Hey Gandhi, you wanna go overthrow the government? Come on, I'm bored...


Lenin, I've told you a thousand times not to interrupt me when I'm nonviolently making clothes! Find something different to do for a change. All you ever do is whine. Destroy the bourgeois...the state is evil...blah blah blah, constantly!


Gandhi, I swear you're the most boring revolutionary ever.


You know what Lenin? Fricking bite me.

Here's an interesting article I found online, which is a good explanation of how principles of nonviolence can work with....umm...violent revolution. Who'd have thought it? It turns out that Lenin and Gandhi are good complements to each other. Gandhi represents the spiritual principle of ahimsa, whereas Lenin represents Kshatriya ahimsa, or the ahimsa of the warrior. I will preface this interesting article with some appropriate quotes, of course. Don't ask me why I am about the quotes so much these days...it just happens sometimes.

"Destroy all that which is evil,
so that which is good may flourish."
- The MacManus Brothers

"While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State."
Lenin

"The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within."
Mohandas Gandhi

Now onto the meat o' the blog:

The Path of the Warrior

The Bhagavad-Gita, which teaches about the spiritual aspect of yoga in great detail, was taught on the battlefield, during a civil war. While some will say that this outer battlefield is a metaphor for an inner struggle, which is true, that an outer battle was involved is clear from many historical records from ancient India. Krishna, the great yoga teacher, encouraged his disciple Arjuna, who was a great warrior, to fight, though Arjuna was reluctant and wanted to follow a way of non-violence instead. Why did Krishna encourage Arjuna to fight?


There are two main types of ahimsa in the Yoga tradition. The first is ahimsa as a spiritual principle, that followed by monks, yogis and sadhus, which involves non-violence on all levels. The second is ahimsa as a political principle, the ahimsa of the warrior or the Kshatriya, that is followed by those who govern and protect society, which allows the use of violence to counter evil forces in the world, including to protect spiritual people, who often cannot defend themselves and become easy targets for worldly people. Krishna taught this Kshatriya ahimsa to Arjuna for the benefit of future generations. Sages before Krishna also taught this, like Vishvamitra who taught Rama and Lakshmana to destroy the evil forces that were persecuting spiritual people, so it is a very old tradition of India.


Yoga teaches us about the three great qualities of nature, the gunas of Prakriti, of sattva (harmony), rajas (action and aggression), and tamas (inertia, ignorance). There are several important laws of the interrelationship of these gunas. One important law is that sattva cannot defeat tamas. The quality of sattva being harmony, balance, meekness and surrender cannot break up the inertia of tamas, which is deep-seated anger rooted in ignorance, hatred and violence. For this the application of rajas or action to force change is required. Sattva or harmony cannot survive unless rajas is used to suppress tamas, which sees sattva as an unarmed enemy.


To put it more simply: Sattva means peace. Rajas means pain. Tamas means ignorance. Tamasic people being dull will only respond to pain. Only pain will bring about change for them. Otherwise they will continue, like a drug addict, in their destructive way of life.


The Kshatriya or warrior path is a common theme elsewhere in the Mahabharata, from which the Gita comes. The Mahabharata teaches that the masses of humanity are composed of mainly rajasic (egoistic) and tamasic (deluded) qualities, which makes them insensitive and unresponsive to sattvic (spiritual) methods. It states that if a ruler does not know how to properly apply the danda (rod), the symbol of punishment, that his subjects will end up "eating one another". Ahimsa as a spiritual principle should not violate common sense that requires a social order that has well-defined and fair laws and punishments to keep disintegrating influences in check.

Article By Dr. David Frawley, taken from http://www.americanhindu.net/Articles6.htm