The Possibility of Buddhism for the Future of Humankind

Richard GombrichI

have been given the honour and privilege of addressing you for 40
minutes. I have been assigned this title and asked to speak on
Buddhism and the future of mankind. Both of those are very large
topics, and combining them does not make them any smaller, so I face aformidable task.
Both Buddhism and humankind already have a very long history. I
have never heard anyone suggest that mankind owes its survival so far to
Buddhism, but on the other hand I think most of us would agree that asubstantial part of mankind has benefitted from the existence of Buddhism. It would not be easy to prove this, but let us assume that it is so. I
take it, then, that what the organizers wish us to discuss is whether
Buddhism has the potential to prolong the future of mankind, and, if it
does, whether Buddhism will make it a better future.

How does Buddhism deal with Violence?
Once we ask whether Buddhism might prolong the future of mankind,
we are likely first to think of the immediate threats to that future. For
most of the second half of the 20th century, the most imminent threat
seemed to be annihilation of the human species through nuclear war. I
have lived through a period, at its height in the 1960s, when many
people were so terrified by the nuclear arms race between the Soviet
Union and the West, led by the USA, that they thought that our only
hope for survival lay in unilateral disarmament. This meant disarmamentby the West, since the Soviet Union was obviously not about to initiate
disarmament. Governments were not convinced, and argued that the best
hope for peace lay in what they called “the balance of power”. We now
know that those governments were right: nuclear weapons were notused, and indeed for fear that they might be, the so-called Great Powers
avoided direct violent confrontation.
In 1989 the Soviet Union had in effect to give up the arms race
because it was too expensive. The Iron Curtain fell, and people in many158

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countries were released from Soviet tyranny. There was great optimism.
Alas, this mood did not last. The diffusion of power led to nuclear
proliferation, and deadly weapons fell into the hands of leaders whom it
has not been easy to deter from using them. For example, it is not surethat such rational considerations as the balance of power will deterNorth Korea from using nuclear weapons. That is speculation. But wehave recently seen Syria using chemical weapons in a civil war, andonly the remains of the dual hegemony of Russia and the United States
was able to settle that crisis. As more countries and even smaller units
acquire such terrible weapons, prospects are not reassuring.
Many would now argue that bad ecological policies also threaten
mankind’s survival. They may indeed be right; but despite local disasters
it will take a long time before mankind as a whole finds its very survival
in doubt. The same goes for our traditional enemies, famine and disease.
War and violence are still far the greatest threat.
What part does Buddhism play in all this? When it comes to ecology,
there are certainly Buddhist movements which point to the dangers ofunbridled consumerism and campaign for saner policies. I welcome
them and do not wish to belittle them, but I have to point out that they
do not yet play a major part on the world stage. I think it is more urgent
to consider how Buddhism is dealing with violence nowadays.
I am afraid the picture is depressing. Non-aggression has been a corevalue of Buddhism ever since its foundation by the Buddha. The word
used is ahiµså; often it is translated “non-violence”, but that is inexact:
the precise meaning is “lack of desire to harm”—in other words “nonaggression”. In the ancient Pali collection of verses called the
Dhammapada, we read:“Renouncing violence against all beings, who neither kills nor causes tokill, Him I call the truly holy man.” (405)and“In this world hatred is never appeased by hatred,
It is appeased by lack of hate; this is the eternal law.” (5)Moreover, the vow not to take the life of anything that breathes is thefirst of the five undertakings that every lay Buddhist is supposed always
to observe; and there is another standard list of unwholesome acts
(akusala kamma) from which every layman must abstain which includes
harsh or malicious speech (pharuså, pisuˆå våcå). I specify that these
are rules for the laity because the Sa∫gha have to observe stricter and160

