Non violent resistance doesn’t mean no violence

Non violent resistance doesn’t mean no violence

Why doesn’t non violence actually mean the end to violence? The conceptual framework of nonviolent resistance is borrowed heavily from the yoga philosophy. As far as philosophy is concerned, yoga and Buddhism are the same if not incredibly almost imperceptibly different to most. Since we aren’t serious scholars of the nuances of yoga versus Buddhism but rather people seeking to apply the yogic concept of nonviolence to active resistance against injustice, we can discard the differences between the two and leave the semantics of whether nonviolence is Buddhist or yogic. It doesn’t matter.

Nonviolence is anglicized “ahimsa” which is part of the yoga philosophy’s personal directives, in this case of non harming. A- not; himsa- harm. Not harm. On its surface, ahimsa asks one to abstain from actions that cause harm to others (life). Actions that cause harm to others include violence which is physical or emotional in form. And thus, we say “non violent resistance” because we look at the weapons of war and war itself and say, this is harmful and violent and therefore our resistance must be in line with a paradigm based out of empathy and love for life and all. Yes, nonviolence is imperative to a new paradigm of love and empathy and it is compatible with this paradigm. However, what of the interim period where we transition from a fear-based, hate-filled, war-obsessed and therefore violent culture to one based in empathy?

Before we proceed, please remember non-violence is one part of ahimsa which is “not harm.” Ahimsa is not just nonviolence though it is not harm and therefore not violence.

We must ask ourselves now what is harm? What is the simple explanation of harm? Physical threat? Emotional threat? If we think harm is thus, then how can we exist? We must dig deeper for a definition of harm than just to say “to end a life” or “to hurt another” because we haven’t considered the very real fact that existence is violence then. Merely existing in this world is violent against all forms of life including our own if we vaguely define violence as an assault to our personal or emotional integrity.

And a philosophy as old as yoga, given new life with buddhism and practiced for millennia after then can not be wrong in holding ahimsa/non harming as a principle aspect of living authentically.

There must be empathy, respect, and love behind an action that might otherwise be violent. There is a difference between the animal whose life is taken in a game between living and dying where the cheetah catches the antelope and life taken out of illusion where the Nazi kills their brother out of hate, fear, and stubborn ignorance. The cheetah is not under any illusion that he is better than the antelope. The antelope is not under any illusion he is better than the cheetah. It is an even match between two in sacred duty to each other— dharma— where their battlefield is planned at birth and the moment of their meeting is pre-ordained.

This moment of meeting that says “hello friend, our moment has come to fulfill our sacred duty to each other where I test your strength and cunning and you test mine. Perhaps I will triumph or you, but now we are met with a purpose of our existence and thus we shall play in this moment.”

Is existence futile and we are unable to be master of our lives? No, that is but an ego trip. What is being said is how we the cheetah or antelope have come into this world in a place and moment already designed to test us in a certain way. Just as we are human and therefore designed to experience the world in a way. We as humans have our own sacred duty to the animals and plants and earth. We as humans have our own dharma to follow with each other.

Humans aren’t cheetahs and antelopes and the man who believes himself a cheetah where he is a man and his brother to be an antelope for him to prey on where there is also a man is stuck in illusory thinking. In yoga we call illusory thinking “avidya” or “not knowledge”: a- not; vidya- knowledge. To be trapped in avidya perpetuating a deleterious vision as a man about your brethren is harmful. What harm should a man inflict on the earth, on life, on each other? None, truly.

Men have dominion over the earth through fortune and cunning and adaptability in their favor. Men have dominion over self in ways that not all animals have been able to master in such a form as man. And thus, men should have no reason to take lives from each other and deprive fellow men of basic necessities and even luxuries. The luxuries of life— abundant food, wilderness/nature, shelter, love and acknowledgement, companionship and community— these are birth rights that men should not take from each other. These are birth rights that we deserve to have ancestrally, from first breath to last, unwavering. Men who take these birth rights from other men are enacting senseless violence.

