How to Respond to Violence in Society

A meditator writes, “I have found so much transformation in myself through yoga and meditation practices. I am grateful to have such a beautiful life volunteering at the iii center, and I have seen this space change so many lives for the better. But when I look at the news and at the society, it still shocks me. I know there has always been violence, since the beginning of human history. But I can’t understand why certain people can be so numb to human life, and why we have such purposeless killing that we are seeing too often.  I know that whether the violence is around the world in Syria, or Egypt, or Uganda, or even in a mall in Toronto, a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Colorado, it affects me and everyone else. So how do I respond? Is there any use in getting angry?

I looked for some guidance from Sadhguru’s words and decided to share in the hopes that they would reach others who may be asking themselves the same questions.”

Sadhguru: “The world is not a globe. The world is its people. If we do not work for individual transformation, if we do not look for ways of making the individual peaceful, talking about world peace is just one more entertainment in the world. Without attending to individual human beings, trying to bring about any kind of change in the world always leads to more problems.

In pursuit of economic well-being, today’s societies are filled with enormous amounts of violence; our very existence is violence. Our music is becoming violent, our dance is becoming violent, and our culture is becoming violent. Just the very way we move, just the very
way we do things in our lives is becoming violent. Once in a while it is bound to spill over on the street.

You should not be surprised that it is spilling over onto the streets. You look at yourself as an individual, and see how many moments in a day, you can’t stand the person who is sitting next to you. You, trying to hold yourself back, are going to work only for a certain period of time; somewhere it is bound to explode. Right now the world community is sitting on a disastrous foundation. Peace is something that these people have not even tasted within themselves. What right do we have, to expect it in the social and world situations? Unless we are willing to work to change the foundations on which the world community is built, peace is not a possibility.

It is not slogans and statement that will bring peace to the world, but a lifelong striving to produce peaceful human beings. On all levels of our human societies if we work for creating peaceful humans, especially among the leadership—key people, people who are in responsible positions in various spheres of activity, be it business, politics, industry, bureaucracy—if we can create people who are truly peaceful within themselves, people who have some sense of wholeness within themselves, they definitely will let peace percolate to large segments of society. Peace is not in terms of just avoiding war, but establishing an active culture of living in peace in the world.

Question: How does one tolerate all the crime that is going on in this world?

Sadhguru: “It is not a question of toleration. If you tolerate, you will go crazy. You need not have to tolerate; you can only do what you can do about it. You cannot reverse what has happened. Now one thing is, you are looking only at that person who is abused as a victim, but the person who is abusing is also a victim in so many ways, because in many ways he is degrading himself. The worst thing that any human being can do to himself is to degrade himself like an animal, which for some reason he is doing. Though it may give him some pleasure or joy or power or something at that moment, still, in many ways, it is a tragedy for him as well. So it is not that one is a victim and the other an assailant. Both are victims. Many things like this are happening in society; it is not just an individual act; it is a complex process of many things that are happening. So should you allow it to happen? No, you do whatever you can do to see that those things don’t happen.

But those things do happen in the world. So what you can do, you do, but you cannot change all of it. It does not matter what kind of a human being you become, even if you become a super-human being, you will never have absolute control over the external world. Whether it is your institution or your family or the world, you will never have total control over the external situation. But you can have total control over the internal situation. This is always possible. Now, the external has gone out of control, for some reason, people are killing, people are raping, people are doing all kinds of ugly things in the world. So, because the external has gone out of control, does it mean to say that you should allow the internal to also go out of control? If your external situations are going out of control, is it not very important that at least you keep your interiority in control? Now that man has gone insane; he is into that kind of act. If you are also going insane with anger and hatred for that man, what is the difference? He raped, so you want to kill. What is the difference? That does not mean you should not do something about the situation. What you have to do, you do. But when you do it with anger and hatred, it is of no value – whatever you do.

Unfortunately, for most people, fear, anger, hatred, are the most intense situations in their lives. Their love is never so intense, their peace is never so intense, their joy is never so intense, but their negativities are intense. So they experience power in negative situations. As you experience power in anger, the rapist experiences his lust as power. It is the most powerful situation that he experiences in his life, where he physically imposes himself on somebody else. He feels powerful. That is the most powerful situation that he has experienced. That is why he is going for it. And that is exactly the justification you are giving to be angry. It is not different. It is just that the acts are different. One is socially approved and another is not approved. That is all. Otherwise both these actions are coming from the same basis. Now you think that you can change the world, or you have the capacity to move yourself only with anger. Why? Why can’t you move with love? Why can’t you move with compassion? Why can’t you move out of your intelligence as to what is needed around you? Okay, not even out of love; at least out of your intelligence you do what is needed for society around you. The most beautiful things will happen when your actions spring from your intelligence and not from your anger.

How you respond depends on what kind of situation you are in, who you are, what your capabilities are, what means you have to do that sort of a thing. You cannot respond in the same way in every situation. If you have the power and the means to do something effectively, you can respond in one way. If you do not have the power and the means to respond at that moment, maybe your response is to keep quiet at that moment and see what can be done later. But this is not done in vengeance or revenge.

You don’t want this to happen, either to the victim or to the assailant. Both are in some way being degraded in their life. One is doing it to himself, another is being subjected to that by somebody. You don’t want this to happen to either of them, not just one. Only then you can say that you are functioning from your love. Otherwise, you are functioning only from your identity as a woman or man, which will not create a healthy world. Since people always act from their identity of belonging to a certain group, or religion, or race, or country, or sex, all this misery has happened. If you act without identity, you just function out of your intelligence and see whether you want this or not.

How you respond depends on what means you have. All of us cannot respond in the same way to any given situation. It depends on what means we have in our hands at that moment. If you get into wild reactions out of your emotions, you will not bring any justice. You will not bring any well-being to the world. You will just counter one evil with another evil. That is not a solution. That is definitely not a solution.”