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more detailed rules; but everyone who wants to be considered a
Buddhist has the duty to observe the general principles.
What is Needed is not to ‘Love enemies’, but to ‘Stop Hating them’True, one may well go further and argue that every Buddhist mustpractise kindness and compassion at all times; but in the context of mydiscussion it may be more helpful to discuss only the more modest
demand made by a negative formulation. After all, the minimum requirement for mankind to survive is that we stop killing and hating eachother; that we all behave with positive kindness is a noble ideal, but nota necessity for survival, and it is probably unrealistic to expect that it
will ever be attained.
Given these principles, people who have never given the matter muchthought tend to assume that for Buddhism non-aggression is a straightforward matter, and that, in a word, Buddhism advocates pacifism.
When they discover that Buddhists, even Buddhist leaders, have often
committed acts of violence, their disappointment often leads them toswing to the other extreme and say that Buddhist claims to non-violence
are simply hypocritical, and that Buddhists have been, and continue tobe, just about as violent as other people. It is therefore necessary toanalyse the matter further.
The application of Buddhist values to public affairs is unforgettably
recorded by the Emperor Asoka, who ruled most of the Indian
subcontinent for the middle third of the third century before Christ. In
his thirteenth Major Rock Edict, dated approximately 255 B.C., herecords how his reign began with a war against Kalinga (modern Orissa)
in which very many people were killed, wounded and deported. Expressing his deep remorse, he says that never again will he wage aggressive
war, although he does reserve the right to defend himself if he should be
attacked. The text of this Edict is one of the finest public documents inhuman history, and should be taught to schoolchildren all over theworld. It is somewhat ironic that some Indian nationalist historians havesuggested (and it can even be found in textbooks) that Asoka’s successors lost power because of this non-aggressive policy. There is noevidence to support their claim, but people are reluctant to believe that
non-aggression can be effective.
Since the achievements of Mahatma Gandhi, however, such a reluctance can seem almost absurd. We all know that Gandhi not only
achieved spectacular success himself, causing the British to give up theirrule of India, but also inspired other great leaders who have compelled
universal admiration—think of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela

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161—, leaders whose non-violence did sometimes lead to short-term setbacks, but who in the end achieved far more than could have beenobtained by violence.
How a Government can Minimise Violence
In the case of Asoka which I have just cited, I have really conflated two
issues. One issue is the difference between attack—initiating violence—and defense—responding to it. If someone attacks me, I may decide notto respond, even—in the words of Jesus Christ—to turn the other cheek.
But the situation changes if the people attacked rely on me to protect
them. The commonest and most obvious instance of this is that parents
must do whatever they can to protect the lives of their children, andindeed vice versa.
This issue of responsibility for others takes us into an even broader
issue, the enormous arena of public life, and the range of new situations
that it may confront us with. In the Buddhist tradition, monks are notsupposed to play any significant part in public life, so—if they followthat tradition—they do not face any moral dilemmas consequent on
taking public roles. But laymen certainly do. It is worth rememberingthat even the pacifist Gandhi did not require Indian soldiers to desert orotherwise forsake their military duty. More than two thousand years
earlier, the Vinaya1 tells us, the Buddha’s friend King Bimbisåra had
trouble on his borders and sent troops to deal with it. But these soldiers
decided that if they were to kill anyone they would be guilty and later
suffer for it; so they became monks. A minister advised the king thatanyone who thus deprived him of his soldiers deserved to be executed.
The king of course did not follow that advice, but he did warn the
Buddha, who took the hint, and laid down a rule that soldiers were not
to be ordained.
Countries need defense forces to deter attack, and potential aggressors need to know that those forces may be used. (I recall my remarks
near the beginning of this lecture of how governments during the Cold
War followed the pragmatic doctrine of the “balance of power”.) Asoka
told the world how much he regretted having waged war on the peopleof Kalinga, and expressed the hope that he never would have to do sucha thing again. But he also warned his neighbours that while he would“tolerate what could be tolerated” (his words), they should not provoke
him. That surely is the right way for a government to minimise violence.
War is by no means the only area of public life in which violence issometimes considered legitimate and even ethically justified. Just thinkof capital punishment. Capital punishment is still used in some countries

