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14. Violence is Weakness, Prayer
is Power (Part Two) |
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Self-Defense
In order for us to better understand the relationship
of violence and authoritarianism, it is worthwhile to
take a closer look at the ideas of self-defense and sacrifice.
Pure selfdefense is not violence because it is based solely
on the affirmation of life, rather than its negation.
It has been reported that one of the hijacked airplanes
crashed short of its intended target in an unpopulated
area of western Pennsylvania, probably because some passengers
struggled with the terrorists for control of the airplane.
Their action was courageous and noble; it was not violence
but self-defense since they were motivated by their desire
to protect and preserve life. Quite often, however, so-called
self-defense is disguised aggression in which one’s
real motive for the destruction of life is suppressed
consciously or unconsciously by self-deceptive rationalization.
The difference between violence and self-defense lies
not merely in the external circumstances, but more significantly
in one’s true motive. In this regard, Shakyamuni’s
injunction to “kill the will to kill” reveals
the profound Buddhist insight into the nature of violence
(quoted in My Dear Friends in America, p. 129). Behind
the passionate emotions or seemingly sound rhetoric of
self-defense is often hidden the “will to kill.”
Violence arises from a will to harm, and self-defense
from a will to protect although both employ physical force
as a means. So it is necessary to look inward and see
one’s true motive— whether it is solely to
preserve life or to harm life. We become capable of self-defense
with the ability of self-reflection, to which one of the
greatest obstacles is an authoritarian orientation that
looks outside for the motive of our action in order to
escape personal responsibility.
Sacrifice
Sacrifice is often praised as one of the highest virtues,
but we witnessed in the recent tragedy that there are
two kinds of sacrifice. One type is motivated by self-denial.
Some people make such a sacrifice because in doing so
they can lose themselves to an external power and thus
become part of what is not them. They are motivated by
a desire to escape from themselves whom they neither love
nor trust. Through making such a sacrifice, however, they
lose the freedom and integrity to think and act as individuals.
This kind of sacrifice is authoritarian in essence, and
it is a sign of one’s weakness and inability to
freely express him- or herself.
Another type of sacrifice is the complete opposite of
self-denial; it is self-expression. Some people courageously
choose—instead of being forced by external authority—to
sacrifice their physical safety or even their lives as
the utmost expression of their spiritual integrity. Their
sacrifice is an assertion of individual freedom and will.
The line between those two types of sacrifice was drawn
clearly in the recent terrorist attacks. While the terrorists
were giving up their own power of critical thinking and,
with it, their humanity to external authority, it was
shown that passengers on the hijacked airplanes and those
trapped in the collapsing buildings valiantly faced their
final moments in efforts to save others and in their prayers
for their loved ones. The terrorists’ acts to blow
up the huge structures may seem ‘active,’
but in their innermost reality they are most passive and
feeble, while the quiet thoughts and prayers of those
who passed away in the attacks— despite their appearance
of helplessness and passivity in the eyes of the terrorists—were
the greatest expressions of their will and love. In their
final thoughts and prayers, they were strong and free.
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