pacifism

[Johnny Dangerous]

Did a search and didn't find a direct thread on this.

Are you a pacifist? Do you believe Buddhists should necessarily be complete pacifists, why or why not?

[lowlydog]

Just calling yourself a Buddhist is not enough to pacify the old habitual patterns of the mind, we must practice the noble 8-fold path as taught by the Buddha. Each step we take on this path purifies the mind. A pure mind is happy, and has no problems, no need for war, or violence.
As we progress on the path the fetters will weaken until they are completely eradicated, until this there is always the chance that sleeping defilements will rise to the surface and we may react blindly to them.
Each defilement that is weakened a little bit, is that much more peace we have in its place.

[duckfiasco]

Tricky. As a general rule, I try to avoid inflicting any harm on any beings, subtly from an unkind look that may be misinterpreted, and more grossly to killing even tiny flies. Not always possible, as we know.

I've found that a lot of times, when someone is in a karmic hell of anger and rage, adding more of the same through physical or verbal violence does not help them at all. Staying calm and kind serves as a greater contrast to their own hellish state and may point out to them what they are blind to see: they're suffering, subject to a violent whim. Anger or depression stamps out everything else. Sticking out like a loving sore thumb in their landscape may help calm things down.

Conversely, it may be necessary sometime to inflict lesser harm on another to stop them from committing even greater harm to others and therefore practically guaranteeing their own rebirth in a hell realm. How and when to do this takes a lot of wisdom.

Ideally, if I were in a situation where my gut reaction is to inflict harm, e.g. someone is attacking me and I have the urge to punch or kick them, at this point in my practice (right or wrong) I would make an effort NOT to listen to my gut. Our gut has been conditioned so long by habits of selfishness and samsara that its advice is likely dubious. Realistically, I'd probably punch/kick the guy anyway. If I had a gun and someone pointed one at me, I would shoot them in the leg and hope to subdue them. Try to save others before yourself, but don't dither and end up doing nothing, thereby saving no one at all.

So my point is it's all squishy and ambiguous and who knows. Hence the need to accumulate merit to avoid such situations in the first place, and to practice our butts off so we may have the wisdom to handle any such mishap, great or small

What is YOUR answer to such an interesting question, Johnny?

[Indrajala]

Did a search and didn't find a direct thread on this.

Are you a pacifist? Do you believe Buddhists should necessarily be complete pacifists, why or why not?

Participating in war, even in self-defence, you run the risk of sending yourself to the lower realms by exercising violence and/or supporting it. Dying on a battlefield is probably not going to be conducive to a good rebirth. Still, you might feel it is worth it nevertheless in order to protect your country.

It is better to run away and not create horrific karma as a result of participating in a killing machine. To be part of an army is to suffer the collective karma of the entire machine.

[Johnny Dangerous]

Well this is stream of consciousness but here goes:

On a large scale, I agree with Huseng somewhat, especially being a solider is fraught with some huge potentials for terrible Karma, beyond the violent acts themselves active participating in repression seems like a bad, bad thing, with deeper implications than just the acts themselves ..however there are issues with viewing it in black and white I think.

There are some peoples in the world who basically face the choices of either fighting back or being slaughtered, it certainly happens throughout history. I assume that in least some of those cases the more "correct" choice might actually be fighting back when no other effective form of resistance is possible. It is an odd thing to think about, do you condemn some other group, people, or nationality (who may not be Buddhist) for fighting back based on your own Buddhist principles, or is a different yardstick appropriate for measuring their actions?

On a personal level, I dislike the doctrinaire vague pacifism professed by many people here in America, as it is definitely as "pacifism of convenience", often coming from people who've no experience of any kind of violence at all. Many people here seem to hold up examples of non violent resistance as being possible everywhere, for any problem, to the same degree, and always being the more ethical choice. I am just not sure it is so cut and dried, though I do think that non-violent forms of resistance certainly would bear far preferable Karmic fruit..they aren't always possible.

In terms of interpersonal, non-military violence, Run-Fu and avoidance is of course always the first option, but having actually been attacked, there is no way I would simply let someone beat me etc. rather than fighting back in order to secure escape, if those are the two choices. I do not believe doing so is a particularly ethical approach, as much as it is a naive one.

All that said, i'm open to viewpoints on the subject of those that disagree, I have met a few total pacifists for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect, even though I might question the viewpoint a bit.