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which claim to be Buddhist. In my view a political leader who claims torespect Buddhism but refuses to apply Buddhism to politics is a despicable hypocrite. The great religious traditions all teach that people should
love each other, be kind and compassionate. By this, they mean that one
should love everybody, not just those whom it is easy to love. Loving
someone who is always kind to you is no more than most animals do byinstinct. Love becomes an ethical accomplishment when it is directed toour enemies, or others whom it is hard to love.
Those who say that they want to keep religion out of politics usuallymean that they do not want to accept the moral values proposed by areligion, but prefer other values, such as those of communism or
nationalism. One of the most famous sayings in world literature is theline of poetry by the Roman poet Horace, published in 23 B.C.: “It issweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”2 Politicians usually prefer that
sentiment to the anti-war views prominent in the great religious traditions.
Discussing controversial cases like defensive war or capital punishment is important, but I venture to claim that it is still too cautious anapproach to our topic. Unfortunately, an honest observer must admit
that, even in the so-called Buddhist world, there are many more cases
where the use of violence by the organs of the state is very difficult or
impossible to justify; one only has to think of how, regardless of what
the law may say, police forces commonly behave towards poor andpowerless people. Similarly, there are cases where the violence is being
spontaneously exercised or supported by Buddhist populations, including members of the Sa?gha, while the state at best does little to prevent
it.

Learning from the Buddha’s Pragmatism
In this terrible situation, I am going to take a different tack. In my book
Theravada Buddhism: a Social History I have recorded some of the
Buddha’s recommendations for how rulers should rule and how people
should live in society, and I have on several occasions made speeches todraw attention to his wonderful advice. One could, and indeed should,
cite and discuss many fine passages from the Canon to show the wholeworld how our lives might be improved, and mankind might lookforward to a better future. But the Buddha was a pragmatist, and I
venture to say that we are now so distant from the kind of society that heenvisaged that we need to consider any suggestion on how to tackle theevils which we can watch on television news any day of the week.

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Therefore, rather than produce more quotations from the texts, I am
going to make such suggestions. I firmly believe that if I had a great deal
more time, I could show my suggestions to be based on what the
Buddha taught.
Individual Responsibility and Its Implications
We must go back to the basic teaching of karma, which is a teaching ofindividual responsibility. The Buddha taught that all thoughts, words
and deeds derive their moral value, positive or negative, from the intention behind them. This does not make the effects of actions irrelevant:Buddhism is no less familiar than is modern law with the idea of
negligence. But the basic, invariable criterion for morality is intention.
Morality and immorality are mental properties of individuals. They
have a dominant influence on how one is reborn, and are a central component of every personality. One is the heir to one’s own karma—and
not to anyone else’s!
Since karma is an essential property of every sentient individual, there
is no trace in the Buddha’s teaching of such a thing as “collective
karma”. This fact has profound moral implications.
Since karma is a matter of individual responsibility, being born into afamily or being a member of any social group which one has not joined
voluntarily does not entail any karmic result. On the other hand, one’s
karma cannot be decided for one by a greater power, whether divine or
human. I cannot lay the blame for my own intentions on a god, on myfather, on a teacher—in fact, on anyone. (I cannot here discuss thisfurther, but the fact that I am responsible for any decision to do what myfather or teacher tells me sets Buddhism at odds with Confucian ethics.)
What are the implications of the fact that karma is always individual,
never collective?
There are still plenty of societies on this earth which believe in vengeance, the principle referred to in the Bible’s Old Testament as “an eye
for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” If you have insulted me, I have the rightto insult you; if you have given me a bloody nose, I have a right tobloody yours. Well, I have already cited the verse in the Dhammapada
which says that hatred never ceases through hatred, so it seems
elementary that we cannot accept the “eye for an eye” principle. But
wait a minute! If you have insulted my mother, do I not have the right,
or even the duty, to insult yours? Or, if she is not available, perhaps yoursister or your wife? But then, why stop at insults? If a principle applies
to insults, should it not apply in the same way to other, more serious
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father, is it not right for me to try to kill your father, or perhaps you?
Once we get into this territory, we see how morally problematic are
the concepts of family honour and of loyalty to a family or other group.
We may think that we ourselves are no longer so uncivilized as tobelieve in vengeance. We have laws and police forces, so we know that
if someone has killed a member of our family, the correct thing to do is
to inform the police and let them catch the criminal and apply the law.
Our society frowns on what is called, under such circumstances, “taking
the law into your own hands”, and that disapproval is certainly anessential feature of a civilized society.
On the other hand, it seems to have become generally accepted in oursociety that those who suffer directly from a crime, such as the family ofa murdered person, have a moral right to see that retributive justice ismeted out to the criminal. I am here speaking only of Britain, andindeed only of Britain as presented to me by the media: I have no othersource of information. A concept called “closure” is used. When, forexample, the murderer is sentenced to life in prison, everyone says that
now the family of the victim “at least have closure”, which seems tomean that they can now stop brooding about their loss; on the other
hand, if the accused is found guilty but given a sentence which they
think inadequate, the family have not found “closure”, and if the accused is in fact acquitted, and the hunt for the guilty party has to continue,
their lack of “closure” is considered to be a grave misfortune. I havenever heard it suggested that another way to attain “closure” would be toforgive the perpetrator or, if that is impossible, to try at least to attainsome emotional distance from the tragedy.
I am by no means suggesting that when a serious wrong has been
done to someone, it is an easy thing for the victim, or those close to thevictim, to forgive it. Jesus exhorted his followers not just to forgive but
even to love those who harmed them, and that is the standard prescribedfor all Christians to follow. In my view, this is unreasonable and therefore impractical. Notice that the Dhammapada verse recommends nothating those who hate you; it does not say that you must go so far as tolove them. I think that if only we could not attempt heroism but simply
stop hating, a huge amount of the wars and violence which are so
prevalent that they endanger the very survival of humankind would meltaway.
The Cancer of “Identity”
In order to introduce this line of thought I have taken the very simple
example of being the victim of a serious crime, such as rape or murder.

