Theos-Talk Archives (August 2004 Message tt00605)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Bart Lidofsky <bartl@s...> wrote:
> According to Buddha, what do we do when our only choices are 
inexcusable?

He admonished us to use "skillful means" to avoid violence or other 
behaviors which violate the dharma. In his own case when the village 
from which he hailed was attacked and destroyed he was somewhere else 
meditating on great issues and therefore not forced into violence. 
Had he taken up arms the outcome would have been the same anyway. I 
read about some Israeli soldier years ago named Yanni who died simply 
burned out by all the killing and destruction he inflicted on 
Palestinians. Had he used skillful means he would have simply left 
for some more peaceful country. He would not in that case have been 
ordered to do anything nasty and would have had no moral conflict. 
As we can see his efforts merely made matters worse and destroyed him 
spiritually. People make fun of Kerry for wanting to deal with 
Islamic terrorists "sensitively" but if they were capable of shifting 
paradigms they would see that he may be on to something. One 
remarkable modern example of skillful means is Mahatma Gandhi, who 
brought down the British Empire without firing a shot. Another would 
be Martin Luther King, who employed Gandhi's methods to bring down 
the apartheid system in the US, and another would be Nelson Mandela, 
who seems to have been inspired by both of them to bring down 
apartheid in South Africa. It is easier to admire those men than the 
bellicose George Bush, his mouth full of bubble gum, and his head 
filled with self serving schemes to use Al Gore's office to stuff his 
own pockets while making the world a worse place for everyone else to 
live in.