There is a difference, you see, in the “violence” of eating a plant, the violence of giving birth, the violence of filling a bucket of milk from a cow before baby calf gets her fill, the violence of unskillful communication that ends in empathetic understanding and is always rooted in love and the violence men enact against each other.

Men who think that they are superior to other men and to other animals and to the earth and her bounty are men who are enacting violence. Even should these men never act on this violent thought form, it is a violence to believe there is a hierarchy of existence at which some men are justified in being on top and ultimately depriving others of their birth rights through their own design. It is a violent mentality that allows men to put to work each other and animals and plants and earth herself for the benefit of some and the insecurity of many. Should a farmer starve? Should a seamstress wear tattered clothes? Should a farmer be in tattered clothing because the seamstress does not want his wares? Should the seamstress starve because the farmer doesn’t need clothing? These are acts of violence, these are unnecessary acts of violence and to perpetuate such violence is to act harmfully even should the violence seem to be on a scale of eating a plant’s life, fishing in the river for dinner, cutting a tree for shelter. It is not the same.

There is no reason for men to deprive each other of care, there is already a sacred contract between man and fish, for example, where the fish understands it is to be eaten by another fish or animal just as it shall eat another fish or animal when it hungers as well. There is no reason for men to have a house so big it sits mostly vacant while others sleep on the street without cover. This is violence. This is harmful and this is not in alignment with nonviolent resistance, non harmful existence.

And then we say surely we must resist this, surely we must stand up against this because we believe in the power of love and respect life. And how, dear friend, do we propose to change the minds of those who enact violence and harm against us? They are not awake or concerned with the suffering of others. Those who act violently out of their illusory thinking (avidya) whether through intention driven from fear and hate fueled or through ignorance continue to be blind to the suffering they cause. They are men pretending to be cheetahs as though we are not all equal. The cheetah knows he is equal to the antelope, the antelope knows he is equal to the cheetah. There is grace and respect, empathy and knowing in this. The man who pretends he is better than another has given into the illusion and lives out of alignment.

We know this and then we say we should resist! But these men are already blind to the suffering. If we simply say “we will show them what they do” we are ignorant and harmful in our mentality. We will never show most of these people something they have not already seen. Sometimes, we may awaken a man from his illusion– “I didn’t know! This is horrible” and then we may consider ourselves successful. This is for some people to do, we welcome this sacred duty for those to whom it comes naturally as their contribution, as their tool in battle. Some may have the words and ability to speak against injustice in a way that rallies many to their sides where there would have only been one, now there are many. “I have a dream,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said to millions– this is his battle axe and he wields it well and mightily. Still others may take on resistance to awaken the stubborn minds and souls in other ways that we think of as violence. The protestor who smashes a store window and burns a limo, the activist who feeds the homeless despite the illegality of it (to be arrested), the person who assaults another speaking on murder of his fellow men as though they are insects to be exterminated (neither man nor insect deserving of such speech fwiw).

To assault a man preaching extermination of his brothers– is this violence? Do we consider the word of nonviolence, of love, of empathetic and compassionate action to be a weapon? If we consider Dr. Martin Luther King Junior to be a man who wielded his words of love as a weapon in a battle of nonviolent resistance against violent hate, then we acknowledge the power of words. We acknowledge that his actions, while nonviolent, were acts of war against violence. We may agree with his choice of weapons, but we concede that his words and ability to bring people together were weapons nonetheless. And so it must be asked if a man who uses the exact same weaponry but chooses to preach illusory thoughts of hate, fear-based vitriol, and unnecessary violence is not declaring war?

