The Buddhism and failure of Ahimsa

Nazar Ul Islam Wani
Assistant professor (Islamic Studies)

The Buddhism and failure of Ahimsa

In modern India Buddha is sidelined, so is Religion. What is visible is the misused version of religion. Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism all these religions are seen through the prism of state. Even the ascetic like Buddha was philosophized into a state by Asoka.

Religion in fifth century India was about to bring certain reforms when a Kshatriya from a tribal republic of Sakka shaved his head and went ascetic while wearing a yellow robe. The man was suffering from spiritual anxiety and immense metaphysical giddiness. Siddhartha Gotama, latter known as Buddha (awakened one), achieved moksha (liberation) through a constant beating of, what Freud called, Id and Ego, and finally received the enlightenment.

Buddha could not bear the pain and suffering in the world which became the main reason of him being ascetic. Since he could not bear it, how could his creed create it? Non-violence as a major teaching was a natural output of a religion, whose founder left the colorful world because of pain and suffering.  If we are to sum up his enlightenment, it has been based on this principle that to live morally was to live for others. This involves also the teachings of all the great traditions of world.

Buddha summed his teaching in four “Noble Truths”: that existence is dukha; that the cause of our pain is desire; that nibbana releases us from the suffering; and the way to achieve this stage is to follow the path of knowledge, concentration…and resolution which he called Nobel path.

Buddha can’t be placed in the list of mystics who fled away from the society to achieve salvation. But his asceticism brought changes within him and in the existing Hindu society of his times. He rose against the violence and injustice of his times. He vehemently fought against the Varna system, for which he believed that converting the Kshatriya was necessary, and he was successful in teaching non-violence to Kshatriyas; who were philosophically created to fight. His ‘Sangha’ if pondered carefully was an alternative created against the aggression of the royal court. Buddha was quite successful in breaking the heroism of Kshatriya. For Heroism is a powerful disease, Buddha knew it and Mahabharata attested it when Yudhishtra tells Krishna that the peace of mind is found only by giving it up.  He could not fight the wars but was willing to fight with his own self, which in Islam is named as greater-jihad.

The peaceful precepts of Buddhism and its impact on Ashoka is a major event of history. It is a fact that the nature of Asoka’s empire was as such that he could not stop killing for extending his empire but Buddha contained the violence within him. So does Religion. It regulates violence. It does not eliminate violence in total. Neither Buddhism nor Islam, nor any religion for that matter comes to swipe all the violence. Asoka according to the Karen Arm Strong realized that if he became a monk the state will be run by force, by someone else, if not by him. He could not avoid state. Mostly, no religion could avoid state and hence violence became an indispensable thing in religion. But a prudent eye would see that it is more an agrarian cult, the rise of civilization, city-states and nation states which used and misused religion. Every religion at some point of time needed a state and Buddhism for that matter could not avoid this dilemma.  Asoka is said to have killed a man who broke the statue of Lord Buddha in latter stage of his religiosity.

In the Indian society, wherein, the doctrine of Ahimsa was taught largely through Jainism and Buddhism and later used by Mahatma Gandhi to fight independence, failed to practically implement it like Asoka because India as a nation-state also demanded violence to extend its nation. It failed to cope with the religious nature of its society and the idea of a nation-state. It never used non-Violence as a technique in Kashmir to win over it. It believed in force like Asoka did by sidelining the Buddha.