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But I wish to extend this line of reasoning far, far more widely, and indoing so I do not flinch from saying something which some will findshocking. People do not identify only as members of a family, but asmembers of far larger groups, for example of a nation, or of a religious
group like a church or sect. I was born British, and that is part of my“identity”, which means that that is how governments, for example,
label and categorise me, and in some circumstances others too will so
categorise me. In the past, the British government ruled the whole of
Ireland and at times behaved with great cruelty and injustice to the Irish,
especially to their Roman Catholic majority. A minority of Irish Catholics have continued to resent what the British did to their ancestors, anda few have taken that resentment so far that they formed an organization
called the Irish Republican Army (IRA) which tried to kill British
people, sometimes indiscriminately. They were believers in collective
karma: that any British person could be held responsible for what other
British had done to the Irish. Even children, even British people who
were recent immigrants and could have no blood relationship to those
who did wrong long ago, were held to be appropriate targets for vengeance.
The aim of those who committed these acts of violence was to create
widespread hatred between British and Irish, so that the violence would
multiply; I am glad to say that in this aim they had very little success.
But think of parallels round the world and you will see that more often
than not those tactics are successful: they light fires which are very
difficult to put out. For lack of time to broach this huge subject, I cannot
here name or discuss specific examples; but I need to make some
general observations. In many cases those who actually carry out theviolence are a comparatively small group whom the rest of the world
calls “terrorists”; but usually their organisation cannot survive for long
unless they have gained the sympathies of many of those who share thesame identity; that much larger group protects them from the forces who
try to maintain law and order, such as the state’s army or police. In the
Irish example which I have given, many Irish Roman Catholics did not
approve of what the IRA were doing, but on the other hand did not handthem over to what they saw as “the other side”, the British and/or Irish
Protestants. In other words, what most people do in that kind of extreme
situation is to think in terms of “them” and “us”, and feel that they mustbe guided by loyalty to “our side”, even if the behaviour of those they
support is barbarous: not to support your own side is seen as an act of“betrayal”, which is considered a worse crime than such things as blowing up children.

