Violence and Non-Violence in Yoga and Buddhism

One of my yoga students approached me with an interesting question today. Here's how the Q&A unfolded....

QUESTION:

"What does “violence” mean in the Yama (Yogic ethical precept) about practicing non-violence? Is violence never justified?" 

RESPONSE:

I’m not fond of translating that particular Yama with the English term "non-violence." It evokes certain things that are not germane to the ethical principle we're talking about. The Sanskrit word for this Yama (which, by the way, is also the foundation of Buddhist ethics, using the same Sanskrit word) is “Ahimsa”. "Himsa" means “harm” and "a-" is a negating prefix, so a more literal translation of "Ahimsa" is simply "non-harming." It’s the ethical commitment to try to avoid creating harm, and to reduce harm as much as possible.

Some people say “violence is never justified," but I believe that (while well-intentioned) this is something of a empty platitude. I mean, look. Reducing harm in World War II meant annihilating Hitler and the Nazis with violence and destruction. This is not up for debate. At a certain point, violence towards Nazis became the moral imperative. Their unchecked aggression and their murderous, genocidal actions were spreading like wildfire, and needed to be destroyed with an equal or greater show of violent force, for the sake of all humanity. Period. Full stop. 🛑  

So while it may not be often, I do believe violence is sometimes justified, in order to protect the greater good and eradicate very harmful situations.

In the Jataka Tales — which are moral stories or fables about the Buddha's previous lives — there's a story about him being on a boat with many, many other people, and knowing that one wicked man on the boat was planning to sink the boat and drown everyone. So he killed that man in order to save the lives of the many other people on the boat. In doing so, he took on the negative karma of killing, but it was in the greater interest of protecting so many other lives from being destroyed. That could be another example of reducing harm.

If you were on a crowded plane and the person in the row in front of you stood up with a gun and a hijacking threat, and you knew (okay, let's chalk it up to your extensive martial arts training and your lightning reflexes) that you had a very brief but viable window of opportunity to take him down through a swift and unexpected attack from behind, what would be the right and ethical thing to do? Would you choose to respect the life and safety of the terrorist over the lives and safety of the other 300 passengers and crew on the plane? Think about this.

In Tibetan Buddhism there are many "deities" or spirits and some are depicted as "protectors" of the teachings and of those who practice the teachings. There are peaceful deities and there are wrathful deities. Most of the "protector" spirits manifest as wrathful energies. They are depicted iconographically as angry, scary, demonic-looking figures who brandish fierce weapons and often hold severed heads in their hands or dance on corpses (which represent the ego and all its bullsh*t). They cut through what needs to be cut through, they restrain what needs to be restrained, and in some cases they destroy what needs to be destroyed.

An example of wrathful protector energy manifesting in everyday life might be the moment when you're about to go into the other room to yell at your spouse or your coworker, but as you're closing the door behind you, you slam your fingers in the door. BOOM! Suddenly you're stopped dead in your tracks, and there's this moment of shock. You didn't want it, but there it is. You've just received a sharp, painful reminder to pay attention to what you're doing.

I have a fair amount of wrathful protector energy in me. People often perceive me as being very gentle and soft-spoken and perhaps a "Yes" man, but in doing so they're only seeing one side of my nature. I can also be very cutting and direct and manifest a strong "No!" energy. In my understanding, it is part of the path of awakening to learn how to experience ALL of our energies, and learn how to utilize them skillfully. Sometimes, skillfully channeling our wisdom energies may look like a peaceful, smiling Buddha or an angel, but other times it may look like a scary demon or a wrathful protector who cuts through what needs to be cut through, without hesitation.

Like, BOOM! Stop it with this harmful bullsh*t, right now! And if you don't, then you're going to face the consequences. And I have a box in my hand, full of those consequences, and it's wrapped up with a bow and it has your name on it. You want to open this box? Are you feeling lucky? It's that kind of energy. 

Wise compassion isn't always syrupy sweet and gentle and passive, being a doormat and letting every harmful situation play itself out endlessly. We have a term for that in Buddhism: it's called "idiot compassion."