[Indrajala]

There are some peoples who basically face the choices of either fighting back or being slaughtered, it certainly happens throughout history. I assume that in least some of those cases the more "correct" choice might actually be fighting back when no other effective form of resistance is possible.

Better to be butchered with a clear conscience than to die guns blazing in a perturbed state of mind.

It is best to flee if possible.

When a number of Buddhist countries in South and Central Asia were being invaded in the late 12th, early 13th centuries many Indian monks fled to Tibet, which incidentally might have prompted a lot of scholarship and activity as other foreigners in the region could get to Tibet and study under the Indian monks rather than risking their lives in India. If said monks had taken up arms against those battle hardened warriors, they would not have stood a chance, and most likely would have been killed. By fleeing, presumably with many texts in hand, they could preserve their lives and teachings elsewhere.

On a personal level, I dislike the doctrinaire vague pacifism professed by many people here in America, as it is definitely as "pacifism of convenience". Many people here seem to hold up examples of non violent resistance as being possible everywhere, to the same degree, and always being the more ethical choice. I am just not sure it is so cut and dried.

Some Americans might be opposed to war, but they remain beneficiaries of it nevertheless. The same can be said for client states like Canada and Japan, among many others.

In terms of interpersonal, non-military violence, Run-Fu is of course always the first option, but having actually been attacked, there is no way I would simply let someone beat me etc. rather than fighting back, and I do not believe doing so is a particularly ethical approach, as much as it is a naive one.

There is a difference of course between defending yourself against a drunk on the street and mounting an organized guerilla counter-offensive against an invading army. The former is immediate and not premeditated, and presumably your intention is to prevent immediate injury to yourself. Self-defence in that scenario is motivated by immediate instinct and impulse, just like how you would pull your hand out of a sudden fire. However, the latter is coordinated and calculated. Arms are gathered, plans to attack are drawn up and the membership is fully intent on working together to kill the enemy. The motivation for such a coordinated assault would be anger and greed (clinging onto one's property and treasures for example).

[Johnny Dangerous]

Better to be butchered with a clear conscience than to die guns blazing in a perturbed state of mind.

It is best to flee if possible.

When a number of Buddhist countries in South and Central Asia were being invaded in the late 12th, early 13th centuries many Indian monks fled to Tibet, which incidentally might have prompted a lot of scholarship and activity as other foreigners in the region could get to Tibet and study under the Indian monks rather than risking their lives in India. If said monks had taken up arms against those battle hardened warriors, they would not have stood a chance, and most likely would have been killed. By fleeing, presumably with many texts in hand, they could preserve their lives and teachings elsewhere.

Naturally it is always best to flee, but I question whether lying down under the enemies sword always allows one a clear conscience, It is not always like the situation with the monks, there are plenty of minorities in the world who face the choices of being uprooted and slowly genocided, fighting back, or simply dying. I don't think that in all these cases that simply dying is the ethical choice.

Some Americans might be opposed to war, but they remain beneficiaries of it nevertheless. The same can be said for client states like Canada and Japan, among many others.

Sure, beneficiaries who have almost no say over policy..though they link to think they do in "democratic" societies, that's largely an illusion IMO...maybe fodder for other threads though.

There is a difference of course between defending yourself against a drunk on the street and mounting an organized guerilla counter-offensive against an invading army. The former is immediate and not premeditated, and presumably your intention is to prevent immediate injury to yourself. Self-defence in that scenario is motivated by immediate instinct and impulse, just like how you would pull your hand out of a sudden fire. However, the latter is coordinated and calculated. Arms are gathered, plans to attack are drawn up and the membership is fully intent on working together to kill the enemy. The motivation for such a coordinated assault would be anger and greed (clinging onto one's property and treasures for example).

Any kind of violence carries with it a web of repercussions, and repercussions of those repercussions, and so on. Even true with the individual 'self defense' variety, and even if one is morally "right" on some level. However, I do not believe that the violence of everyone involved in armed conflict is motivated solely by greed and anger. While I don't think there is any kind of "clean violence" by any means, I do think that there are some peoples who simply have fewer choices than others, and fight for survival rather than material gain. It is easy to say the actions are "wrong" from a Buddhist perspective, but I wonder if we don't need to have an overall human perspective as well, if we are unable to differentiate between the motivations behind the violence of the oppressed, and the violence of the oppressor, to me this is dangerous naivete that can lead to false equivalence in places where having a considered opinion really matters.

