Chapter 10 Where does violence come from?

Jean-François - what we've just been talking about leads us to a metaphysical question - if the Mafia can lead to a metaphysical question - the question of Mal.Regarding this topic, I really want to know the attitude of Buddhism, because the characteristic of various major religions and philosophies in the West is to accept the question of evil.That is to say, to accept the idea that there is an evil in itself.This is one of the great problems of metaphysics and morals in the great religions and in the great philosophies, especially in Christianity.In Christianity, the concept of evil is closely linked with the concept of original sin.In those big philosophies, we take classical philosophies such as Descartes and Leibniz as examples, the possibility of evil poses a problem that anxieties these philosophers, who are at the same time Christians, whose philosophy The system itself is based on the idea that there is a divinity, that there is an almighty God who is equal to the highest wisdom and at the same time boute souveraine.How could he allow evil?The question is never resolved both literally and in the metaphysical context in which it is posed.All the solutions proposed to overcome this contradiction are specious.Does Buddhism admit that there is an inherent evil?

Mathieu - This is an important question.The nature of Buddha exists in every being like oil in sesame seeds.This perfection inherent in every being needs to be expressed and realized only when one removes the veil of ignorance and the disturbing emotions formed under the influence of this ignorance.The primordial nature of man is perfect, but it is very easy to lose control and devote himself to certain negative thoughts which in turn manifest in harmful words and actions.It is not, therefore, that man is as good as Rousseau's "good savage," for, if one allows ordinary beings to express themselves in a state of savagery, the best are seldom expressed. come out.Their intrinsic goodness is revealed only when they bring to life their deep nature.

Jean-François—Is there a primordial depravity in sin similar to that in Christianity? Mathieu - There is neither depravity nor sin, there is only an oblivion of our primordial nature, a lethargy, an amnesie.And once this essence is forgotten, the distinction between self and other emerges with all the tendencies associated with attraction and repulsion, which is egocentrism that produces negativity and pain. Jean-François - where do these tendencies come from?If people are inherently good, how do these negative tendencies develop? Mathieu - In fact, emotions and pain are never "created", because nothing has a solid reality, and when man achieves awakening, he wakes up, so to speak, from a nightmare.Ignorance never really existed.A man who is awakened like Buddha sees the ignorance of all kinds of people, just as one can see the thoughts of a sleeper haunted by nightmares: he knows the nature of the nightmares, he himself is not deceived.

Jean-François - what a beautiful image!Even if evil is only an illusion, it torments us.Doing so is nothing more than a matter of diversion.If all things are inherently good in reality, how can evil arise? Mathieu - it does "appear", but it has no existence of its own.When man takes a rope for a snake, that snake never existed.So error has only a completely negative mode of being, it has no existence of its own.This is because the ultimate nature of ignorance is the realization that ignorance can be eliminated.One can wash off a lump of gold, but one cannot turn a lump of coal white.

Jean-François - Although this formulation is not the same as in Christianity or in classical metaphysics in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the problem is pretty much the same.We Western philosophers have racked our brains to explain how a God who is good in himself can allow evil to exist in nature.Even if one says that evil is only an illusion, only relative to a situation, and does not really exist in itself, this answer cannot be satisfied. Mathieu - When people are not aware of the true nature of things, people are attached to the appearance of things.Dualisms develop between self and other, beauty and ugliness, pleasing and displeasing, etc., and set in motion a whole cascade of disturbing mental factors.Thus ignorance appears like a curtain which makes man forget his true nature and leads him to act against his deepest nature.It is like a deviation, an illusion that attracts the mind to things that are harmful to itself and to others.

Jean-François - but why do these negativity, these "evil perpetrators" appear?If there is a fundamental goodness in human beings, these negative factors should not be able to be revealed. Mathieu—Ignorance is a kind of "possibility", and this "possibility" is precisely determined and expressed by ignorance.Ignorance arises in knowing, but it is not of the ultimate nature of knowing.Its nature is illusory.Therefore, when awareness is realized, nothing actually happens.This is a difficult subject to talk about in a few words.In simpler terms, ignorance is an accidental misunderstanding, a sudden forgetting, which does not alter the ultimate nature of the mind in the slightest, but which creates a chain of visions, like nightmares, although for those who are lying comfortably The fact of being in bed didn't change a bit, but it still caused a great deal of mental pain.This interpretation, though far-fetched, reflects a fact of contemplative experience.An awakened person understands the illusory nature of his dreams without the slightest need for explanation.

