III. Promise
Tags: Stopasianhate, Nonviolence, Asian American, Chinese American, Violence

This is part three of a collection of six. See the landing page for more.

I walked the path that led me to the end…

~Angels Fall, Breaking Benjamin

There’s a promise to violence. It’s one I know very well. In fact, the first couple of street encounters I had in Philly — of a spate that began for me April 2021 — I did not perform as well as you might have thought I did in my narrative of my last encounter.

My history with violence begins in 3rd grade. I’m sure it started earlier, but my first memory of the promise of violence is on the bus, where a 1st grader is bullying me. He’s a white kid with a blond bowl cut, and he wants to show the other kids he can bother a 3rd grader without remonstration. He’s taunting me and I have nothing to say. It’s this nothing-to-say-ness that propels me, the third time he provokes me, to harshly slam the back of his hand with the steel buckle of the flapping seatbelt. He shuts up. In a weak voice he says, “That really hurt.” Victory.

As I grew older I learn about the power of words, and the violence of words. I’m in camp with a circle of girls when a boy waddles over, wanting to impress. Insults are traded amongst us, when he calls one of us mentally challenged. I charge, “At least I’m not horizontally challenged.” The girls go quiet and then say excitedly, “Oooooh!” It’s the first time I’m seen as something other than a wallflower. But he’s embarrassed, humiliated even. I know I’ve gone too far. But I relish his reaction. It felt like I was unheard, insignificant. The hurt in his eyes told me otherwise. And he started it.

I tell you this so you know I’m not some vegetarian, Hare Krishna chanting, meek, tiny monk raised in the silence of a temple. I was raised to be proficient in the martial arts and had an active, competitive fencing career in high school, after which I practiced kendo and worked in defense on products used by the US military.

To turn to nonviolence, in other words, is a deconstruction of much of what I am.

Like the two snakes winding around the staff, the medical signet, at the same time I became proficient in the use of psychic violence as a reaction to others’ provocation, I also began to learn of an entirely opposite philosophy, one that sowed its seeds in me early on through an unread Dalai Lama book in my brother’s room. At that time, one of my favorite activities was checking out my brother’s things without his permission, so naturally I read it.

One of the first things that stuck with me was the Dalai Lama’s claim that you could be selfishly enlightened. He said that even if you didn’t actually want to be nice to other people, because it benefits you, you can at least strive for enlightenment selfishly. That perked my ears.

He said that all humans are the same because ultimately, we all crave love and we all suffer. On the basis of our shared suffering we can begin to see that others’ feelings are as valid as ours. He asked the reader to participate in thought exercises where the reader stood alone next to a group of desperate people in need, and asked if we were able to understand that the needs of the many are certainly worth striving for when compared to the need of one.

What I actually took away from it though, at age 12, was that humans are extremely ignorant and frequently sabotage their own good karma. So the next time two middle schoolers tried to bully me, I closed my eyes and thought, “Ignorant fools. It is really THEM WHO ARE BEING LED TO THEIR DEMISE.”

Later on at age 18 I joined our school’s vegan society. At this point, I was able to practice some basic compassion, although I still could not understand the Lama’s exhortation that “if someone hits you, you should not hit back.” My compassion for animals and even plants was largely due to my view that animals and plants are innocent, and thus do not deserve harm. Still, my intention was not strong or single-pointed enough to last more than a year. At this point, while I admired pacifists, I believed that ultimately the only way to get things done was through violence. The only way to resolve an argument was by dominating with my words, the only way to ascend the corporate ladder was to hoard power (I frequently told younger people, “make yourself indispensable and they’ll be forced to keep you,”) and the only way to defend our nation was through weaponry.