Take nonviolent action without making an enemy
Oppose what is harmful, publicly if need be, while refusing to see the people on the other side as enemies.
Why it works
Engaged Buddhist movements have used marches, mediation, peace delegations and public witness, and the Fourteen Trainings ask members to take a clear stand against oppression and injustice and to strive to change the situation without taking sides in a conflict. Thích Nhất Hạnh’s publisher quotes his line that “the essence of nonviolence is love,” from which strategies arise. In Cambodia, Maha Ghosananda’s Dhammayietra peace walk, which began with the return of refugees from the Thai border camps in 1992, turned walking itself into a religious act with his instruction to move toward peace step by step. Sallie King distinguishes this “love” approach, which recognises no enemy, from a “prophetic voice” that does not hesitate to denounce; both are found among engaged Buddhists.
How to do it
- Name the specific harm you want to oppose, and the specific change that would reduce it.
- Write down who supports the harm, then write one sentence about what each of them might be afraid of or protecting.
- Choose a form of action that refuses violence in deed and in speech — a letter, a vigil, a walk, a meeting, a boycott.
- Before you act, decide how you will speak about the people you oppose, and hold to it.
- Afterwards, review: did the action reduce the harm, and did it leave a door open for the other side to change?
Evidence
The Tenth and Twelfth Trainings are on the Plum Village Fourteen Trainings page; Poethig’s article describes the Dhammayietra and its origins; King’s chapter on war and peace narrates the nonviolent work of the Dalai Lama, Thích Nhất Hạnh, Maha Ghosananda and A. T. Ariyaratne. On effectiveness, Stephan and Chenoweth’s data set of major resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006 found nonviolent campaigns more successful than armed ones in achieving their goals, even against similar opponents and repression. Sallie King’s distinction between a “love” approach and a “prophetic voice” is from her concluding essay in Queen and King’s volume, as summarised in Fenn’s review. (observational)
The civil-resistance data concern large national campaigns, not individual Buddhist practice, and are observational. Whether one should avoid “taking sides” is itself contested among engaged Buddhists, some of whom speak in a sharply prophetic, oppositional voice, and Amod Lele points to classical Buddhist texts that reject political activism altogether.
Sources
- Plum Village. The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings of the Order of Interbeing (revised version presented by Thich Nhat Hanh, February 2012). plumvillage.org.
- Thich Nhat Hanh. Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change. Berkeley: Parallax Press.
- Poethig, K. (2002). Movable Peace: Engaging the Transnational in Cambodia’s Dhammayietra. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 41(1), 19–28.
- King, S. B. (2009). War and Peace. In Socially Engaged Buddhism (pp. 67–95). University of Hawai‘i Press.
- King, S. B. (1996). Thich Nhat Hanh and the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam: Nondualism in Action. In C. S. Queen & S. B. King (Eds.), Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia (pp. 321–364). SUNY Press.
- Fenn, M. L. (1998). Review of Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia, ed. C. S. Queen & S. B. King. Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 5.
- Lele, A. (2019). Disengaged Buddhism. Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 26.
- Stephan, M. J., & Chenoweth, E. (2008). Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. International Security, 33(1), 7–44.
Common mistake
Keeping your actions nonviolent while your speech and thoughts about opponents stay full of contempt — in this tradition the refusal of violence includes how you think and speak about the people you are working against.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Engaged Buddhism: Interbeing, the Mindfulness Trainings and Practice in the World
- Contemplate interbeing in one ordinary object
Look at a single thing — a sheet of paper, a cup of tea — until you can see the cloud, the forest and the people that are in it.
- Hold your views as guides, not weapons
Care about a cause without turning your position on it into something to fight, despise or die for.
- Be peace before you try to make peace
Tend to your own anger first, so the action you take carries peace rather than more of the conflict.
- Practise deep listening and loving speech
Listen to someone you are in conflict with only to understand them, and speak only what is true and able to help.
- Consume mindfully: the four nutriments
Look at what you take in — food, media, intentions, the moods around you — as nourishment for yourself and for the world.
- Serve with others, as practice
Join a concrete, shared act of service and treat the work itself — not only its results — as your practice.
- Keep a sustaining practice so care does not burn out
When years of caring work leave you depleted, steady yourself first, get support, and rebuild a practice that keeps you going.
Related concepts
- The Six Pāramitās: How the Bodhisattva Trains
Six trainings, each aimed at one obstacle, and each made whole by wisdom
- Walking Meditation, Made Practical
Each step a breath, each breath a step — integrating mindfulness into movement
- Karuṇā: Compassion Meditation in the Theravāda Tradition
The second divine abiding, practised the way the Theravāda commentaries lay it out
- Ahimsa: Non-Violence as a Daily Practice
The first yama of Patanjali and Jain ethics — non-harming in thought, word, and deed
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