Jean-François—but these non-existent events still made him suffer? Mathieu – Actually, although pain in a dream is real pain to the one who sees it, the illusory nature of pain does not make the necessity of healing pain any less.This is what justifies the spiritual path.As far as its occurrence is concerned, it is governed by the law of cause and effect: it is the result of our actions, words and thoughts.In the end, however, only one thing is always there: inherent perfection.Gold never changes, even though it is buried deep in the ground; the sun continues to shine, although it is sometimes hidden by clouds.

Jean-François—after all, well... this answer does not satisfy me.This is pretty much Leibniz's answer to the contradiction between an evil world and its Creator, a supremely good God!Efforts have been made to explain that the presence of evil in the world is not due to God himself, but to various accidental factors.In this case, one of two things: either God is omnipotent, then he is responsible for evil; or he is not omnipotent, then he is not God! Mathieu – this is one of the lines of reasoning that Buddhism uses to deny the idea of ​​an all-powerful creator. Jean-François-Leibniz, with his absolutely inexhaustible metaphysical imagination, invented the famous theory of the best possible world, which was satirized by Voltaire in Candide of.Voltaire puts Candid and the Leibnizian philosopher Pangloss on stage.Amidst the ruins of Lisbon just devastated by an earthquake, as the victims groan under the smoking rubble, the master explains to his disciples that we live in the best possible world.It's a wry and impressive account of the fact that there really is an unsolvable problem at this moment.Manes, in his famous theory, affirmed the existence of two separate and distinct forces in the world, the principle of good and the principle of evil, which led to a religion called Manichaeism (manicheisme). ) teachings.It was refuted and condemned as heresy by the Catholic Church, and generally rejected by philosophers, especially Emmanuel Kant.This is one of the most difficult metaphysical problems to solve even in words.In any case, what distinguishes Buddhism from Christianity is the Buddhist denial of the concept of sin, especially original sin.

Mathieu - The great "advantage" of fault, or "crime" is precisely that it has no real existence.Therefore, there is no negative action or negative thought that cannot be dissolved, purified or remedied. Jean-François - God, on the other hand, cannot be accused of being the creator of evil, because God does not exist! Mathieu - We ourselves are responsible for our evil.We are both heirs of the past (le passe) and masters of the future (le futur)."Good" and "evil" have no meaning in themselves. Some behaviors and thoughts lead people to pain, while other behaviors and thoughts lead people to happiness.Also, it is fundamental that the metaphysical problem of pain and evil is not equal to the solution to the problem.One day, the Buddha grabbed a handful of leaves in his hand and asked his disciples, "Are there more leaves in my hand or in the forest?" The disciples replied that of course there are more leaves in the forest.The Buddha continued: "In the same way, I realize more than I show, because there are many realizations that are useless for ending suffering and attaining awakening."

Jean-François - If man is "good," how does that explain so much violence? Mathieu—We can understand this view of "true essence" as a state of balance for human beings, and violence, as an imbalance.The proof that violence is not in the deep nature of man is that it calls suffering both in the bearer and in the bearer.Man's innermost hope is happiness.When we speak of someone who is possessed by hatred, don't we say that he is "involuntary", that he is "no longer himself"?Satisfying one's hatred by killing another never brings the murderer the slightest peace, the slightest satisfaction, only sometimes a morbid ecstasy of short duration.Instead, the murderer finds himself in a state of inner confusion and panic that sometimes leads him to commit suicide.