QUESTION:

"Thank you. This is good food for thought. I was thinking of this in relation to sports or shows. Lots of what you could consider violence going on."

RESPONSE:

Yes. It’s important to be mindful of the images of violence you consume, and be aware of how they affect your mind and your nervous system. As Ben Okri wrote, "Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world."

I really enjoy some violent movies like Kill Bill, where the violence is cartoonish, and mixed with dark humor, and it's sort of all in good fun. And each viewer, each consumer of images, is unique; I'm simply describing my own tolerance and proclivities here. "Kill Bill" does not negatively impact my mind-stream or leave me feeling nauseated afterwards. In fact, it makes me laugh and I can identify a lot with Uma Thurman's character: her ability to be 100% befuddled and vulnerable in one moment, seemingly hopeless, and then to bounce back in the next moment with a fierceness and a furious commitment to what she perceives as justice.

I DO NOT enjoy movies like the “Hostel” or “Saw" franchises or any of their ilk, which are basically fictionalized snuff films where the violence is pornographic, and you just watch psychopathic people killing and torturing other people because they enjoy watching them suffer and die (we're sort of back to talking about Nazis again) and there’s no point in the depiction of violence other than to indulge in images of graphic violence and killing for their own sake, to derive some very morbid and sociopathic kind of titillation. Those kinds of violent films leave me feeling deeply, spiritually nauseated.  

Likewise, whenever the 45th President of the United States (and voilà! for the third time in this Q&A we are talking about Nazis who needed to be stopped) used to come on the TV screen — and thank God that doesn't happen much anymore these days — I would have to turn it off or leave the room. Or if I'm in a public space and they set the TV to Fox News — same thing. What slithers off the TV screen and into your mind from Fox News is so painfully grotesque and spiritually violent that it nauseates me. 

I boycott these violent images and discourses. They do not have permission to enter or occupy my mind-space. For me, that's part of practicing self-care, reducing the harm that would potentially be done to my mind and my heart by absorbing such hateful and belligerently ignorant rhetoric and images. It's not burying my head in the sand. It's fierce and compassionate self-protection. Ahimsa.

WHAT ABOUT YOU? 

Lost in Translation

Yoga and meditation have taken American society by storm. Starting from a few transplanted Indian teachers and their ashrams, countless styles and schools of yoga have evolved to address every niche market and demographic: bootcamp-style hot power vinyasa classes; body-image oriented yoga for glutes and abs; traditional Bhakti devotional yoga done in front of murals and statues of Hindu deities with chanting and incense, wearing white clothing; corporate yoga done in front of computer screens or at office desks, wearing suits and dress socks; yoga for children; yoga for the elderly; yoga for overweight people; yoga for women; yoga for men; prenatal yoga; postnatal yoga; alignment-based yoga; Christian yoga; dance-based yoga; pilates-based yoga; yoga for sleep; yoga for sex; martial arts-based yoga; acro-yoga; aerial yoga; and, yes, even hot nude yoga.

In the realm of meditation, something similar is now taking place. Starting from a few Buddhist meditation centers established by teachers transplanted from various Asian countries, “mindfulness” (and a host of related practices) has grown into a cottage industry and a household word in mainstream society. Mindfulness is taught at Google and in Wall Street banks to help employees be less stressed and more productive; it’s taught in hospitals to help patients cope with pain and illness; it’s taught in classrooms to help students concentrate and perform better on tests; it’s taught in church basements to help addicts in recovery and in therapists’ offices to help patients regulate mood disorders; it’s taught in temples to help spiritual aspirants reach towards enlightenment and in boutique meditation centers to help busy urban professionals find a time to slow down and relax; it’s taught by the military to help soldiers cope with the stresses of warfare.

With yoga and meditation finding their way into so many corners of American society, and taking on so many new — and frequently materialistic — manifestations, it may be time to take a step back and assess whether something essential is being lost in the translation of these ancient Eastern traditions into American culture. 

Truthfulness in Yoga and Buddhism

This is part one in a series of articles examining key principles of Yoga and Buddhism.

