DUCKPOND

Normally violence is thought of as an overt action or threat. Yet violence can be present in other forms. We can speak violently. We can think violently. Of course, we should recognize the violence inherent in the situation, either as institutional violence or structural violence, and then there is cultural violence.

The aim for the nonviolent person, to paraphrase Thomas More as he waited to be executed in May 1635 in a letter to his daughter that he knew his interlocutors would be reading: “I do nobody harm. I speak none harm. I think none harm, but rather wish everybody good.” And he went on to say: “If this not enough to keep a man alive, then in good faith, I long not to live.” More as an act of conscience, had refused to sign the Act of Succession that legitimated the marriage of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn.

According to Wikipedia:

More accepted Parliament’s right to declare Anne the legitimate queen of England, but he refused to take the oath because of an anti-papal preface to the Act asserting Parliament’s authority to legislate in matters of religion by denying the authority of the Pope, which More would not accept.

More was found guilty under the terms of the Treason Act 1534, which included in part:

. . . that if any person or persons, after the first day of February next coming, do maliciously wish, will or desire, by words or writing, or by craft imagine, invent, practise, or attempt any bodily harm to be done or committed to the king’s most royal person, the queen’s, or their heirs apparent, or to deprive them or any of them of their dignity, title, or name of their royal estates, or slanderously and maliciously publish and pronounce, by express writing or words, that the king our sovereign lord should be heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel or usurper of the crown . . .

More’s letter did not work, but unintentionally he established the basis for nonviolence. I think this is a remarkable, almost paradoxical, development. It is like when you are having a conversation with someone,and they are wondering are you getting it. The honest answer is that I am not getting it.

Eknath Easwaran’s Thought for the Day is a good source for matters related to nonviolence. He usually explains very clearly what the reference text is saying. Of course in especially in relation to Vedanta texts it is useful to have a description crafted in the light of an understanding of the cultural background. For example, take yesterday’s thought for the day:

Nonviolence is the supreme law of life.
-Hindu proverb

The Sanskrit word for nonviolence is ahimsa: a means “not” or “without”; himsa is violence. This may sound negative, but in Sanskrit a word constructed in this way stands for a state both perfect and positive. Ahimsa implies that when every trace of violence is removed from the mind, what is left is our natural state of consciousness: pure love.

Unfortunately, that love has been buried under layer upon layer of ill will and selfish conditioning. To have love bubble up to the surface of our life, all we have to do is systematically remove all those layers. There are three kinds of violence: one, through our deeds; two, through our words; and three, through our thoughts. Most of what we call violence is in the form of action, and it is with our actions that nonviolence naturally begins. But as long as our minds harbor violent thoughts, that incipient violence will find its way somehow into our speech and behavior. The root of all violence is in the world of thoughts, and that is why training the mind is so important.

[The Thought for the Day is from Eknath Easwaran's Words to Live By: (Copyright 1999-2005 by The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation.)]

Postscript:

Thomas More does not impress James Wood. Is thereby wrong in everything he wrote?

Robert H Borg, of the American Enterprise Institute, argues that More stood for social order through the rule of law in a time of cultural change, questioning the primacy of individual conscience.