Dr. Michael Nagler has devoted his life to spiritual practice and exploring nonviolence as an alternative to violence and war. Professor Emeritus of classics and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and founder and former chairperson of the University's Peace and Conflict Studies program, Nagler has become one of the world's most widely respected peace scholars and activists.

Dr. Nagler is the author of several books, including "America Without Violence" (Island Press) and "The Upanishads" (Nilgiri Press) and "Is There No Other Way: The Search for a Nonviolent Future," which received an American Book Award in 2002. A recently updated and expanded version of this book was released in 2004 by Inner Ocean Press.

Besides writing book, Dr. Nagler is editor of "Metta: A Journal of Nonviolence." He is also on the editorial board of "The Acorn: Journal of the Gandhi-King Society," and on the advisory board of "Tikkun" magazine.

Dr. Nagler has been teaching various subjects at the university level for the past forty years, including ancient Greek, comparative literature, religious studies, and peace studies, and continues to teach highly popular courses on nonviolence and meditation at U.C. Berkeley. He is proficient in ancient Greek, Latin and Sanskrit, and speaks French, German, and a bit of Spanish and Italian. Dr. Nagler received his MA and PhD in Comparative Literature at U.C. Berkeley. He makes his home in Tomales, California.

More information on Michael Nagler and his work can be found on his website at: www.mettacenter.org

SG = Soul Graffiti
MN = Dr. Michael Nagler

SG: DOES ONE HAVE TO SUBSCRIBE TO A POLICY OF NONVIOLENCE TO FULLY EMBODY KINDNESS AND COMPASSION?

MN: Actually, it can go either way. If one subscribes to the values of kindness and compassion he or she will find, if s/he is serious, that nonviolence is unavoidable. On the other hand, if one wishes to adopt nonviolence as more than a mere policy s/he will find that kindness and compassion are its very definition in terms of our mental attitude.

Remember that real nonviolence, which we do not usually hyphenate any more, especially when we mean active, principled nonviolence as opposed to the mere absence of overt harm, expresses itself as a kind of balance, whereby one accepts the humanity of the "opponent" even as one rejects his or her injustice. That is the secret to nonviolence's effectiveness - and it immediately shows how kindness and compassion are an inevitable component. If you will, nonviolence (Satyagraha) is the active expression of kindness and compassion.

SG: "AN EYE FOR AN EYE" IS A QUOTE OFTEN USED TO JUSTIFY VIOLENCE, IS THIS A WRONG APPROACH?

MN: Well, since this was repudiated by the time we get to the New Testament (speaking of the West at least), certainly it is way out of date! Both King and Gandhi said, in similar words, "an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." Note that they were emphasizing the practical, not what we might call the moral dimension. If we don't want our actions to be useless, ineffective, counterproductive, then retribution of any kind is surely 'wrong.'

Since I've mentioned retribution, as the underlying goal of almost our entire criminal justice system, it has been demonstrated to be horribly wrong in the sense that it increases crime and violence dramatically. The nonviolent alternative is restorative justice, which seeks instead to reintegrate the offender into society -- and, more importantly and perhaps primarily, with his or her own deeper self. Since 25% of the world's criminal, or rather jail population is now housed in the United States, outgrowing Old Testament values would be an extremely important step for us to take in this area. We simply cannot get on with outmoded revenge values any longer.

SG: WE OFTEN TEACH OUR CHILDREN THAT IF ANOTHER CHILD BULLIES THEM OR FIGHTS WITH THEM, THEY SHOULD FIGHT BACK? WON'T NONVIOLENCE ONLY LEAD TO FURTHER BULLYING?

MN: No, but passivity will. It is crucial for us all to realize that nonviolence is a 'third way', or middle way that is neither retaliation nor passivity and is the only ultimately successful way out of them. Nonviolence is far and away the most successful answer to bullying by people or nations! Its track record is spectacular; only most of us still do not have a frame of reference to put it in.

SG: NON-VIOLENCE MIGHT BE A RATIONAL APPROACH IF BOTH SIDES WERE RATIONAL AND RESPECTING OF EACH OTHER, BUT HOW CAN NON-VIOLENCE SOLVE A PROBLEM WHEN BOTH PARTIES REFUSE TO RESPECT OR UNDERSTAND THE OTHER'S POSITION?

MN: In a sense, nonviolence begins where appeal to reason alone has been exhausted. This is the point in the escalation of conflict which Gandhi called the "law of suffering:" that one must now reach the heart of the opponent, and that can only be done by in one way or another taking on oneself, voluntarily and without bitterness, some of the suffering in the situation. I have put this onto a graph in my book, dividing the escalation of conflict (measured as dehumanization of the other) into three stages. What you're talking about here is the boundary between stage one, when the opponent can still be reached by petitions or the like and the dispute can still be settled by the tools of conflict resolution (which are becoming pretty well developed now in many arenas), and stage two, when they cannot. This is where Satyagraha, or active nonviolence, must be invoked, in its appropriate forms (usually a combination of constructive and obstructive measures). In the last stage one must be willing to risk one's life. That is why it's so important to intervene earlier.

SG: WITH THE GROWING THREAT OF TERRORISM AND NUCLEAR AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE, IS A NON-VIOLENT STANCE A REALISTIC POLITICAL APPROACH?

MN: Is any other stance realistic? We see before us every day the glaring failure of the violent stance in Iraq. On the other hand, there have been dramatic successes of the nonviolent alternative even against terrorists, as for example when Vinoba Bhave, one of Gandhi's leading disciples, persuaded a whole community of bandits to turn in their weapons and face appropriate but not excessive punishment under the law. To be quite honest, we are being violent when we label people as "terrorists." We are being violent when we lack the courage to ask why they hate us - or give phony, self-congratulating answers. Nothing but complete nonviolence, properly understood and properly applied in every area from sane foreign policy to conflict reduction to the ultimate confrontation when those have failed, can save us from terrorism.

SG: IS VIOLENCE EVER APPROPRIATE?

MN: No, though at times force may be, even, in extreme emergencies, lethal force. This is a subtle point and the circumstance rarely happens, but it's important to know that if one must one can use force and it will still be not violence, technically, if one does not harbor anger or fear. Gandhi was the most active and longest-serving nonviolent person known to history, and he never found himself in such a spot. We can also hope to avoid it if we're proactive in our study and implementation of nonviolence, but it can be handy to know about this exception if it helps to distinguish nonviolence from passivity or cowardice.