Can violent tendencies be eradicated?

Elizabeth J. Harris (Violence and Disruption in Society); Wisdom Quarterly

Violence is social and personal. But a study of the earliest Buddhist texts shows that there is cause for optimism (brainil/discovermagazine.com).

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There is an optimism at the heart of Buddhism.

The Four Noble Truths and Dependent Origination present a doctrine of hope because they affirm change and evolution.

Men and women are NOT pawns of "fate," chance, or a capricious metaphysical being.[Note 66] 

We can be makers of their own future. Applied to the issue of violence and social disruption, this means violence within the individual and in society can be fixed.

Buddhist texts, however, make it clear that the obstacles to transformation are large.

Buddhism has no concept of a worldly utopia. Samsara (the Wheel of Rebirth) is samsara, characterized by disappointment (dukkha). Nirvana is a victory over samsara, not a destruction of samsara. 

The doctrine of impermanence, in fact, undermines any dream of a permanent golden future or a straight road of development towards harmony and peace. [There were an will be more "golden ages" as the aeons cycle through ages.]

The worth of working to bring into being conditions for concord and amity is constant in the Dharma. Important questions emerge: 

• How feasible is the lessening of violent tendencies in society? 
• Can changes in the individual affect society as a whole?
• When there is violence inherent in the structures of society, what steps can be taken?

To take the possibility for change within the individual first, certain passages from the texts suggest that the Buddha assigned a rather low probability of "uninstructed worldlings" (puthujjanas) changing. The Dhammapada (Verse 174) reads:

Blind is the world.
Few are those who clearly see.
Few birds escape when a net is cast.
So, too, few go to blissful states.

Sermons show that the Buddha recognized that reaching people obsessed with material things with a new message is difficult. Our perception and ability to hear has been conditioned by the pattern of our craving:

But a situation exists when some individual here may be set on the material things of this world. And the talk of that individual follows a pattern in accordance with which one then reflects and ponders. And one associates with that person under whom one finds happiness. But when there is talk of imperturbability (ananja) one does not listen, does not lend ear, does not rouse mind to profound knowledge, and one does not associate with the person under whom one does not find happiness.[67] 

Monastics, an unskillful person is possessed of unskillful states of mind, consorts with unskillful persons, thinks as unskillful persons do, advises as they do, speaks as they do, acts as they do, has views as they do, gives gifts as they do...

And how, monastics, does an unskillful person act as do unskillful people? As to this, an unskillful person is one to harm creatures, to take what has not been given, to engage in sexual misconduct...[68]

In one passage Prince Jayasena is pictured in conversation with a Buddhist novice who speaks about aloofness (mental and physical withdrawal aimed at) one-pointedness of mind. 

On the evidence given the prince declares such an achievement to be impossible. Confused, the novice goes to the Buddha, who says that such direct teaching could not possibly have been understood by one indulging in the luxurious lifestyle of the prince:

That Prince Jayasena -- living as he does in the midst of sense pleasures, enjoying sense pleasures, being consumed by thoughts of sense pleasures, burning with the fever of sense pleasure, eager in the search of sense pleasures -- should know or see or attain or realize that which can be known by (mental) renunciation, realized by renunciation -- that is impossible.[69]

These passages might seem to imply the reverse of hope on the very same ground as hope was confirmed in the introduction to this section -- dependent origination. If perception is conditioned by a person's lifestyle, the friends one chooses, and greed for material objects, then appreciation of another set of values... More