AFTERWORD: JEDI VIOLENCE AND NONVIOLENCE

“We are keepers of the peace, not soliders.”

—MACE WINDU IN ATTACK OF THE CLONES

As a person looking at Star Wars from a Buddhist perspective, I would be remiss were I not to address the issue of violence in those movies. The Buddha’s teachings are explicitly nonviolent. Killing and maiming leads very clearly, in the Buddhist view, to suffering in the one killed or injured, in her family and friends, and also in the attacker. Acts of violence can be motivated by anger, hatred, ambition, and jealousy—all factors of the dark side. But can they ever be motivated by compassion? The traditional Buddhist answer is an unequivocal “No,” and I don’t recommend anyone pursue any path of violence—yet I think there is something important to be learned about ourselves and the nature of violence by looking at the way violence is used by the Jedi Knights.

Can we accept the venerable Jedi, the so-called “guardians of peace and justice,” as wise and compassionate people when they use their powers to destroy individuals seduced by greed, hatred, and anger? If their acts of violence are grounded in aggressive feelings and revenge can we say the Jedi are balanced and clear on their view of Obi-Wan’s symbiont circle? Let’s look at a few specific examples from the Star Wars series.

In The Phantom Menace, Darth Maul kills Qui-Gon Jinn out of hatred and ambition: hatred for all things Jedi and ambition to help his master rule the galaxy. Qui-Gon Jinn’s murder may have sparked hatred in the heart of Obi-Wan Kenobi, causing the Jedi apprentice to follow in the footsteps of the Sith apprentice. Obi-Wan’s scream, “Nooooo!” for example, seems more enraged than anguished, as his face hardens into an assassin’s mask. It’s the energy of that rage that he apparently used to engage Maul in a lethal dance of plasma and power. Maul was acting out of hatred, and Obi-Wan seemed to retaliate in kind. If this is true, if the young Jedi is motivated by anger, aggression, or hatred, then there is very little difference between the “evil” Darth Maul and the “good” Obi-Wan Kenobi. The dark side of hatred was strong in both.

Before Obi-Wan destroys Maul he has a moment to gather himself and reflect. He hangs, weaponless, above a long shaft leading to certain death (or not so certain if The Clone Wars has anything to say about it). During this time Obi-Wan doesn’t appear as irate as he’d been before. The mad fire seems to have left his eyes and the hateful rictus is gone from his lips. He draws upon his powers to hurl himself in front of Maul as he ignites his master’s saber and slices the Sith Lord in two. The question is: When he actually killed Maul was there hatred in his heart or did those few seconds of reprieve allow him to recognize Maul’s sickness and strike him down with sympathy? Did he kill out of some sort of desperate act of compassion to save his dying master? Did he kill to protect the galaxy from the destructive evil of the Sith? I don’t know, but if Obi-Wan killed out of hatred than he may as well don the black cloak and take up the red lightsaber of his fallen foe.

Obi-Wan may have believed that because he is a Jedi he is on the “right” to destroy Maul, that the ideals he fights for should be achieved regardless of the means employed. He may rationalize that killing Maul is not only necessary but somehow preferable.

Similarly, in our own world, we may believe that school shooters and terrorists, for instance, should be destroyed at all costs, but we may fail to see the ways in which our lives, culture, and beliefs have helped create them. This is not to say that a person who commits deplorable acts of violence and murder should be pardoned. Of course they shouldn’t! We need to do all we can to stop violence when it’s happening and prevent it from propagating into the future. But to fail to recognize our contribution—however small it might be—to the evil in the world, to say evil exists only in the Other, is the way we create more evil and suffering.

Simply thinking we can kill “evil-doers” and in so doing end evil is naïve. We must together confront the evil in humanity’s heart, and engage people’s minds with compassion and love and thereby help them out of the poverty, social injustice, and ignorance that is the cause of their dissatisfaction and hostility. We do not need to wait until they attack to help remedy our differences. We can act with considered goodwill now before there is more violence. This is a difficult course of action and much harder than wiping them out with satellite-guided bombs or Death Star–like weapons, but it is the only way we can stop the cycle of violence.

