violence/non-violenceFurther reading: Allen (1993); Blackburn and Simmons (1999); Derrida (1976);
Foucault (1994); Hill (2002); Lynch (2001)VIOLENCE/NON-VIOLENCE
The concept of violence is a relative concept that refers to acts that injure,
cause harm or pain, or destroy an object, animal, or person. Non-violence
is also a relative notion that means the opposite of violence. Within a
particular culture, it is difficult to find members characterizing their
actions as violent because harsh actions tend to be equated with justice,
a righteous war, heroic actions, martyrdom, or ritual. Those external to
a religious culture are apt to view violence within a religion in a negative
way. From cultural insiders, violence tends to get rationalized and thus
justified. From a cross-cultural perspective, violence and non-violence
are relative concepts because the degrees of acceptability are different
among diverse religions and even within particular religious cultures.
Moreover, the acceptability of violence or its opposite is often different
within changing historical periods and circumstances.
Violence is most evident within a religious context with the perfor-
mance of a sacrifice, which basically calls for something to be killed
or destroyed. The ancient Vedic sacrificial cult of India is a complex
system, suggesting a mixture of violent and non-violent elements within
a particular rite. Within the context of an animal sacrifice, priests ask
the gods permission to use the animal, participants turn their faces away
from the victim, give excuses for its death, lament its demise, suffocate
or strangulate the animal so that it does not make a sound, and killing
is even denied by the sacrificer. As the religious culture evolves, texts
present evidence of two movements within the sacrificial cult: a grow-
ing embarrassment about violence and a move towards symbolic per-
formances. This symbolic sacrifice can be found in the ancient human
sacrifice and the various forms of self-sacrifice performed by ascetics
by turning within themselves and using their mind to execute the rite.
In ancient India, the violence associated with sacrifice is used meta-
phorically to depict the self-sacrifice of a warrior on a battlefield.
Reacting in part against the Vedic sacrificial system, Buddhism and
Jainism advocates non-violence for everyone. The Buddha makes non-
violence part of his Eightfold Path to liberation and a major ethical pre-
cept, which presupposes a respect for all life, a universal moral imperative.
Buddhism does not think that all life is equally valuable because it mea-
sures a creature’s ability to attain nirvāÏa or final release. Additional