[lobster]

Are you a pacifist?

No.
However the opposite of being able to pacify our inner and outer demons is not spiritualised warfare. It is far more combative than that.
If you are attacked would you be able to take the beating or worse? Being a martial artist I do not feel I have that level of skill.
If someone who is argumentative, contrary and only desiring to troll and project their suffering in your direction, do you have the character to be stronger than their base instincts? Not sure I always have that much fight within me.

I am not a pacifist but I know my enemy . . .

Om Vajrapani Hum

[Red Faced Buddha]

No,we Zen have never been considered pacifist.Fire is in our veins. If there was a second Hitler,who was putting people in death camps,would you go to war with him to stop him from sticking any more innocent people in ovens?I would,I would utterly destroy that ****** until he's nothing more than ashes.

[lowlydog]

No,we Zen have never been considered pacifist.Fire is in our veins. If there was a second Hitler,who was putting people in death camps,would you go to war with him to stop him from sticking any more innocent people in ovens?I would,I would utterly destroy that ****** until he's nothing more than ashes.

That action will lead you into the womb of an animal, or worse.

[Johnny Dangerous]

No,we Zen have never been considered pacifist.Fire is in our veins. If there was a second Hitler,who was putting people in death camps,would you go to war with him to stop him from sticking any more innocent people in ovens?I would,I would utterly destroy that ****** until he's nothing more than ashes.

That action will lead you into the womb of an animal, or worse.

Hmm, I wonder though if we are too look out for the welfare of all beings, shouldn't we theoretically be willing to accept the inevitably bad results of committing violence, if it can allow others to avoid them? I am not saying that it is or is not possible mind, just asking if this IS possible, then what is the answer?

[lowlydog]

Sewing seeds of misery will produce fruits of misery.

Beings such as Hitler are deserving of our compassion, just as much as their victims.

Anything we consider evil or turn into a war or fight against is doomed to failure.

From: A New Earth:

War is a mind-set, and all action that comes out of such a mind-set will either strengthen the enemy, the percieved evil, or, if the war is won, will create a new enemy, a new evil equal to and often worse than the one that was defeated. There is a deep interrelatedness between your state of consciousness and your external reality. When you are in the grip of a mind-set such as "war", your perceptions become completely selective as well as distorted. In other words, you will see only what you want to see and then misinterpret it. You can imagine what kind of action comes out of such a delusional system. Or, instead of imagining it, watch the news on TV tonight.

[Johnny Dangerous]

What while you are saying has some truth overall, I feel like in context is just a cop out. Compassion is not an action, nor a choice of actions, though we hope to have actions and interactions that come from compassion. We are not just talking about large scale war anyway, nor the othering and web of self deceit that goes along with it, there are other kinds of violence than this, and other situations where options dwindle down to only a few, violence being among those.

Again, the question to me is whether or not one can ever act out of compassion for others by taking a life and causing harm - and assuming the negative consequences of the action so that others will not face even more negative consequences. Of course with the assumption that such times would be exceedingly rare, though existing nonetheless. You can say that there can never be 'positive' outcomes of violence, but at least in the short term it becomes pretty obvious this is not true. While violence always carries a number of repercussions, the question is why those repercussions which are knowable are worth avoiding violence for, if the knowable repercussions of not acting appear to be much worse. Again not something I would call common, nor would I think most situations of formal 'soldiering' fall under this category, but I do believe they exist.

To say that it should be avoided entirely without regard to knowable consequence is to my mind simply using Buddhism to avoid any form of self sacrifice, in short it might actually be (in these rare situations) the opposite of acting with Bodhicitta. I'm sure some will condemn me for that statement and claim I am distorting things.

Saying we should have compassion for those who cause great harm is something I am sure we would all agree with, I think that those with great power are often most tormented..but it does not answer the question at all. Saying one should just be compassionate and not act against evil deeds again, is just a cop out.

From my perspective, there are times where those choosing to take no action bear more culpability than those who are willing to mire themselves in the horrible work of violence, I don't think by any stretch those times are common, and I think they should be avoided at all costs. However I am inclined to believe they exist, and that people bear some ethical responsibility for acting in others benefit, even if/when it might mean dirtying themselves.

