Sangha of Auspicious Companions

A Yellow Sari on a Busy Street

A mother in a bright yellow sari leaps from a rickshaw in Muradabad, India, and places herself between a stranger and the child he’s beating. “Brother,” she says, “please don’t hit him — he’s too young to understand his mistake.” Her daughter watches, terrified and embarrassed, certain the man will turn his rage on her mother. Instead, he stops. Years later, studying Gandhi’s philosophy of satyagraha — truth force, love force — the daughter finally understands what her mother enacted that day. It wasn’t recklessness. It was a kind of courage that places the body as barrier, that takes suffering upon oneself, that trusts in the power of moral intervention. From a rickshaw in India to the civil rights movement in America, the same force moves: the willingness to stand between violence and its target, to disrupt cycles of hate with acts of revolutionary love. As the daughter, Professor Veena Howard, states decades later, even small acts of interference “have the potential to disrupt the cycle of hate, violence, indignation, and oppression.” This is not passive peace. This is love in action — and it asks more of us than we think.

Be The Change

The next time you notice someone being diminished in some way, such as through words, exclusion, or contempt, place yourself, gently but firmly, between that person and the harm. It might be as simple as changing the subject or addressing the person with dignity. For more inspiration, join a live conversation with the daughter of the woman in the yellow sari, Professor Veena Howard, this Saturday!