Creative Love
"Compassion is a spontaneous movement of wholeness. It is not a studied decision to help the poor, to be kind to the unfortunate. Compassion has a tremendous momentum that naturally, choicelessly moves us to worthy action. It has the force of intelligence, creativity, and the strength of love." --Vimala Thakar
Love is spoken of too often and understood too little. Not the soft, pastel version on greeting cards, but the kind that splits stone, that bends the arc of history, that rises from a bruised and broken world with hands still open. Sanskrit holds over a hundred words for love, each with a meaning too vast for translation. One of them is ahimsa—not just non-violence, but Creative Love. A love that resists without an enemy, that refuses to mirror the harm it seeks to heal. It does not react—it responds. It does not endure—it transforms. It moves like rivers carving canyons, like roots splitting sidewalks, like the quiet patience of those who build something that cannot be undone. Such a love requires the courage to withhold conclusions, to wait for the larger murmuration to reveal itself.
As we loosen the grip of Me, as the circles of We blur into the boundless, what new creativity is made possible in that field of Us?
When Gandhi was thrown off the train because of his skin color, he spent the whole night shivering at the train station -- and later called it "the most creative night of my life." What allows someone to take a wound and wield it as a torch rather than a weapon? In the face of injustice, how do we awaken a third force—beyond fight or flight, beyond righteousness or retreat?
This is heartivism—the path of those who refuse to answer hate with more hate, who meet suffering not with despair but with a love so fierce, so intelligent, so unyielding that it deepcasts an inexhaustible ripple in the world. To love in this way is not to turn away from the wounds of the world, but to walk into the fire and emerge with enough warmth to share. This kind of love is not just personal—it is woven into the very fabric of evolution. Nature has always served the whole, but we are awake to our role as its conscious agents. If we can imagine a more beautiful world, do we dare to help create it?
Today, we explore this third way. When do we obey the law of love, even at the cost of our own comfort? When do we extend the hand rather than tighten the fist? And when does love require us to draw a line, to stand firm with a compassion as fierce as it is kind?
When we fall—not to the level of our aspirations, but to the level of our practice—who are the noble friends who remind us to rise again? If the arc of the universe bends toward love, but is long, what kind of heartivist must we become to hold steady in times of crisis?
Such Creative Love cannot be reduced to data, replicated in a process, or contained within a system. It is a force, alive and unpredictable. So today, we feast on a buffet of stories of those who have walked before us—who have stood in the impossible place between resistance and tenderness and found something even stronger.
In a city torn apart by war, where hunger and fear filled the air, Vedran Smailovic did the unthinkable. After witnessing a brutal attack that left 22 innocent people dead, this renowned cellist refused to answer violence with more violence. Instead, he walked straight into the destruction, sat beside the crater where lives had been lost, and played his cello. Dressed in formal concert attire, he returned every day for 22 days, offering Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor—a lament, a protest, a prayer. As bombs fell and bullets tore through Sarajevo, his music became an act of defiance, a stand for dignity, and an offering of love amidst the wreckage. When a journalist asked, “Why are you playing the cello while bombs are falling?” he replied, “Why are they dropping bombs while I’m playing the cello?” Though war raged around him, not a single bullet touched him—perhaps because some things, even in war, remain sacred.
Telling the story above, Holly Near sang a song she had composed -- Planet Called Home:
[Extra: Sharing The Wounds of Other (4-mins), a story of creative love in Poland in the holocaust.]
Start with Einstein's fundamental question: Is the Universe Friendly or Scary? (3 mins)
Read Michael Nagler's essay, The Third Way (9 mins): "In face of a difficult situation, we tend to give ourselves two choices: fight or flight. From the perspective of nonviolence, this is really no choice at all. Either approach -- passively allowing violence to be used against us (or, for that matter, someone else) or reacting in kind -- will only serve to increase the violence. Our real choice is not between these two expressions of violence; instead, it's the choice that opens when we don't want to take either approach." (Also: research on 106 years of movements!)
Soak in a couple intriguing examples of creative love, in any sector of society that speaks most to you:
- EVERYDAY LIFE: Elizabeth Gilbert remembers a bus driver who became an agent of illumination on a bad day. During her childhood, Nora Bateson remembers When My Father Faced an Emergency. At a subway station in New York Why I Invited My Mugger to Dinner An elder responds to a hostile neighbor: Finding Three Magical Words In the face of conflict, Aikido Master on a Train
- BUSINESS: in the context of charging for every three minutes, Birju proposes a minute of silence. To raise awareness of dementia, a Restaurant of Mistaken Orders. Nine Nanas who operated a Secret Business for 30 Years. Because his son was severely autistic, he changed the corporate world: Everyone is Good At Something, and Truly Human Leadership at Barry Wehmiller, a 3Bn$ global organization.
- EDUCATION: watch the first 10 minutes of A Teacher in Tokyo, and his interaction with the kids. A brilliant use of "data" to prevent bullying and a Maths teacher on Lesson of Grace in Class. Sister Lucy's response to an angry student -- Love Surely Works 99.9% And from the remote Himalayas, Uninvited Guests of the Universe
- PILGRIMAGE: Peace Pilgrim's 28 year walk without money, two monks 800-mile bowing pilgrimage, Nipun and Guri's practice, and Zilong bicycling across America.
- SOCIETY: In prison for life, Guiding Rage Into Power. When Mandela won the election in South Africa, 50 thousand men threatened to fight -- Until Mandela Transformed An Army General In Sri Lanka, Dr. Ariyaratne Meets His Assasin. On a soccer field, when a player collapses, 60 thousand rival fans spontaneously organize into a unified chant: Christian Eriksen
Close it out with a counter-intuitive reflection by one of the senior-most Buddhist monks alive: I Don't Need to Like You to Love You (3 mins): "Metta means you love your enemy; it doesn’t mean you like your enemy."
[For some additional perspectives, see today's bonus bibliography.]
Practice: The Art of the Third Way
-
Speak like you're right, listen like you're wrong. In a conversation today, practice expressing yourself with conviction while also holding the humility that you may be missing something essential.
-
Find the unseen bridge. Identify someone—perhaps a colleague, neighbor, or even a stranger—who feels inaccessible, whose views or experiences seem distant from yours. Instead of debating or avoiding, see if you can find a third way: a shared value, a common curiosity, or even a simple act of kindness that shifts the dynamic.
-
Be present, without agenda. Heartivism isn’t about convincing or converting; it’s about deep presence. Engage with someone you normally wouldn’t, not to change them, but to see them, to hold space for the mystery of who they are.
For inspiration, remember john powell's wisdom, a life-long civil rights advocate who worked closely with Nelson Mandela:
"Here's the dilemma: if we come together while all the oppressive structures are in place, things won’t go smoothly; but if we wait until all those structures are addressed, we never come together. What we can do is begin with short bridges while paying attention to structure and culture. Engage in practices that center our bodies, minds and hearts, but also recognize that we’re a part of a larger world. It’s an iterative process. It’s not one before the other. We have to do both at the same time and to reject the duality between the inside and the outside. We’ll make mistakes and conditions will change, and that’s part of the process."
"Bridging doesn’t mean we agree with someone. It’s not predicated on the notion that I’m going to convince you or you’re going to convince me. It’s predicated on seeing each other, on being present, on listening, and on compassion, which means to suffer together. And research shows that when we can do this, when we can be fully present with someone else, it not only transforms them, it transforms us, so even though we’re not doing it for the purpose of changing a person, it can actually be a very effective change agent."