So there is a song out i think you should listen to. Yes you. I don't care who you are or that you only listen to death metal. I don't care that you think Alanis Morissette is a terrible singer who should have her voice box torn out (best insult i could think of).
Go turn on your Limewire or Frostwire and download the song Versions of Violence. It is a great song (at least to me cause i like the singer) but also because i think that the topic is something that gets a lot of air time in discussions and school and TV commercials but doesn't really enter too much of how we live our lives.
We live our lives thinking (well me at least) quite often how actions could hurt other people. But though we can scream and yell at other people for causeing harm to still more people or to ourselves but how often do we consider how our actions harm others? I know i don't near enough. I am still a way better critic of others than of myself (so if you know me please call me on it).
But the second point i want to raise here is we tend to consider violence something physical and that it only tends to really have one basic form (hitting people, even stabbing someone is similar to a hitting action). Meanwhile there we (or i hope we do) aknowledge that there is more to a person than simply their body(note kindergarden: its what is on the inside that counts).
Violence comes in many forms, and this is one of the reasons i like the language latin more than english (even though i don't speak it and don't plan to take courses on it), words have more than one meaning and in saying a word you need to consider more than the single meaning. Violence should be considered in my humble (ha ha) opinion something that harms someone else.
Now we need to define harm, because face it, harm can also mean tonnes of other things. To be honest the first thing i think of when i think the word harm is the first aid symbol. But harm is so much more than that. To get at my definition of harm we are going to use another word.
Suffering. Thats right people, we are heading back into Buddhist territory! Noble Truth Numerio Uno, Life is suffering! But what is suffering? Suffering is anthing that is a negative, hunger, pain, depression, reliance on a substance, greif, basically any form of pain (not getting the prom dress you wanted? yep that counts too).
To me harm is simply the result of an act of violence which causes suffering to someone. The equation goes something like this suffering is pain,voilence results in harm to someone which creates pain which is suffering.
Now one of the points of becoming Buddhist (or in my case a buddhist practioner, not an actual buddhist) is to help reduce suffering in the world through mindfullness. Mindfullness is being aware of what your doing. To explain that i shall tell a story.
Yesterday i was driving with a friend of mine to pick up my little sister but while driving we were having a very animated discussion, which distracted me so i missed the turn to where she would be not once but twice! This is an example of not being mindfull, i didn't pay attention to my actions or their consiquences, instead going on insticnt which resulted in a waste of gas and time (luckily my little sister was also late getting to her bus stop so we were there first).
Now how does mindfullness link to suffering which links to harm which links to violence which links to Alanis? Simple really, if you are mindful of your actions then you notice when you are about to do something which harms someone through an act of violence (taDOW! oh i love it when a plan comes together!).
Alanis's song comes into play though because it shows how violence isn't just an act of hitting someone, it is the act of doing anything which may cause harm which causes suffering. That includes anything mental, as well as things people don't know you are doing. Harm and violence are not always ententional, this is something obvious that still needs to be stated, but please, take the time to think about in which ways you are violent and how you feel about that.
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