Ahimsa, the Way of Nonviolence

The sky was still faintly dark on the first morning of Tết, the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam. Grandma got up early. The door bar slid back softly. Her footsteps went out into the yard.

The grandchild lay under a warm blanket, listening. Then the child crawled out of bed and followed.

Grandma stood in the yard holding a small bamboo cage. Inside, a few tiny brown sparrows pressed close together, round-eyed and silent.

"Grandma, why aren't we keeping the birds?"

Grandma turned and looked at the child. The sky was still a grayish blue. The chill of the year's first morning still hung in the air.

She set the cage down on the step and sat beside the grandchild.

"Let me ask something first. Say someone is minding their own business, and we rush in and hit them. What would that be?"

"Bad, Grandma. Nobody should do that."

"And if a bird is flying, living its own life, and we catch it and shut it in a cage, what then?"

The grandchild was quiet for a moment. "The same, isn't it, Grandma?"

Grandma nodded. "That's it. People long ago had a name for that. They called it ahimsa."

She took the child's hand gently. "It is a very old word in Sanskrit, an ancient language of the people of India. The a means not. Himsa means causing harm, or violence. Put together, ahimsa means doing no harm to any living being."

"It sounds simple. But people long ago understood it far more deeply."

She told of a line from the Mahabharata, passed down through countless generations: ahimsa paramo dharma, which means nonviolence is the highest moral law. Not strength. Not victory. Simply doing no harm.

She added that the sage Patanjali placed ahimsa first among the rules of conduct for spiritual practice. Before learning anything else, learn how not to do harm.

Grandma picked up the cage and gently slid back the latch.

"People often think ahimsa is weakness. Not daring to hit back. Not daring to resist."

She looked at the grandchild. "But really it is the other way around. We do not hold back because we are weak. We hold back because we are strong enough to choose not to strike."

The cage door swung open.

The first bird shot out, its small wings spread wide, rising into the grayish blue sky of New Year's morning. Then the second. Then all of them, a little flock bursting up like a scrap of brown cloth flung into the air.

For one second their wings beat with a rushing whir, and then it was quiet. Only the sky remained.

Grandma went on, her voice warm. "Buddhism brought ahimsa to our country a very long time ago. The first of the Five Precepts that Buddhists keep is not to kill. Not to take the life of any living being. That too is ahimsa."

"That is why Buddhists here set birds and fish free at Tết and on festival days. They do not set them free to get something in return. It is a way of practicing that choice every day, the choice to do no harm."

The grandchild looked up at the sky, toward where the flock had vanished.

"So Vietnamese people knew about ahimsa way back then, Grandma?"

"They did. And we still live by it, today, on this very morning."

Grandma settled down again and went on with her story.

"Ever heard of the Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh?"

"Yes, I know who he is."

Grandma sat quietly for a while, as if remembering.

"He taught people how to slow down. To breathe deeply. And to choose not to answer with violence, whatever the situation. He called it Engaged Buddhism. It carried Buddhism out of the meditation halls and into the places where people were suffering."

"He traveled to many countries, wrote many books and taught people everywhere. Then in 2018 he came back to Từ Hiếu Pagoda in Hue, and he lived his last years there."

She paused, and her voice grew softer. "All his life, he did not only talk about peace. He lived it. That too is ahimsa."

The grandchild listened in silence.

"Grandma, does ahimsa mean we are never allowed to get angry?"

Grandma shook her head with a small smile.

"Not at all. Ahimsa does not say we must stop feeling. We can still be angry. We can still see that something is unfair. But we choose how to respond."

"When someone says something unkind to us, we can choose to hit back. Or we can take a breath, hold back, and find another way. That choice takes real strength, not weakness."

She looked out at the front yard, where a few yellow apricot blossoms had dropped in the night and still lay unswept.

"That is why people say the gentlest act can sometimes be stronger than any sword."

The grandchild sat beside Grandma on the first morning of Tết, as the sky slowly grew light.

"So setting the birds free is practicing ahimsa, Grandma?"

Grandma nodded. "Every morning we wake up and choose to do no harm, we are practicing. No bird cage needed. No Tết morning needed."

"Not hitting a little brother or sister, even when angry. Not catching an ant that crawls along our arm. Hearing someone speak badly of us, and not speaking badly back."

"Those small things add up. They change the way we live."

The sky of that Tết morning had grown light. All around, it was still quiet. The flock was far away now, and there was only a light wind passing over the roof.

The grandchild looked at the empty bamboo cage in Grandma's hands.

Nothing was left inside. But something had been given away, lighter than the wind, and longer lasting than the Tết season itself.