Is violence ever justified in Buddhism?
Yes, I think it is justified in certain cases.
First, it's justified in self-defense to an extent, to a limited degree.
If someone
is threatening your life, then you might do violence to them to stop them.
Without the intention to hurt them, the intention to stop what they're doing.
I would say this is
This is not a harmful act.
It's actually a beneficial act.
If it's, in certain cases, possible to stop someone without doing violence, without intending to bring harm to them, but simply to stop them.
So, for example, you might knock them out.
Suppose someone is...
attacking you or attacking someone else, you hit them over the head and knock them out.
You could say that's violent, but it wasn't a bad thing for them to do that, for you to do that.
Putting people in jail might be seen as a violent act, but you might think, well, in certain cases it's beneficial, both to them and to other people, to put them in jail.
As an example, I mean, there's obviously broader implications with things like jail, especially.
But ostensibly, there's nothing wrong with it.
Now, I don't have any real backing for that claim.
It might be that it's totally...
totally a false claim, but the backing that we have is that monks are allowed to hit someone in self-defense.
This is actually allowed for monks to perform violent acts in self-defense to the extent necessary to get away from the person, the aggressor.
So whether or not intrinsically the mind is defiled by doing the act, I mean, you might at the very least say that this is still an attachment to one's own health and well-being, which an arahant might not have.
So you might say that an arahant wouldn't perform such acts and self-defense, but I'm not convinced.
It seems to me that even to that extent it's still...
I don't have a definite answer in my mind.
Because it seems to me it could be done simply because it's proper.
Simply because it is the proper response to a certain experience.
The natural response.
And it might be unnatural to allow oneself to be killed.
For example.
But for sure, even if it is intrinsically defiling to act in such a way, it's certainly not defiling to the extent that it is rejected in Buddhism or forbidden.
Now, the other way that violence might... So I actually talked about both of them.
So one way is in self-defense.
The other way is that it might actually help the individual.
Now, as I said, I don't have a doctrinal backing for this exactly, and it's a bit sketchy, but...
It seems to me that if you can be sure or if you're clear in the mind that it's either in self-defense or for the benefit of the person to whom you're doing violence, then I think there is room for the view that it is justified.
I'm not saying that it is because I'm not the Buddha who can justify it, but I'm also not the Buddha who can denounce or forbid it.
So there is still an opening there.
But it's never justified to hurt other people for your own benefit.
or to hurt to hurt other people out of greed anger or delusion to to to hurt other people outside of these two reasons to actually harm someone to actually do something to make their life less
less peaceful this is never never justified I would say