Compassion and Nonviolence
Summary: Virtues mature through practice until they become effortless expressions of character rather than forced performances. Because virtues are interconnected, they cannot be practiced selectively or intermittently; truth, compassion, honesty, and peace support one another. Compassion reveals our humanity and protects us from hardened indifference. Nonviolence, often reduced to a slogan, must arise from genuine inner purity, not public posturing. When compassion and integrity are rooted in one’s nature, friendliness, truthfulness, and nonviolence naturally follow.
There will be a time when you must struggle to cultivate virtues, but a point will come in your life when the behavior you aspire to embody becomes spontaneous and natural. If you are struggling to be good, kind, or gentle, know that you have not yet overcome your weaknesses. Each virtue should be a spontaneous expression of your personality and consciousness, with no struggle, pretense, or duplicity. You cannot practice virtues unvirtuously—pretentiously, intermittently, or for show. This is the truth.
All virtues are interconnected; you cannot practice them in isolation. For example, without right thinking, right knowledge, and right awareness, you cannot consistently act rightly or remain true to yourself. If you genuinely love, that love will manifest across your life. If you are truthful, it will be reflected in both thought and behavior. You may speak the truth now and lie later, but that does not make you a genuinely truthful person.
Some people do not feel compassion at all. A few months ago, a newspaper report described a doctor from the U.S. who hunted a wild lion with arrows and killed it. Many people were outraged, but some felt the lion’s life was not that important. Compassion is an expression of the humanity within you. It is a godlike quality and the only hope for the survival of the human species in an otherwise brutally competitive world. If you do not spontaneously feel compassion for anyone’s suffering, know that you have hardened your heart and made yourself vulnerable to negative emotions.
In today’s world, nonviolence is one of the most misused words. Nonviolence is the highest virtue—not a political slogan or something you practice only at the dinner table. We see seasoned politicians publicly advocating drones and other military options to kill enemies while also declaring themselves admirers of Mahatma Gandhi and his policy of nonviolence. That is playing with words to sound good or look good.
The point is not that you should never use weapons or military options to address conflict and extreme violence; it is that you should not declare yourself a practitioner of nonviolence when you are not. At the very least, you must be truthful and not pretend to be someone you are not. In fact, you cannot be truthful without being honest, compassionate, contented, and peaceful. These qualities are interrelated. That is why scripture advises you to practice virtues for the all-round transformation of your personality, not on a piecemeal basis. If you want to practice nonviolence, you must also practice truthfulness, non-stealing, and non-covetousness. Only then can you accomplish true self-transformation.
People may practice nonviolence for various reasons, but they must be genuine, and their motive should be a spontaneous outcome of their higher nature. Whether you eat a vegetarian diet or avoid aggressive behavior, it should arise from the tenderness of your heart—friendliness, compassion, love, and spirituality. If spiritual purity (sattva) predominates in you, you will be nonviolent without effort. You will naturally express compassion, love, and friendliness toward all life forms. You will have the Buddha Nature firmly established within you.
This is the truth: from all-around virtue, love, compassion, honesty, integrity, truthfulness, friendliness, and nonviolence naturally flow. From the perspective of right living, compassion is even more important than nonviolence. If you have compassion, you will naturally be friendly, gentle, peaceful, cheerful, and nonviolent.