Thoughts on the idea of ‘safety’.

Sharon Salzberg tells a story about when she’s in India on a rickshaw going to see her teacher Dipa Ma when she's assaulted. She gets away, but she's traumatized. She's just been ******** assaulted. She goes to Dipa Ma and she asks her, “What should I have done? I'm trying to practice loving kindness and I'm not safe.”

Dipa Ma asked her if she had her umbrella (in Calcutta it's often raining). She said yes. Dipa Ma replied, “well, if that ever happens again, with all of the loving kindness that you can muster, take your umbrella and smack him in the face.”

Self-defense. You don't even have to hate him to be able to say, “get the **** away from me.” Protect yourself.

Buddhism is non-violent. And I believe that there is a level of self-defense that is not violent.  When you're in a situation where you may be assaulted, there's a level of physical self-defense that is not an act of violence. There's a line between hitting him in the face with your umbrella and stopping the attack…but when there's the anger, when there is the rage where you're you think, “Now I’m going to stab you with this umbrella 17 times.”

There’s a line between defending, the stopping of harm to yourself when you can then say, “I’m safe again”… and “I'm safe again and I'm hurt and now I want to hurt you.”

Then, it's no longer self-defense, it's violence.