[lowlydog]

What is an evil deed? Murder, causing harm?

You wish to stop an evil deed, with an evil deed, and you want to call this compassion.

The Buddha taught the Noble 8-fold path, this is a path that trains one to become a person of nobility, a saintly person.

There are many beings in this world who are not practicing this path, some of these beings even refer to themselves as Buddhists, some of these beings are even wearing robes.

These beings may choose to engage in wars, but they are merely practicing a mundane path and are caught in a trap!

The fight is within, and it is not a copout.

[Johnny Dangerous]

What is an evil deed? Murder, causing harm?

You wish to stop an evil deed, with an evil deed, and you want to call this compassion.

The Buddha taught the Noble 8-fold path, this is a path that trains one to become a person of nobility, a saintly person.

There are many beings in this world who are not practicing this path, some of these beings even refer to themselves as Buddhists, some of these beings are even wearing robes.

These beings may choose to engage in wars, but they are merely practicing a mundane path and are caught in a trap!

The fight is within, and it is not a copout.

Tell this to someone who faces the three basic choices of fleeing and becoming a refugee and all that entails, fighting, or dying.

There may be a good argument to be made against violence, and for fleeing or dying, but simply saying "the battle within" is not a good one to my mind.

[Indrajala]

Tell this to someone who faces the three basic choices of fleeing and becoming a refugee and all that entails, fighting, or dying.

There may be a good argument to be made against violence, and for fleeing or dying, but simply saying "the battle within" is not a good one to my mind.

The lower realms are far worse than being a refugee, or being killed without putting up a fight.

War won't be going away anytime soon and what occurs on the battlefield tends to dictate the direction of history. However, that being said, that is the way of the ordinary world. To go along with the ordinary world is to suffer. To be liberated requires that you go against the stream. This requires that you turn away from these things and not participate.

It is better to be a destitute refugee than to participate in a war.

[Johnny Dangerous]

Tell this to someone who faces the three basic choices of fleeing and becoming a refugee and all that entails, fighting, or dying.

There may be a good argument to be made against violence, and for fleeing or dying, but simply saying "the battle within" is not a good one to my mind.

The lower realms are far worse than being a refugee, or being killed without putting up a fight.

War won't be going away anytime soon and what occurs on the battlefield tends to dictate the direction of history. However, that being said, that is the way of the ordinary world. To go along with the ordinary world is to suffer. To be liberated requires that you go against the stream. This requires that you turn away from these things and not participate.

It is better to be a destitute refugee than to participate in a war.

What about a destitute refugee forced into prostitution? Child soldiering?

[Indrajala]

What about a destitute refugee forced into prostitution? Child soldiering?

The former is still better than fighting a war.

Look ... if you feel compelled to die in a war for a purportedly just cause, I doubt I'd be able to convince you otherwise. How many people marched off to the Middle East after 9/11 to participate in what they thought was just war, but just ended up being about securing Iraq's oil reserves for the western power bloc?

However, if you are concerned about your post-mortem fate on the far side of death you might think twice about exercising violence of any kind. If you abhor your own suffering, stop harming others. That means if someone throws a stone, you walk away. If they keep throwing stones you still don't retaliate.

This doesn't work for states and governments of course, but as an individual you have the freedom to walk away and abandon such evils. You might be disgraced and dishonoured, and called a coward, but in the end it is better to be a human coward with a means to liberation than some being in the lower realms.

[viniketa]

If you are attacked would you be able to take the beating or worse?

I am a pacifist. As a non-combatant in a culture war, I have been attacked, repeatedly stabbed, severely beaten, left for dead. I had defensive wounds; orginally passive, I recall at some point trying to stop and deflect the attack. Somehow, I did not die, but not for lack of effort on the part of my attackers.

The most difficult aspect of recovery was not physical. It was dealing with the anger directed at me by family and friends because I was not angry and full of blood revenge toward my attackers.

Pacifism is not the easy way out. But it is the way out of the cycle of violence, anger, and revenge.

[lowlydog]

War won't be going away anytime soon and what occurs on the battlefield tends to dictate the direction of history. However, that being said, that is the way of the ordinary world. To go along with the ordinary world is to suffer. To be liberated requires that you go against the stream. This requires that you turn away from these things and not participate.