Today many people in the West approach Yoga primarily as a physical practice for training the body, and meditation as a tool for subduing the mind's noise and cultivating peace. These are fine goals in themselves, but they really only begin to scratch the surface.

Looking at Yoga and meditation in this way is sort of like looking at the small tip of an iceberg that sits above the surface of the water and believing you’ve seen the whole iceberg. There is so much more hidden down below — in fact, you may be missing about 95% of the iceberg.

In a gym Yoga class or in a contemporary mindfulness seminar, you’re not likely to hear the teacher speak much about morality and ethics. But that’s actually where both of these paths begin.

In Buddhism (which is the source of most contemporary meditation and mindfulness techniques), meditation is actually the second of three areas of training: Shila (Ethical Conduct), Samadhi (Meditation), and Prajña (Insight or Wisdom). Without the foundation of following certain ethical principles, it’s difficult or impossible to cultivate the higher states of meditation and insight that lead to spiritual freedom and awakening.

In the classical Yoga tradition, the same is true. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras lay out an eightfold path called ashtanga, more commonly known as the eight limbs of Yoga (ashta = eight and anga = limb). The first limb of Patanjali’s Yoga is Yama, the ethical standards that a Yogi should follow. The physical asana practice is the third limb, and its intention is not only to care for the body but to cultivate the discipline and focus necessary to approach the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th limbs of Yoga, all of which are concerned with meditation and insight.

To put it simply, without ethics your life is a mess — and you are haunted by the mess. You harm yourself and others with your thoughts, words and actions, and the consequences of this behavior torment your mind and body. The apple is rotten from the inside, and no amount of polishing its surface with asana practice or meditation is going to make it edible. The ethical precepts in Buddhism and Yoga restore the apple to a wholesome state, from the inside out.

The ethical principles from each tradition are largely the same. I’ll focus here on just one of them: Truthfulness.

The Noble Ninefold Path? The Complex Ethics of Right Consumption

Cross-posted yesterday at The Interdependence Project.


John Stuart Mill, the 19th-century thinker most closely associated with the moral philosophy called Utilitarianism, wrote: "Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness."

Roughly two-and-a-half millennia before Mill, Shakyamuni Buddha said more or less the same thing. The system of ethics taught by the Buddha, one of the pillars of Buddhist spiritual practice, is based not upon a rigid moral code handed down by a god or authority figure, but upon the principle that actions that bring about a positive effect and result in well-being are inherently virtuous and worthy of being cultivated, and actions that bring about a negative result and lead to suffering or harm are inherently unvirtuous and worthy of being abandoned.

The noble eightfold path, part of the Buddha's earliest teachings, is a step-by-step plan for bringing all aspects of one's life into alignment with the ethical goal of harmlessness -- living in a way that doesn't create harm in the world, but only brings benefit. Living in this way creates the conditions and the good karma that will not only make oneself and others happy, but will support one's path to liberation.

The Buddha's prescription for an ethical life did not shy away from the nitty-gritty: for example, right livelihood, one of the eight parts of the noble eightfold path, includes specific suggestions on which careers it would be best to avoid due to the amount of harm they typically involve. Many butchers and prostitutes are really very decent people, but the Buddha taught that being a butcher or a prostitute probably isn't the best career choice for someone who wants to follow the spiritual path as he taught it.

In the time of the Buddha, people's lives were harder in some ways, but also much simpler. The brutal facts of life and death were on display in a more harsh light -- but by the same token, the choices one could make on a day-to-day basis were also more straightforward. As our lives have become more comfortable and secure, they have also become more complicated. Ours is a highly globalized and interdependent world where the simple choices we make in the supermarket or on the street or in our homes have ethical implications that stretch thousands of miles and impact thousands of lives.

Peel a banana and eat it, and you create ripples that go outward and circle the planet. You cannot divorce the enjoyment of that banana from the realities of economic oppression in the banana republics of Latin America, or the environmental costs of industrial-scale monocropping and toxic pesticides and preservatives and petroleum-based transport. Through something as seemingly simple and even innocent as growing, selling, buying and eating bananas, we are all complicit together in a system of production and consumption whose ethical implications boggle the mind.

