How to lovingly punch a nazi
There is a story of the Buddha, from one of his lifetimes before he achieved enlightenment, in which he is the captain of a boat that is attacked by a pirate. The pirate intends to sink the boat, causing the death of hundreds. Even though killing is regarded as wrong, the boat captain chooses to kill the pirate in order to save the lives of the passengers.
In this story we are not to assume that the boat captain is some hero representing ‘good’ whilst the pirate is the villain, representing ‘evil’. The captain acknowledges that by killing the pirate, he will take on the consequences of his choice. But he also recognises that it will be small in comparison to the karma the pirate would reap as a result of taking so many lives. Unquestionably, the pirate needs to be stopped, and the captain knows that he will accrue the karmic debt for killing this individual, but he’s willing to take it to save the lives of the passengers and save the pirate from his own karmic folly.
Killing one person in order to save many is a skillful choice, even if it isn’t an easy one. It could only be considered easy if we choose to dehumanise the pirate. When we see the pirate as purely evil, beyond redemption and somehow fatally flawed, then extinguishing his life becomes easy. He is not a human being so much as he is an evolutionary flaw, subhuman. The problem with this approach is the assumption that someone is only one way and that we are not subject to the same causes and conditions that have influenced the pirate up to this point.
The first time I heard this story I understood it as the basic message that we should not be too rigid in our beliefs of right and wrong. We are given precepts in many walks of life, secular and religious, and there are certain points on which most civilizations agree. Not killing is seen as an obvious one, along with not stealing or lying.
Yet, context matters. An example in the case of lying and stealing is if you see your neighbour abusing their dog and the dog later runs away to your home. You keep the dog hidden away and when the neighbour comes and asks you if you’ve seen it, you tell them no. You don’t agonise about the fact that you both lied and stole — there is no question that to do both was what the situation called for.
If we look at this example in the same way we examine the story of the pirate, by removing the dog from the situation, we are not only saving the dog but also preventing the dog’s abuser from increasing their karmic debt. We are not disputing that it is wrong to abuse an animal, but we are also not making a value judgement of the animal’s abuser as a human being. We see that the abuser is suffering — afflicted with aggression and ignorance — and we make a choice to intervene on behalf of all parties.
Culturally, killing may seem to have fewer grey areas than lying and stealing, but anyone who has had a heated discussion about eating meat can easily come to understand that this too is far from black and white. There are times when we kill without thought — such as when we reflexively smack at a biting insect. Most of us wouldn’t really think this is something to consider, but as a Buddhist it is part of my practice to pause and be aware that something which was once living, is now dead as a result of my actions. I also consider what it is that compels me to rank the value of a life. Why is it okay to eat a cow but I’m appalled at the idea of eating a horse or a dog? What is it that makes a bee more deserving of life than a wasp? How can we, as a society, say that killing is wrong and yet condone the death penalty in any circumstance?
Asking such questions allows us to take a more nuanced approach to what are often seen as black and white ‘commandments’ for morality and ethics. Killing, lying or stealing are not inherently wrong or ‘bad’ and what is ‘right’ isn’t always obvious.
The ship captain is a true bodhisattva because he does not rank the pirate as any less deserving of compassion than anyone else. To be a bodhisattva is to bear witness to the fullness of any situation, to see the interconnectedness of all things and to act skilfully to reduce suffering whenever possible. He saw that the pirate had to be stopped and negotiation wasn’t going to work in the heat of that moment.
From this point of view we can see that there is nothing inherent in an action. It is important that we reflect on context, but also on intention. The intention behind the pirate’s motivation to kill the passengers was malicious and cruel, fuelled by aggression, clinging to his own desires, and ignorance of the value of the lives he intended to take. The intention behind the ship captain’s motivation is to cause the least amount of harm — to reduce suffering.
He does not kill the pirate out of hatred or because he sees this person as someone who needs to be eliminated. He doesn’t see the pirate as evil at all. He sees the pirate as human — as human as any of us — and therefore just as capable of waking up. He kills the pirate because he recognises that the pirate does not understand the consequences of his actions. This is all very Buddhist-y, but the captain does not want to see the pirate reborn in yet a lower birth, whereby he will continue to suffer and cause suffering.
His heart breaks for the entire human condition, including whatever delusions the pirate is so trapped by that he would make such a horrific choice. The captain doesn’t think he’s any better than the pirate because he doesn’t operate with the same delusions — indeed, he recognises that as a human being he is just as subject to such delusions. He knows that if he were to kill the pirate out of hatred, he would be putting himself at risk of thinking the same way as the pirate. He uses discernment, fuelled by a longing to be of benefit, and makes a necessary, albeit difficult, choice. The act of killing the pirate is genuinely skillful as it causes the least harm to all parties.
So what does this have to do with punching nazis?