If a man of hate filled illusions is declaring war with his words and actions and we see and know this, what is our role? We want to exist in a way that doesn’t harm, we want to follow the philosophy of “ahimsa” and yet our inaction is harmful, isn’t it? We realize that men are no better than all other living things and certainly not any better than each other and we hear and know that men are saying contrary that endangers or has already harmed others. For us to know this truth of oneness in the face of hate-filled vitriolic preachers and do nothing or even defend their right to exist without violence is for us to be complicit in violent action. We hold “accomplice” as a meaningful levy against someone who knew of a plot to violence (murder, assault) but perhaps didn’t act on it and thus we are an accomplice as well to the violent actions inspired by violent men we tolerate and fail to act against.

We must act, then. We can’t ignore this person, we can’t pretend that their words and therefore actions are not violent. We can’t pretend that ignoring them will suddenly transform them into one who will cease to act harmfully. To fail to act is to be complicit in the violence. To act is to participate in violence. Only, we must now return to the idea of ahimsa and nonviolence.

Nonharming is not the same thing as non violence. Nonviolence implies there is no violence. We have already seen the flaw in such a thought because many actions on the surface may appear violent though they may not actually be. So we must be clear about what is violent– a storm, perhaps, is violent– and what is harmful. Yes, we may give birth in rapture, but we may also scream with the violence of being ripped apart in places meant only for pleasure. Yes, we may eat only foods that may replenish themselves in perpetuity (fruits, some vegetables, some animal products like milk and honey) though we may also eat food that takes a life even so (a bug on a leaf or a worm in an apple, a fish from the sea, a bull) and this is violent but it is still a part of the sacred contract animals and plants have with each other. Nonharming is to stay within the sacred contract of your existence– to act without harm to your brethren, to other lives– and to do your best to always move throughout the world causing little to no harm.

But oh harm, what a nebulous concept seemingly! Is it harmful to grow a plant outside of its natural environment (hot house tomatoes?)? Is it harmful to raise animals for food? Is it harmful to lose your temper and yell at a child or friend or family member? Perhaps this is so. However, this is part of the contract that is living. If you look at the reincarnation aspect, this is why one must continually reincarnate, to get the full breadth of experience and therefore understand what is harm and what is the natural order of things. One must work to do the least harm, to do no harm and to honor each other therefore. While we can discuss to depth what is harmful (clearcutting a rainforest, cutting a tree for shelter), there is unequivocally harmful actions that we need not discuss at all: hate speech, acts of unnecessary violence against each other based out of the illusion we are separate and unequal. It is harmful to deprive each other of the basic necessities and birth rights of earth existence– clean water, shelter, community, clean air and ground, food… These are unequivocal harms.

The question on how to stop someone who is harming others and life isn’t as relevant as the answer that they must be stopped. You know that harmful actions must be stopped and thus you must not question the actions taken, but rather respect that action is necessary. You must act. You must act to the best of your ability– following your dharma, sacred duty, in this world– but you must never question the imperative of action. Whether you agree with the action is irrelevant when there is harm and action is warranted and necessary.  When confronted with harm, you must always choose the path of nonharming and this inevitably includes stopping harm from perpetuating itself whether that is through the actions of another person, an environmental challenge you may aid (tsunami, flooding, averting a crisis thereof), or otherwise.

Nonharming is choosing the path of nonviolence. Non violence doesn’t mean that you do not act violently, it means that you defend the right for all to exist in a world free of unnecessary violence. You defend the paradigm of a nonviolent existence. Defense may include acts of violence. But the wars fought by those stuck in illusory thinking and acting from a place of violent hate and ignorance are wars nonetheless. To stand idly by and allow yourself to be quiet in a time of injustice, to fuck off into the woods as it were, is to be complicit in the unnecessary violence of haters. You then become what you have sworn you aren’t. You are a violent hater yourself because you choose to allow the hater to act without concern for anyone’s well being in the face of your own attachment to the illusion of nonviolence.

Rise. Rise to the occassion. Stand up and fight. It is not a question of violence, it is a question of honor. If you truly care for love, compassion, and a paradigm of empathic connection, you will not allow haters and illusory thinking to destroy that through the declarations of war uttered by those who would surely see you and your brethren die before you have even begun to reconcile the need to act.

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