Darshan with Swami Krishnananda during 1997

by Swami Krishnananda

41. Ahimsa

(Darshan given on July 21st, 1997.)

A visitor: …defending countries and societies without arms, what we call as non-violent defence.

Swamiji: If you can do that, do it. The only thing is, if you cannot do it then the question doesn't arise. Do you think you can succeed?

Visitor: I don't know.

Swamiji: You cannot succeed?

Visitor: It's a difficult question.

Swamiji: Why is it difficult?

Visitor: Because there is conflict and violence.

Swamiji: Who is doing it? You are not doing violence, and if somebody does it, you keep quiet. That is what you are saying. That is your idea of ahimsa. If somebody invades the country, the country will keep quiet. That is what you mean?

Visitor: No.

Swamiji: Then what else? What is ahimsa then?

Visitor: You can also defend. You can defend your country without violence.

Swamiji: Without violence how will you defend? You have to counteract them. So where is the ahimsa? It is gone in one minute. Ahimsa cannot be understood so easily. It is like meditation. However much you may probe your mind, you don't know what is meditation. Like that is this. It is only a word. People go on uttering the word ahimsa, ahimsa. They don't know what it means.

When you treat a person suffering with microbes in the body, you destroy the microbes. Now is it himsa or ahimsa? Your concept of ahimsa must be very clear. It is a vague word which means nothing finally, though people think it is very clear. When you sweep the floor, some insect may die. In the kitchen when you burn firewood, some insect may get burned there. You may trample on an ant when you walk, and how will you avoid it? So the definition of ahimsa must be clear first. What is the proportion, what is the extent and what is the motive behind it, finally?

There was a man called Bertrand Russell. He wrote, “Let us think we should follow ahimsa.” He was a very humorous man. Suppose Hitler invades England. England will keep quiet. They won't do anything. Hitler will arrest all the British officers. Let them keep quiet. Let them be arrested. He will put German officers. Let it go. They will charge tax. We will not pay tax. Then they will put us in a concentration camp. Let it be, we will be in the concentration camp. We will lie down on the road. They will pass a bulldozer over these people. Let it go, we will die for that. He says finally the man will be fed up. He cannot go on like that ruling the country by putting bulldozers over people and then controlling people with no tax paying. The dictator will be fed up afterwards. He cannot bear it. Then he says this ahimsa will work. What do you think? Half of the population should die before ahimsa succeeds. This is one definition. But that is not the intention of anybody who propagates it. They don't say you must die for that. You must succeed in it.

Now, what is your problem?

Visitor: I wish to know about non-violent resistance.

Swamiji: Will you not resist if somebody attacks you? What do you say?

Visitor: I will.

Swamiji: Then why are you asking that question? You have already answered the question. Otherwise, you keep quiet.

Visitor: The form of resistance, the form that I would choose to defend myself, I might persuade the person from attacking me.

Swamiji: He will not listen to you. You go and tell a tiger, “Don't kill the cow.” Would you be able to dissuade it? It will eat you also, not only the cow. That is very important. It depends upon to whom you are talking. If you are telling a saintly man not to be very aggressive, he will understand, okay. But if you are talking to a brutish type of person, he is already a brute, and he doesn't want any advice from you.

Ahimsa cannot be defined so easily. It is highly intricate, and it changes from circumstance to circumstance, from condition to condition, from one context to another context. It is not a rigid steel frame. It is not like that. It is just like medical science. You cannot give the same medicine every day to the same person. For different persons, different medicines, different conditions. It is a kind of dharma. Dharma varies from minute to minute, circumstance to circumstance, condition to condition, person to person. It is not uniformly even. It is a highly flexible evolutionary process. Ahimsa or himsa, whatever you call it – war and peace, whatever it is – they are all parts of the evolutionary process.

Evolution is the destruction of the lower condition and the emerging of the subsequent condition. Now, universal evolution is himsa. What do you say? You have destroyed the babyhood that you were once upon a time, and now you are an adult. Have you destroyed your babyhood? So evolution is not destruction, it is evolution. Somebody cuts off the legs of a man. If it is done by a doctor, it is called surgery. If it is done by an evil-minded man, it is called assassination. But both are doing the same thing. So who is right, who is wrong? Tell me. The act does not give the answer. It is the motive behind it. So your question is to be answered by the motive of a person.

There was a person who got very angry. He just gave someone a kick, and he fell on a big pot of honey. Now, to be inside a pot of honey is a very nice thing. You can go on drinking it. Can you say he has done a virtuous act by throwing him into a honeypot? But the intention was not to give honey. Incidentally he got honey also, but his intention was something else. He has not done a virtuous deed just because he is drinking honey. So you can't answer the question like that. This question includes many others.

Have you read Tolstoy's War and Peace? You have to work in the manner the universe works. That is the teacher for you. You need not ask questions from anybody. Just use your mind to understand how the universe is working. That is the way you have to work. And if the universe is operating without causing any kind of internal change within itself, then you can also do like that. You need not bring any kind of change. You simply keep quiet. But every moment there is internal change in the cosmos where the lower is transcended by the higher, completely transformed. So transformation of the lower into the higher may also look like the destruction of the lower for the sake of the higher.

In the Mahabharata there is a sloka: tyajed ekaṁ kulasyārthe grāmasyārthe kulaṁ tyajet, gramaṁ janapadasyārthe ātmārthe pṛthiviṁ tyajet (M.B. 5.37.16). In a family if one person is a wicked person, he is an impossible man, for the welfare of the family you can throw him out. Suppose there is a family which is vicious; all the members of the family are vicious, then they must be turned out from the village for the sake of the welfare of the whole village. But if the village is rotten and it is behaving unmannerly and affects the state administration, the state can throw out those people. For the sake of the attainment of God, the whole universe can be thrown out. So the lower can be thrown out for the sake of the higher.

In the Bhagavadgita, Lord Krishna says, “Cast out all dharma and come to Me.” Everywhere people say you must follow dharma, and he says throw it away. Now, what does he mean by that? What is he throwing? He means that when you follow the higher, inclusive dharma, then the lower one gets subsumed. It is not throwing away; it is transcending, transcending. When you become a graduate, you throw away the primary educational textbooks. But you have transcended them, not thrown them away. So when you say 'throw away', it means 'transcend'. Renunciation is not throwing away. It is not giving up. It is not casting out. It is overcoming the limitations caused by it and transcending above it. The world can be renounced only if you are above the world. If you are one of the finite individuals inside the world, controlled by gravitation and other things, how will you renounce the world? Only he who has conquered the world can renounce it.

So these are all unnecessary talks. People don't understand. The evolutionary structure of the cosmos is your Gita, so do exactly what it does. If you think it is doing nothing, then you can also do nothing. But in the Gita it is said na hi kaścit kṣaṇam api jātu tiṣṭhatyakarmakṛt (B.G. 3.5): Without action, not an atom will keep quiet. Every atom is evolving, and where it is moving? The planets are moving. The sun and moon and galaxies, they are all moving. Towards what end are they going? Why are they moving? There is a higher destination for them which is a universal comprehensiveness. They want to achieve cosmic Self-realisation. That is the purpose of every kind of movement. Even an ant is moving towards God only. Though it is moving towards some hole, its impulse comes from somewhere else. When a leaf moves, it is the wind of the cosmos.

So unless you know everything, you cannot answer any question. You have to know everything in the universe in its totality, and then every question will be answered inside. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.