The uncomfortable truth is we are no different from someone who believes in white dominance. I’m not saying this because we might hold these views on an implicit level (which we probably do) but because we truly are equally human. We are equally capable of changing — for better or for worse — and we are equal in our longing to be free from suffering. We are also equally capable of causing harm, regardless of the ideology we hold or what our motivations are. We all have choices and every choice we make will have a multitude of consequences both externally and internally.
It can be easy to justify our hatred and anger and frustration because we see ourselves on the right side of history. We can convince ourselves that hating people who have racist beliefs is acceptable because we’re on the side of ‘good’, and therefore we are different (and better) than they are. It can also seem incredibly practical — how else to stop the violent acts of another if not with a show of violence on our end?
If we are going to survive as a species, we have an obligation to take care of each other. That involves stepping into the fray to protect and stand-up for the most vulnerable among us, and to take a stand against systemic oppression and harmful systems of belief. And that means we will have to punch nazis. But when we do, we need to ask ourselves: is this the most skillful choice?
To determine the most skillful choice, we have to understand that they are not just a nazi, just as the ship captain could see that the pirate was not just ‘evil’. Human beings, even the ones we don’t particularly like, are complex, multi-dimensional and interconnected. We all have a wide range of emotions and a whole life story. None of us are born full of hate. No one is born a nazi. It is not an inherent quality of any human being and we cannot know, given the same trajectory in life, that we wouldn’t have made the same choices as the person we are about to punch. It was the circumstances of their birth, causes and conditions, that led them to such ignorance, and it is the circumstances we must consider when we confront another person — as we certainly must when they intend to cause harm.
This is where questioning becomes very useful. Questions cut through self-deception and help us look at a situation with a much bigger view. Are we at risk of dehumanising this person, just as they dehumanise others? Are we punching the nazi because we want to save them from themselves as much as we want to protect the person or people they intend to harm? Are our hearts and minds shut down to the humanity of this person? Do we see this individual as beyond redemption or do we recognise that they, as much as anyone else, have the potential to wake up and punching them is going to help that in this particular situation?
This line of questioning helps us go beyond reactionary responses to see things from a longer view, with greater appreciation for the complexity of a situation and the role we all play in bending society towards justice and a clean conscience. This is a call to think deeper so we don’t risk closing our hearts and minds to another human being. Closing our hearts and minds is the very thing which we are in opposition to.
Hate is a destructive emotion.
Hate is still hate, even if a lot of people agree that it’s wrong to hate someone for their skin colour but okay to hate someone for having a harmful ideology. Regardless of the reason, why we hate or who, hate corrodes a person. It is also exhausting. Hate is a burden to carry, which will tire us out and make it harder for us to fight nazis, which we must do. Hate also inhibits our ability to think straight, to discern wisely, and to see beyond the immediacy of the situation. Acting from hatred creates more of the same in ourselves and others — we need only look at retaliatory bombings around the world as proof of this.
At any point we can be the one to choose something different, to break the cycle of hate. It’s about seeing how causes and conditions work but that we also all have personal responsibility for the choices we make as a result of those causes and conditions. What we want to address, what we need to address, are harmful systems of belief. This is not an easy path, by any means. It is the path of choosing to condemn and stand in the way of harmful behaviour without condemning the person. That’s hard to do when we feel threatened, or our friends, family and community are threatened. It means putting aside the sense of ‘I’ or ‘me’ that we want to protect and seeing the bigger ‘we’ — a ‘we’ that includes nazis.
In the story of the ship captain and the pirate, the captain acts selflessly. He does not consider any one person, himself included, as more or less deserving of compassion. He does not see the pirate as a lesser being but as someone who is suffering, just as anyone suffers. When he chooses to kill the pirate, he does not do so out of hatred or anger, but out of love — it is a fierce act but not a hateful one. It is an act of love.
To love so fiercely is radical, and also unpopular. So unpopular that those who call for it are often killed for it. To be called to love our enemies feels threatening, but only if we think of the enemy as ‘other’, beyond redemption and removed from humanity. As long as we convince ourselves that another human being is inherently bad or lesser than, we don’t see that we are truly no different than the very person whose face just met our fist.
Love constructs where hatred destructs, regardless of who it is directed towards and why. When we stand defiantly out of love for everyone, because we are all equally deserving of it, we make room for possibility. We remain uplifted and energised when we tap into compassion and keep an open and loving heart. We remain clear-headed and able to discern what is skillful and how best to resist oppressive behaviours and actions. We are better and more effective agents for change when we are not overcome by hatred.
Which is to say, when you’re going to punch a nazi, do it lovingly.
Punch them to knock sense into them.
Punch them to protect them from their own ignorance.
Punch them because you know they don’t really want to watch the world burn, even if they don’t realise that.
Punch them to educate them, to show them that their choices have unpleasant consequences.
Punch a nazi because you want to prevent their ideology from causing harm — and you see how it harms them as much as it harms anyone.
Punch them out of compassion, with an open heart and mind and the intention to wake them up.
Punch them like a Buddha.
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