, analyze texts, respond, collaborate, present, and produce at a high academic level. The stresses that accompanied this workload were handling in a variety of ways, and one method is part of the workload itself which is my personal project of mandala making.

The mandala I made for my fifth and final entry comes at a time where the bulk of the work is done, but the last challenge is still to come with my final exams, presentations, and paper revisions. This mandala was made in a calm and relaxing moment amid focused classes and times of work and study. I expect to continue to draw mandalas in the future after the personal projects have concluded and I would even entertain the idea of a mandala-themed tattoo. I am also glad for the personal project I have taken because it forced me to think artistically, which is not one of my strong suits. My undertaking of mandalas, in the end, has been a calming de-stressor and a fun and diverse activity with deep cultural ties and I am glad to have partaken in such an activity.

5th Mandala