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Old 03-01-2007, 02:28 PM   #31
MikeLogan
 
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Location: Rochester, NY
Join Date: Jul 2004
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Re: Aikido and Pacifism

Kevin, before even reading your post, I wanted to reply with another quote that said it better than I, but you go ahead and say it for me:
Quote:
Kevin Leavitt wrote:
It might be more ethical to use a bullet to stop one person from killing 100 people, than to take no action at all, even though we would be committing an act of killing.
Quote:
But in the spirit of breaking the bonds of attachment to ideology, the practice of the precept not to kill goes much further in Buddhism. A person caught in a doctrine or a system of thought can sacrifice millions of lives in order to put into practice his theory, which he considers the absolute truth, the unique path that can lead humankind to happiness.
With a gun in hand, a person can kill one, five, or even ten people.
But holding on to a doctrine or a system of thought, one can kill tens of thousands of people. Therefore, unless the precept not to take life is understood in terms of breaking the bonds of attachment to ideology, it is not truly the precept taught by the Buddha.
--Thich Nhat Hanh, Thundering Silence
(Parallax Press, 1993)
I wanted to ask whether non-violence is simply the conscious detachment from a fixed idealogy of pacifism. Is it the 'new&improved' pacifism? Which of us is thinking of the life-giving sword? I'm betting all of us.

michael.
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