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Once the majority of members of a society have become polarised
into opposing groups, “them” and “us”, the whole society is likely to bedevastated and a huge number of lives will be lost. The further that thisprocess has gone, the more difficult it is to avoid being caught up in it.
In 1983 a small group of Tamils, provoked by many years of discriminatory behaviour on the part of the government elected by the Sinhala
Buddhist majority, managed to blow up a lorry carrying 13 Sinhalesesoldiers, and this in turn provoked anti-Tamil riots in the south of theisland. This rapidly led to a full scale war, which lasted 26 years. Some
individual Tamils who did not agree with the war were killed by the
Tamil terrorists; on the other hand, many innocent Tamils were assumed
by the Sinhala army to be terrorists and killed for that reason. The only
safety available to a Tamil was to manage to escape from the country.
Similar impossible dilemmas faced many Sinhalese, though, being in
the majority, some of them suffered less. All this horror was due to thebelief in collective responsibility, even though the great majority of
individuals affected were not responsible at all.
Attribution of collective responsibility is the same as what Buddhists
call belief in collective karma. We all know that this is extremely widespread. If you are a Jewish Israeli, you may totally disapprove of how
your government treats Palestinian Arabs, but that will do nothing tosave you in this life, even if your good intentions make you likely tohave a better rebirth. A recent development is that there are now violent
confrontations between the Buddhist majority and the Muslim minority
in Myanmar, Thailand and Sri Lanka. The struggle between Sunni andShia Muslims, currently focused mainly in Syria, but spreading everwider, is so virulent that within twenty years it could almost annihilate
both sides. Thus we can actually see before our eyes how belief incollective karma may destroy a segment of the human race. Were thosepeople to understand and accept the Buddha’s view of karma, theymight yet survive to live in peace. But one cannot be optimistic.
Never Indulge in Guilt, Concentrate on Purifying Yourself
How could we start moving in the opposite direction? I think we need totackle not merely aggression, but also guilt.
Buddhists cannot, as it were, wipe out a former bad intention. The
Buddha taught that bad karma cannot be cancelled out, even by remorse.
But of course this does not mean that one is in any sense the prisoner of
one’s past karma. One can, and should, improve, and have better intentions in the future. So if I have done something bad, no ritual can in any
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should acknowledge that I have been wrong, and bear that in mind if it
helps me to become a better person, which in Buddhist terms we can
express as accumulating better karma.
A famous sutta in the Pali Canon3 recounts that the Buddha was once
approached by a murderous brigand called A∫gulimåla, but converted
him. After A∫gulimåla had become a monk, people were terrified ofhim, but he was so kind and gentle that he was able, purely by the powerof his character, to save a woman who was having a difficult childbirth.
A∫gulimåla did not deny his wicked past, but he apparently felt no guilt;
he simply turned over a new leaf and became a kind of saint.
Acknowledging that one has been wrong is not valuable in itself: itsvalue lies in using that thought in order to improve. Guilt is a uselessemotion. Many people make themselves miserable by indulging in
guilty thoughts: Have I been at fault in the past? Certainly, if one has
wronged someone, one should apologise. But beyond that, brooding
over what one has done is quite pointless. In fact, it is worse than pointless, because it takes up time and energy which would be much better
spent on becoming a good person, consigning the past to oblivion.
What I now have to say may offend all those who consider that the
top priority must always be to see justice done and the wicked punished—those, in fact, who believe in “closure”. But I think that Buddhism canteach us that we need more forgetfulness, so that we may in effectforgive others, rather than seek vengeance, and forgive ourselves, rather
than succumb to debilitating guilt.
There are a few encouraging examples of what I mean. Perhaps themost remarkable is going on in Cambodia. As we know, under Pol Pot
in 1975–9 about 2 million people were killed. How can a society survive
such a cataclysm?
Pol Pot is dead, and so are some of his leading henchmen, but theUnited Nations have for a few years now been trying to run a war crimes
tribunal to put on trial and to punish the guilty. I am told that it has been
making very little progress because the government has been extremely
inefficient about supplying documents. I wonder whether this inefficiency is not in fact a kind of wisdom.
Nelson Mandela behaved slightly differently when he came out ofprison and led his country out of the dark night of apartheid. True, he
did set up a “Truth and reconciliation” commission in which people
were encouraged to apologise to individuals they had wronged. But
surely that could only account for a tiny fraction of the wrongdoing. The
main emphasis had to be on burying the past and making a fresh start.
On a smaller scale, I think that a similar combination of reconciliation

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and willed amnesia has been achieved in Northern Ireland.
I repeat: what is needed is not that people should learn to love theirenemies, only that they should stop hating them. Buddhism does havepotential for helping mankind to survive if it can persuade people toabandon their obsession with righting past wrongs, and instead for each
one to concentrate on purifying their own mind and conduct.
NOTES
Vinaya I, 73–4.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
3
Majjhima Nikåya II, 97–105.
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