Sorry to break it to you folks, Gandhi did try to apply his non-violence approach to Hitler but it didn’t work. See his letter to Hitler below. Do notice it was the tea-drinking Brits he successfully dealt with. But when it comes to a sick monster hell bent on the total domination of the Ariyan race and the complete annihilation of the Jews, well, so much for the Ahimsa approach…
Now imagine if Gandhi had adopted warfare as his method to deal with the British (who also had garrisons and troops in India, and not just teapots and cups) - how much more lives would have been lost.
I read Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago a long time ago, and I vaguely remember that he called Hitler as a tame puppeteer or something, compared with Stalin and the scale of the purges that he carried out, which happened after WW2. Violence just breeds more violence and power corrupts even more.
I can see how using ahimsa might appear nonsensical when the scale and magnitude of an onslaught is massive, and justifying reciprocal violence can be done when we think about the lives saved by killing other beings bent on genocide - which is what Bhikku Bodhi tried to argue. But, it’s maybe in such situations that the Dhamma can make a difference…
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My personal opinion is that the Ahimsa is the weapon of the weak. I have no doubt that this can be more powerful than the atomic bomb. Having said that I do not think Gandhi would have used his Ahimsa weapon if he had the access to a atomic weapon. Perhaps he would have been the second person to use the atomic bomb.
If someone can use the Ahimsa weapon when he has the access to a atomic weapon is the real hero.
That would make the Buddha the weakest of all beings. 
Quite so…
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Aren’t we all physically weak?
I would say Buddha would have been physically weak but mentally strong.
Yes, I meant the same thing too. He embodied non-violence, though not in the extreme way of the Jains.
Hi santa100,
I remembered something that may be of some inspiration to you.
http://www.mahabodhi-ladakh.org/
I have been there a few times and it’s a nice campus. The person who founded it, Bhikku Sanghasena, was in the army and then quit to pursue a life dedicated to the Dhamma. The establishment he developed after leaving the army has orphanages, schools, old-age homes, hospitals, meditation retreat centres, monasteries etc.
It’s quite an accomplishment and I think that such dedicated effort in pursuing a Dhammic way of life would result in positive kamma. Maybe this story can be of help to you in some way.
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Marking it down next time I travel to India. Thanks for the info. Sujith…
By “deal with Gengis Khan” et. al. I assume you mean deal with internal, psychological reactions – “dealing with” the emotions and body reactions which arise after thinking about a…holes?
Certainly Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has techniques – techniques which parallel and resemble Buddhist practices.
I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether it’s internal or external emotions. But one thing I kept saying all along, it’s too easy to say all the wonderful lovely things from inside your warm cozy room while sipping hot chocolate. Just wait 'til the real Gengis Khan, Hitler, or Pol Pot come knocking on your door and do all kinds of “lovely” things to you, your parents, your spouse, kids, and relatives. Then see if you can come back and say the same thing again. As the saying goes, talk is cheap.
I see you point Santa.
This is where you have to make your choices.
Do you want to be an Arahant or something closer to it?
or
Do you want to be a politician?
Another point is, solve the problem in your hand.
Do not worry about the problems we had in the past or might happen in the future.
SarathW1, I’ll repeat again, wail 'til the real Gengis Khan, Hitler, or Pol Pot come knocking on your door and do all kinds of “lovely” things to you, your parents, your spouse, kids, and relatives. Then come back here to claim whether you want to be an Arahant or not. If you have not been thru any of that, then talk is just talk. Heck, right now as we’re speaking, who can say w/ 100% certainty they want to be an arahant? Cuz if s/he did, s/he would’ve spent much less time hanging around online forums sand would’ve spent a lot more time on their cushion and/or reading suttas.
Unfortunately Sakyan were slaughtered, but Buddha could not do anything.
Gengis Khan, Hitler, or Pol Pot the all human and made by us.
The world is dependently originated.
By the way who are next Gengis Khan, Hitler, or Pol Pot?
Is it Kim Jong un or Donald Trump?
The Buddha has earned the right to say what He said. He’s been thru 6 years of the worst kinds of extreme asceticism. How many years of of the same training have you and I been thru? Actually we don’t even have to go that far, just get enlisted and spend some times yourself at the training boot camp, get deployed to a remote post far away from home and loved ones and see how it’d affect you. Don’t make the same mistake as Donald Trump, a spoiled rich 70 year-old kid who talks crap about things that he’s never even once experienced in his life.
So wait a minute, I’m trying to catch up here. Obviously a large number of the wars that have been fought, especially recently, could definitely have been avoided and I would argue were certainly not for our freedom, but more for profiting the industrial war machine, big business, people in power, blah blah blah. I’m on board with that, and I also think that killing should definitely be avoided at all costs.
But when you start talking about Hitler in WWII, if you really think Gandhi’s approach would have actually worked with the nazis, that’s incredibly naive. If the whole world just laid over and said we aren’t going to fight, then we would be living in the thousand year reich right now. No one would be practicing buddhism or even talking about the precepts right now because every last buddhist text would have been burned along with every last buddhist who was “out of the closet” so to speak. The world would be so ravaged with suffering on a scale we can’t even comprehend. And even if you somehow disagree with that, you can easily imagine a thought experiement in which that circumstance presents itself.
Are we really saying that in that circumstance it’s better not to fight back? And instead just let everyone now and in the future so much more? Sometimes killing is the most compassionate thing to do for the most amount of people. Yes, in that rare circumstance, kill as little as possible, capture as many as possible instead, try and find peace as soon as possible, but there really is no way around at least some killing in those circumstances. When it comes to genocidal maniacs, Gandhi’s approach is their dream come true.
So, although I think some here are a little too wrapped up in the soldier valorizing, and I do think that soldiers in general have a pretty bad reputation for how badly they treat civilians during war and how bloody thirsty they can become, I do think that war is necessary sometimes. I can imagine a buddhist army that is full of compassion and does everything possible to avoid killing, but still has to fight and kill their way through a genocidal maniac’s army so they can stop his rampage throughout the entire planet. I mean, if someone is trying to kill you on the street, and for whatever reason the only way to stop them is to kill them, are you really saying that you’re just going to let them kill you? Or even just that you should? I’m pretty sure the Buddha didn’t expect that, and when he talked about soldiers going to hell he was more talking about fighting and killing for some nonsense political reason or just to conquer.
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What I am saying is do not try to fight an enemy you can’t see.
There is nothing called compassionate killing.
India and Sri Lanka got freedom thanks to world war 2. (and thanks to Hitler and Japan who fought back British Empire)
(What India and Sri Lanka did with their freedom is another discussion)
Otherwise, those countries still will be under British control.
What I am saying is everything is Dependently Originated.
Don’t take part in unwholesome.
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So if you saw some huge strong guy stabbing someone and you tried to get him off but you couldn’t so you had to smash something over his head and it killed him, that wouldn’t be a compassionate killing?
There are dark and bright kamma.
You will be charged for murder. You can’t take the law to your hand.
Well that’s not true, it’s called self defense. Honestly you’d be labeled a hero, although I don’t think that’s the right moniker, it’s just not murder. You don’t get charged for killing someone who was trying to kill someone else. You’re allowed to save someone’s life from a murderer by killing the murderer if that’s your only option.