Love is not passive, it is active. Love is not weak, it is courageous. Love means standing up to those who are harming us and others, and stopping them. We stop them with firm hands, but compassionate hearts. When terrorists bring violence to our shores we must respond calmly and not allow anger or fear to overwhelm us. We can respond with compassion in our hearts. We can respond with fearlessness and nonviolent resolve to bring peace and justice to the world. We can look deeply and see that communities that support violence are often acting out of fear and the delusion that they are under attack. They may have misperceptions about us and may see us as the terrorists. They may even say the terrorists are right to attack us and we are wrong to attack them.

Right or wrong violence does not stop unless we set aside the view that “they” are evil and “we” are separate from them. If we find ways to talk with our adversaries so that we may understand their suffering and allow them to understand ours, so that we may make evident our “symbiotic link,” we may put an end to the cycle of violence.

In Attack of the Clones, Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker are in pursuit of Count Dooku, the supposed mastermind of a galactic war. Obi-Wan tells Anakin it’s important that they catch Dooku so they “can end [the] war right now.” The intention behind their thoughts of killing Dooku is admirable. They hope to prevent an escalation of the Clone War and avert further loss of life—both acts of compassion. But their compassion does not appear to extend to Dooku himself. When they finally confront him, Anakin’s anger is evident. He tells Dooku that he must pay for all the Jedi he killed that day. Thus Anakin is not motivated by compassion but by revenge.

When Anakin charges Dooku, attempting to take the Sith Lord on alone, his attack is reckless and unfocused. At that moment Anakin was in the grips of the dark side, swept away by anger and hatred. There’s no room for wisdom or compassion when you’re pissed, only the all-consuming demand for payback.

In attempting to discover whether the violent acts committed by Jedi can be described as being rooted in compassion it may be considered unwise to take the example of Anakin Skywalker. To hold him as exemplar of the Jedi is to say very little for the wisdom of that Order. After all, he did grow up to be Darth Vader. However, if we move forward along the Star Wars timeline we see that in Return of the Jedi, one of the most respected Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi, advocates killing without compassion.

In that movie, just after Master Yoda dies, Obi-Wan advises Luke to destroy Darth Vader. But Luke is hesitant. He believes good still remains in Darth Vader, and he still hopes to help his father turn back to the good side. When he tells the deceased Jedi Knight this, Obi-Wan dismisses Luke’s insight, saying Vader’s humanity has been “destroyed.” He informs Luke that Vader is more a twisted and evil machine than a man. If Obi-Wan’s intention truly was Vader’s ruin—even if it was for the greater good—it’s hard to identify a clear case of compassionate violence here or anywhere else in the Star War series.

For the Jedi to confront violence with compassion they would need to understand first that they are not much different from their opponents. We have seen that life is interconnected. Evil does not exist outside of us. It exists in our own heart. This is the lesson Luke learned in the dark side cave on Dagobah. When we see hatred in another person we cannot truthfully say that hatred exists only in him. If we are honest and we look deeply we will see that person’s hatred as a reflection of our own.

The second thing required for the Jedi to compassionately confront violence is that they recognize they are co-responsible for the evil in the world. The dark side does not spring up out of nowhere. All things are a product and a continuation of other phenomena. And all phenomena are bound together in a relationship of interdependence. The Sith, for example, did not appear one day from the sky. They are an offshoot of the Jedi themselves!

