Ahimsa vs. the need to create

For anyone into yoga, ahimsa isn’t a foreign concept: it means simply “non-harming.”

For some, this includes abstaining from eating animal products, for  many it means abstaining from intentional causing harm to another living being, be it through one’s own actions, words and thoughts.

But what about unintentional harm?

I think often about the fact that Catcher in the Rye was Mark David Chapman’s “statement”as to why he shot John Lennon.  I can only imagine Salinger’s response to this, to hear that one’s own work of art, one’s creation, one’s produced piece, was influential enough to be used as an excuse for destruction?

Once your words are on the paper, you no longer have control over how they’re understood.  To think that someone could use your words so strongly against you . . .

Reclusive or not, Salinger wrote.  And continued to write after Catcher in the Rye.  It takes a directed intention to follow through on a complete work – it takes fortitude to finish the project all the way through.  You don’t just accidentally produce a new work.  So to see someone else take that product and all the sacrifice, sweat and tears behind it and . . . pull murderous motivation from it?

Fuck that!

I suppose I don’t truly know about anyone else, I can only speak for myself, but I create out of love.  Out of exploration of this stupid thing called life.  Out of a desire to produce something positive that might make the world even an inkling bit better or enlightened.  I don’t want to imagine anyone being able to take my words, my actions or anything else having to do with me or my work as a justification for their own bad choices or destructive behavior.

In all honesty, I found Holden Caulfield to be a self-indulgent, annoying little boy.  But the ultimate story isn’t solely about the main character’s personality traits; it’s a slice of Americana, a reflection on a moment in time for a (no matter how unappealing) character and his world.

Which brings me to ahimsa vs. the need to create.

When I was younger I was a hell of a lot more true to my instincts: I wrote emails that expressed exactly what I was feeling at that moment in time, I spoke off the cuff and, because I usually only felt passionate when I felt like there was some sort of injustice being inflicted upon myself or someone else, I felt justified in my speech.  But age and time have taught me that a momentary feeling isn’t worth the repercussions involved.  My strong words lasted longer than the sense of injustice involved and so I learned to sit back and wait.

Don’t fire off that email.  Don’t confront that person.  Your words can only do more damage than you can possibly imagine during the moment at hand.  If you’re going to truly adhere to the concept of ahimsa, you have to abstain from the actions that might cause someone else pain.

But here’s the problem:  doing nothing IS doing something.  It is literally doing nothing.

If you’re a creator, a producer of work, an artist or whatever you want to call it, you can’t do nothing.  Because then you, as a creator, a producer of work, an artist or whatever, cease to be.