VANQUISHING VIOLENCE

Abstract

Imagine a person sitting in the warmth and coziness of his home who picks up a newspaper to read, a quick glance over it, all of his comfort is engulfed within the various tumultuous activities happening around him, most prominent amongst them being violence. Violence is a greater set which contains all the minor subsets of an array of negative activities ranging from riots to rape and vigilante to vendetta. In simple terms, violence is becoming the single most prominent issue, the world is facing today. Today we are witnessing many marvelous discoveries in the field of science and technology which are trying to make human life simple, easy and more comfortable. But a look at the other side of the coin reveals how these advancements are leading us to more suffering and danger, slowly and steadily, simply because we are developing ourselves in an unbalanced way. We are only developing our materialistic side and neglecting our spiritual side due to which we are getting more violent and intolerant.  The growths of our desires are never ending and not a lot of thinking goes into taking any decision. In order to develop the spiritual side in us we need to follow the right path offered by Buddha. This paper aims to discuss the problems of violence, its type and causes, and emphasizes that the teachings of Buddhism are completely based on love, kindness and compassion, which offer a perfect solution to this problem of violence.