People can also become insensitive to crime, like those African children whose employers first forced them to execute a member of their family in order to destroy all feeling in their hearts, thus making them ruthless murderers.Some Serb partisans in Sarajevo say killing has become so natural that they don't think about other activities.When people asked them, "If an old Muslim friend of yours passed by your targeting range, would you shoot him?" they answered "Yes."Apparently these partisans have lost touch with their true nature.Didn't we say that certain habitual offenders "no longer have an iota of humanity"?On the other hand, if some sworn enemies, who had long expressed a bitter hatred for each other, were reconciled, they felt a great relief, a great joy, which no doubt came from a sense of their true nature. Discovered again. Jean-François—I am not as sanguine as you are about the remorse of the great criminals which should drive them to suicide.I know very well that Stalin died in his own bed, Franco died in his own bed, and Hitler committed suicide because he was defeated, not because he felt any remorse for the crimes he committed.I also regret to know that Saddam Hussein has not killed himself and continues to shoot people and cut off their ears every day because it is the new fad.He ordered the ears of the defectors to be cut off and the doctors and surgeons who refused to perform the operation to be hanged.Criminals' suicidal remorse is statistically very minor. Mathieu - I don't mean remorse, but pain, the complete loss of inner peace.On his deathbed, Stalin ordered his mistress to be killed because he could not bear that she would be with someone else. Jean-François - I am very pessimistic when it comes to the eradication of evil.Contrary to what Rousseau believed, I think that man is bad, and that society makes him good when society is established according to justice.From time to time, some forms of society make people less bad.Why?Because evil is irrational. Mathieu—I would say, is against nature. Jean-François - If there is a use of violence and a practice of evil that I may define as realism, it is of course morally reprehensible, but at least we can discuss it!What I mean by realism is that when people use violence solely for their own benefit and with a definite purpose in mind, then it is a selfish and brazen use of violence, which is nevertheless rational usage of.If so, this would limit the use of violence.In particular, the use would be based on a reasoning that might be unethical, but which could be opposed by another, even more realistic reasoning. Unfortunately, it is clear to us that the use of violence is most often an utterly stupid use that goes beyond the pursuit of realistic ends.To take some recent examples, the most horrific use of violence in Algeria, the former Yugoslavia or Rwanda is a pathological use.The real interest of the various nationalities that make up Yugoslavia should be to have some realistic exchanges.Let's look at the vast majority of wars: even when the warmongers set themselves political and strategic goals at the outset, they far exceeded them.If Hitler wanted to reoccupy the left bank of the Rhine, if he wanted to reconquer certain Czechoslovakian territories that he considered German territory, he could also be considered to belong to the category of real-poli-tik.But he went into an all-out war against the whole world, he executed all or almost all of the Jews in Europe, he went on a crazy expedition against the Soviet Union, which was his ally, and all of that It can only be interpreted as a suicidal behavior, and this suicidal behavior is also the performance of the German people.According to the most superficial rational analysis, this action is obviously unsuccessful. ① German: real politics.A euphemism for power politics. Those who use violence often go far beyond their specific purpose: when the National Convention crushed the royalist rebellion in the Vendée, there was no military danger on the frontier, which is when shameful massacres of citizens took place ①.Chinese history tells of many emperors or feudal lords who ordered 10,000, 15,000, or 30,000 people to be beheaded, which was completely unnecessary from a practical point of view.It's a purely sadistic desire to bleed.Let's come back to another example. Luc Ferry also cited this example in his book. He said that Buddhism will not do anything about this example. This is the genocide in Rwanda. ①Refers to the massacre of the Paulistan faction, the constitutional faction, and the citizens of the rebellious cities in 1793 during the French Revolution. Later generations called this period of terror. Mathieu - Obviously, Buddhism cannot have any control method for the genocide in Rwanda at present!However, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that no one has been able to do anything against this genocide, and those powerful regimes that claim to be realistic, the new international order of Western powers, have neither prevented it nor stopped it . Jean-François - But what is even more shocking is that this genocide in Rwanda has absolutely no end in sight.When a criminal commits a crime that does him some good, I condemn him, but I also understand him.Anyway I interpret his behavior as a greed, a will to power, a realist plan.But when the crime has no meaning, when this kind of mass murder of people