According to legend, over a millennia before the events of The Phantom Menace a group of Jedi forsook their Order to investigate the Force in a way forbidden by members of the Jedi Council. This group became known as the Dark Lords of the Sith, and they were marked as wholly evil. Shortly after the rise of the Sith, a great war took place where internecine conflict and Jedi intervention brought about the destruction of the Dark Lords. Yet one remained. He acquired an apprentice, and over the next thousand years the secrets of the Sith were passed from master to apprentice. Century after century the Sith lived in the shadows until the time was ripe for them to reveal themselves and exact their revenge on the Jedi Order. The evil of Darth Maul and the eventual destruction of the Galactic Republic and the Jedi Knights had its beginning in the Jedi Order itself.

If the Jedi were to look deeply it would not be difficult for them to see that this “new” evil came from the heart of “good.” The Sith are in fact in the Jedi, and the Jedi are in the Sith. It was Jedi dogma and strictures that stifled some Knights and contributed to their restlessness and subsequent search for greater power. This search came to fruition with the rise of the Empire and the destruction of Alderaan.

Jedi contemporary to the events of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones also contributed to the rise of evil. Count Dooku, the ringleader of a group of disgruntled star systems and financial conglomerates, was a fallen Jedi. His discontent with the bloated bureaucracy of the Galactic Republic and the failures of the Senate propelled him to seek a new order to replace the decrepit old one. Many Jedi, such as Qui-Gon Jinn, were aware of the corruption in the Senate and could relate to Dooku’s yearnings for a better tomorrow. When we look carefully at our enemies we will see ourselves, and we will see how our lives have contributed to their manifestation.

For the Jedi’s action to be considered compassionate they must act without anger or hatred, and with the clear understanding that their opponent is not their enemy. When a Jedi sees herself in the Sith she may seek other means of stopping her foe that don’t end with a saber across the throat. She will attack only out of necessity to protect others from harm and with compassion for the evildoer.

In Attack of the Clones, Mace Windu informs Palpatine that the Jedi are “keepers of the peace, not soldiers.” Inside, Palpatine must’ve been giggling his two-faced head off. For centuries the Sith had been plotting the eradication of the Jedi. Not just the decimation of the Order’s numbers, but a complete destruction of their spirit. The Clone Wars were designed to turn the Jedi into exactly what Mace said they weren’t—soldiers. The wars would force the Jedi to abandon their values and become killers. By the time Order 66 was executed, the Jedi were already dead.

The issue of the Jedi’s failed mission is addressed throughout The Clone Wars animated series, particularly in two story arcs: the Lurmen episodes and the Mandlore arc in season two. In that arc the self-described pacifist Duchess Satine calls out Obi-Wan for the Jedi’s divergence from their peaceful mandate.

“I remember a time when Jedi were not generals, but peacekeepers,” she says.

Obi-Wan is not fazed by her words. He is convinced he is doing what is right to restore peace to the galaxy. “A peacekeeper,” he reasons, “belongs on the frontlines of conflict, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to do his job.”

Buddhists are ideally nonviolent. There couldn’t be nonviolence if there weren’t people defending pacifists against those who would crush them. Even the great nonviolent victories of the past century—Indian independence and the Civil Rights movement in the United States—were successful because they were able to appeal to authorities whose very power rested in their legal monopoly on violence or because they were able to leverage the economic power of other authorities with that power. Nonviolence and violence are interconnected.

Perhaps the Jedi would not have strayed from their role as peacekeepers if they hadn’t allowed their vision to become shrouded by the dark side. Perhaps they would’ve seen a way to prevent the war and cleanse the corrupt Senate without becoming soldiers. But so much was out of balance even before Qui-Gon had discovered Anakin Skywalker on Tatooine. The Jedi had already become political instruments, proud of their status and arrogant, as Yoda pointed out. War was already upon them when Mace made his declaration about their preferred role. At that point they had no choice but to fight the war to keep the peace. That’s the way it always is. Once war is upon us, it’s too late to stop it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t act now to prevent the next conflict. As Duchess Satine argues, “The work of a peacekeeper is to make sure that conflict does not arise.” That’s no easy task. But it can never be achieved unless we start now. Our actions today create the world of tomorrow.