On Transformative Action
By Anke Wessels, CRESP Executive Director
The Buddha spoke of this triple truth: A generous heart,
kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are
the things that renew humanity. This dictum resonates.
The challenge comes, of course, in the practice. How can
I keep a generous heart in the face of widespread human
and environmental devastation? How do I speak kindly of,
let alone to, those defending violence by citing the Bible,
the Torah, and the Koran? How do I feel compassion for
political leaders who continue a course generating more
hatred than it wins allies? What do I do with my outrage?
How do I practice the triple truth?
Recently, I heard American Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron,
address this question. She reminds us that beneath our
anger and despair is grief. She suggests that when we
move through our anger to the grief beneath it, we experience
an emotional shift, which gives access to love and compassion.
While anger breeds resistance, love and compassion give
us a base from which to move forward, identifying possibilities
for positive action. Her words echoed for me this phrase
from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Nobel Prize acceptance
speech: “Man must evolve for all human conflict
a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation.
The foundation of such a method is love.”
Not long ago, I discovered Nonviolent Communication, a
method for resolving human conflict that embodies exactly
the principles of which Dr. King spoke. Developed by Dr.
Marshall Rosenberg, NVC is a practical process that has
been used around the world in war-torn countries; in schools,
prisons, corporations, social change, health care and
government institutions; and in intimate personal relationships.
It eschews blaming and judgmental language as aggressive
and moralistic. NVC shows us how to connect to the divine
in others instead, and guides us in transforming painful
patterns of relating into new, compassionate ways of acting,
expressing ourselves and hearing others. In so doing,
we can create life-serving systems responsive to our needs
and the needs of our environment—a wellspring of
human renewal.
Yet, friends have asked, “What good it is for social
activists to respond compassionately to those who hold
all the power and flaunt injustices without fear of reproach?”
UCLA professor and environmental justice activist, Scott
Sherman, argues that when activists approach conflict
with compassion rather than anger, and with the intent
to transform antagonism into cooperation, enemies into
friends, and adversaries into allies, they are more successful
in achieving their goals. Moreover, they recognize no
matter how poor or politically marginalized, the power
to reshape their community and make their dreams come
true is their own. They renew their own humanity through
this Transformative Action.
Nonviolent Communication and Transformative Action, then,
provide specific strategies for living out the Buddha’s
triple truth. The spiritual depth of these practices,
as well as their promise for effective social justice
work, has made them the focus of CRESPs current programming.
Our goal is to train, equip, and support the CRESP leadership,
as well as student activists and local social change agents,
with the tools for Transformative Action, among them Nonviolent
Communication. These we feel are truly the most effective
means for achieving social change in our intensely polarized
society. Given the diversity of our Projects (updates
in the following pages), CRESP aims to model how Transformative
Action can be richly expressed across a variety of issues,
settings, and methods for social change.
CRESP is committed to engaging others in effective action
for social justice, human rights, and the preservation
of the planet. We do so, pragmatically, to build a more
just and sustainable society. Yet, fundamentally, we are
dedicated to an even grander purpose: that of renewing
humanity.
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On Transformative Action
