Addressing the Roots of Violence

"In law enforcement, detention centers, and prisons, we try to suppress symptoms of violence. At the same time, we allow violence to be fed in our daily life - in our family, in our school, in our society. It does not mean much to try to suppress the symptoms. You have to deal with the roots. Suppressing violence with violence does not make any sense, becase the person in charge of suppressing violence may have a lot of hatred, fear, and despair within himself.

That is why we have to reconsider our approach. We have to bring a spiritual dimension to our way of working, and of solving problems. This does not mean that we have to be religious. We have our human nature. We have our animal nature. We have our Buddha nature, our spiritual nature. It's possible that the human nature and the Buddha nature can live together with the animal nature in peace. This is called civilisation. We still keep our animal nature, but it is under control. It doesn't have to suffer. We enjoy transformation and healing. We have to organise our life - individual, family, institutional, societal - in the light of that kind of insight.

We don't like terrorism. We don't like people terrorising us, attacking us, killing us. We declare war on terrorism. We want to strike at terrorism. We want to use violence to deal with violence, to suppress symptoms of violence. Every spiritual tradition can tell you that using violence to suppress violence is not the right thing to do, because it will never bring peace. The desire to remove violence and terrorism is a good desire. It is authentic, legitimate. But the means that we use in order to remove violence and terrorism should be effective. By using violence to suppress violence we create more violence....if we have some time to look, we will realise that only understanding and compassion can neutralise violence. Violence only adds to violence and creates more hatred, more enemies, more terrorists. This is a fact. If you look deeply into the situation, this is clear.

We are so busy with our daily lives. We have allowed the situation to become what it is now. The siutuation is a collective creation of our mind. We have voted for our Congress. We have voted for our government. But we have not had the time to help them, to support them, to offer them insight. We leave everything to them. Each of us should organise our life is such a way that we have the time to be in the here and the now, to touch reality deeply, to get understanding and insight. Insight is nourishment for our life. But it is also a contribution to our society. The collective insight that we offer will serve as the light to lead the nation and the world out of this difficult situation..."

Excerpt from Keeping the Peace (2005) by Thich Nhat Hanh