is of no benefit to anyone and brings no benefit to anyone, one must consider the existence of evil itself or the effects of evil on people. exists. Mathieu – This is more of a loss of all standards that arises when man deviates from our true nature.Everything becomes possible.This is a profound misunderstanding, a kind of forgetting.All of what you say outlines the thinking of certain authors who study such events in history and conclude that if any small group of us lived by ourselves without any regulating factors such as spiritual principles or human contracts Wait, they must eventually kill each other. Jean-François - how did they prove it? Mathieu - Through examples similar to the events in Bosnia and Rwanda: as soon as a man is allowed to kill his neighbours, he proceeds to kill all his neighbours, even though until then he had been with them Good relationship.Those who had escaped from the Bounty's mutiny, though united in the battle at which they set out, were killing each other on the island where they settled.In the prehistoric clan era, the formation of groups that kill each other may have a rationale for biological existence, but such a behavioral characteristic is completely irrational in our society today. ①A British armed transport ship, on April 28, 1789, its crew, under the command of Captain W. Bligh, staged a mutiny. Jean-François - Everyone justifies their actions by thinking they are in a situation of legitimate defense.What is certain is that no reasoning of any kind can help with such a community of individuals. Mathieu - But even with this tendency toward violence, it is the nature of reason to heal it, not to succumb to its influence.Because, where does this hatred come from?If we go back to its roots itself, we find that everything started with a simple idea. Jean-François - Yes.In Rwanda it's pure state hatred.To use the example of Bosnia again, each side initially had some territorial claims that it believed were justified by history, geography, territorial occupation by its own members, etc.In the beginning, we had classical geopolitics, and people could talk about it if they were dealing with some reasonable negotiators.But no one likes to negotiate.So people go to war.At this point it is still what one might call a legitimate war, which, according to Clausewitz, is politics continued by other means.And then people were finally soaked in completely illegal blood, which not only exceeded the original political goals set by people, but also made this goal no longer attainable.As the massacre had finally become too unacceptable, the international organizations intervened in an attempt to bring everything under control, some groups were sent in at once, but people ignored all this and went into a complete bloody anarchy, In this situation where Croats kill Muslims, Muslims kill Croats, and Serbs kill everyone for years, people cannot get people to respect the minimum peace agreement.So, in fact, people are facing the self-destruction of all implicated groups. Mathieu – I prefer to place all this not at the level of analysis of political or geographical causes, but at the level of analysis of the psychological processes that lead to the outburst of hatred. Jean-François – I also don’t think that political reasons and geographical reasons can explain anything, because if people only pay attention to all this, people can have a reasonable solution. Mathieu – This is exactly what Buddhist analysis is of great interest to.Whether it's for some territorial claim, or for distribution of irrigation water, etc., the cause of all conflict in the world comes from the idea that "someone is doing me harm," and with that comes a sense of hostility.Such negative thinking is a departure from the natural state and, therefore, a source of suffering.So, it is clear that our thoughts must be controlled before they invade our spirits, as the fire is extinguished at the first smoldering, and not when the whole forest is engulfed in fire.In fact, on some gigantic scales, it is very easy to distance yourself from the "basic goodness" inherent in our hearts. Jean-François—but how to explain the far more frequent departure from this "fundamental good" than the constant devotion to it? Mathieu—When a person walks along a mountain road, if he takes one wrong step, he will roll down the hillside.The basic purpose of a spiritual "doctrine" is to be always on high alert.Attention and alertness are the basic qualities that the spiritual life helps us to develop.The ideal is to be perfectly still and alert at the same time. Jean-François - Yes.But if, in order to eradicate evil from the world, one has to wait until six billion individuals have reached this spiritual life, we are in danger of waiting too long! Mathieu - As an Eastern proverb says: "As long as you have patience, the orchard becomes jam." Having to wait for a long time does not in any way detract from the fact that there is no other solution.Even if, on the whole, pain persists, the only remedy for it is the transformation of the individual.This transformation can then be extended from individuals to their families, and then to villages and societies.Some countries have, at certain points in their history, established peaceful microenvironments.This goal can be achieved if everyone does his part and a "universal sense of responsibility" among beings develops towards one another.