And this is not to single out bananas for journalistic abuse. Pretty much anything and everything we enjoy is steeped in the suffering of other beings. Patrul Rinpoche, in "Words of My Perfect Teacher," wrote at length about the unfathomable amount of suffering that goes into producing a simple cup of tea. Want something more complex to chew on? Pick up your iPhone, if you have one, and contemplate the recent string of suicides among iPhone factory workers in China (or AT&T's massive contributions to Tea Party candidates in the recent midterm elections).

If the Buddha were living in today's era of global commerce, I suspect we would have a noble ninefold path, and the ninth aspect of the path would be Right Consumption. Surely how and where you spend your money is just as important as how and where you make it. If you're contributing your dollars or euros or yen to a product or a system or a company that does more harm in the world than good, that's something the Buddha would probably advise you to look at.

Yet, making the right choices in today's world is not always an easy or straightforward proposition. When there are conflicting interests, how do you judge whether the harm outweighs the good or vice versa? Much of the time, it's difficult for us to even know what impact our consumer choices might have. The facts are not always available to us -- and even when they are, many consumers prefer not to know the facts.

The ethics of consumption in today's world is not something on which I pretend to be any kind of an expert at all. I find it incredibly difficult, and I think the Buddha would find it difficult too, if he were living today. Even by withdrawing to a monastery and living in relative seclusion from the world, you can no longer extract yourself from the global matrix of consumption. (You can trust me on this one, as I'm currently living in a very remote monastery, miles and miles away from anything.) Your carpets are still made of petroleum products, your tea and coffee and bananas still come from impoverished countries on other continents, your stove still runs on natural gas, even your Internet service uses the same orbiting satellites as people all over North America. The days when you could get most of what you needed from your neighbors, or you could build it or grow it with your own hands, are gone. Some people are trying to get those days back, or at least minimize the damage, but it's not a simple proposition to put the genie of global commerce and industrialization back in the bottle when we are all enjoying the genie's magic conjuring tricks.

We sentient beings were never truly independent of one another, or of our global environment. The Buddha knew that almost 2,600 years ago. But the real fact of our interdependence is now more plain to see for anyone who cares to look. And when we see the extent of our interdependence, we realize that the ethical repercussions of even simple, everyday actions and choices stretch further in space and time than we could have previously imagined. Edward Hubbell Chapin said, "Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity."

When we begin to realize how much harm is created through everyday consumer choices we ordinarily take for granted, we might feel a sense of paralysis. How can we do anything or consume anything without creating harm? On the other hand, we might become very self-righteous and think that we've got the correct moral choices figured out, and everyone else should just get with our program and the world would be a better place. Both of those extremes are crazy-making. We either become despondent about our ability to bring about any positive outcome and therefore give up caring , or we go to war to save the world, determined to convert everyone to our way of thinking and our particular ideas about right consumption.

The Buddha, as always, would probably advise us to follow a middle way, avoiding both extremes.

Do the Right Thing

In Buddhism there are various ways of talking about ethics and ethical behavior: the Eightfold Noble Path, the Ten Virtuous and the Ten Non-Virtuous Actions, the Six Paramitas, the Five Lay Precepts, and so on. While each of these schema come at the subject from different angles, they are all concerned with three key points:

• Refraining from causing harm (to oneself or others)
• Practicing virtue (or doing good, creating benefit)
• Taming and training the mind completely

It is said that these three points encapsulate all the teachings of the Buddha. Practicing these three points is the essence of following the Buddhist path.

In Buddhism there is no external Creator who lays down the law and tells us what is right and what is wrong. There is no Moses coming down the mountain with tablets of Commandments inscribed by God speaking from the burning bush. Rather, there are basic, common-sense principles for conduct, based on the natural laws of cause and effect. We can test these principles in our own experience and see for ourselves how it works: committing so-called "negative" actions leads to unhappy results, while committing so-called "positive" actions leads to happy results. But this does not result in a black and white moral code, a list of "Thou Shalt Nots." The positive or negative charge of any action is always shaped by our intentions, and under certain circumstances, with certain intentions, an action that appears outwardly negative may actually be quite positive, and vice versa.

The Five Precepts are one way of understanding the notion of ethical conduct. In different Buddhist traditions, there are various ways of phrasing and interpreting the Five Precepts (ranging from conservative to liberal), but basically they are:

1: Refraining from killing. Recognizing that all sentient beings value their own life just as we do, we undertake to do our best to refrain from taking the life of any sentient being. One of the things we discover as we practice this precept is how deeply we are embedded in the web of life and death, and how much death actually occurs all the time in order to keep us alive (if we contemplate the food chain, for example, we see how many beings died in order to bring us our food -- even if we are vegetarians). But by making the effort to refrain from killing as much as possible, we discover in ourselves a deeper respect (and even affection) for the lives of all creatures -- a sacred outlook that includes all living beings, even spiders and creepy-crawlies.

2: Refraining from stealing. Recognizing that all beings value their own property and possessions, we undertake to do our best to refrain from taking anything that isn't freely offered. This could include not only material possessions, but things like time and attention and energy -- how often do we steal those things from another person?

3: Refraining from sexual misconduct. Recognizing the potential mayhem that can be caused when we misuse our sexuality, we undertake to do our best to refrain from sexual misconduct. It is said that the Buddha recognized the tremendous power of his own sexual energy, and said that if he had been subject to another instinctual drive as strong as sex, he probably would not have been able to attain enlightenment. In Buddhism, sexual misconduct is not defined mechanically as this or that bodily activity, but rather as any sexual behavior that might cause harm to oneself or others; thus, there are certain basic things to avoid, such as adultery (someone always gets hurt), or promiscuously spreading sexually transmitted diseases. Ultimately, our sexual relationships should be wise and mature, based on mutual respect and affection, not just a matter of selfishly using other people to gratify our physical urges.

4: Refraining from wrong speech. Recognizing that our speech has a powerful effect on our own mind and on the minds of others, we undertake to do our best to refrain from speaking in unskillful ways. This precept is sometimes translated as refraining from lying (speaking with intent to deceive others), but unskillful speech includes more than just lying. We also cause harm when we speak harshly with intent to hurt someone's feelings or to malign another person, to cause divisions between other people, or even when we simply indulge in pointless, idle chatter to fill up the empty space, robbing ourselves and others of mindfulness.

5: Refraining from abuse of intoxicants. Recognizing that all Buddhist practice is about gaining greater clarity and presence of mind, we undertake to do our best to refrain from damaging that clarity and clouding our presence of mind through abuse of alcohol and other intoxicating substances.

Observing the Five Precepts can help us accomplish the three key points of the Buddhist path: refraining from causing harm, practicing virtue, and taming the mind completely. The first two points relate to each of the precepts very directly, but the third -- taming the mind -- is less obvious. But consider what happens in our mindstream if we steal something, for example -- think of how much energy and time we then devote to feeling guilty and worrying about getting caught. If we speak falsely to deceive others, think of how clouded and jumbled our mind becomes with our own lies and alibis and the fear of being exposed as a liar, until we get so mixed up that we can't even remember what story we told to whom. If we get drunk or high on drugs, it is difficult to think clearly, let alone to meditate effectively the next day; even putting aside the question of what we do when we're intoxicated, the recovery time alone is a huge drain on our physical energy and clarity of mind.

Thus, building a good foundation of ethical behavior removes obstacles -- from our own mindstreams and from our relationships with others -- that would otherwise prevent us from progressing along the spiritual path. It creates peace of mind and clears the way for awakening to unfold naturally -- that is, as long as we don't get hung up on our concepts of morality, or attached to our self-image of being a "good" person or a "good" Buddhist. If we turn the Five Precepts, for example, into a rigid moral code, then it's like putting on a wonderful pair of shoes and tying our shoelaces together -- we won't get far that way.