Once in a far off land there was a young monk who liked to spend most of his time in silent contemplation. Often he could be found walking down the road, deeply absorbed in prayers without much attention to what was going on around him.
As it happens, there was a bully who liked to take advantage of people weaker than himself and whenever he could, he would bother the monk, taunt him, tear at his clothes, even hit the monk for the pleasure it would give him.
The monk barely noticed any of this, and would continue on his way thinking only about his consciousness and responsibility to achieving evolution within himself.
This went on for some time with the monk enduring many beatings and humiliations from the bully while never lifting a finger in self-defence or even the slightest admonishment for bad behavior.
Another monk had noticed this, and one day, walked up to the victimized disciple, saying
"Why do you not hit him back?"
The answer was silence, as if the monk could not understand the concept of hitting anyone for such violence was the furthest thing he could possibly consider from his goal of achieving a higher state of consciousness.
The days went by. The beatings went on. The other monk would from time to time approach the victim again and again asking "Why do you not hit him back?"
Always the answer was the same,- a rather dumbfounded and confused look, unable to understand any concept involving violence as the answer to anything.
Then one day, the other monk approached him again, but this time told the victimized monk to look down the road and observe a house burning in flames.
Sure enough, it was the house of the bully and it was burning to the ground. The victimized monk stared at it, somewhat surprised, and not knowing what to make of the incident.
The other monk stared at him and said firmly.
"You could have stopped this from happening, if only by hitting the bully back."
The victimized monk stared at his friend, then back at himself, now noticing his tattered clothing from the repeated beatings. Then he stared at the house burning and all of a sudden he knew what had happened.
For years he had been building his consciousness in the same way that one builds a house. His prayers were his insulation from evil. His meditations were his rooms of peaceful contentment. His ethics were his walls of safety and his love for God was his ceiling and roof. All of these and so much more were the security he had built over a lifetime of prayer and dedication to goodness.
Someone had tried to make him violate his house, prodding him into a situation where he would have to violate his prayers, meditations, his ethics and beliefs by hitting back,- for to become violent himself would have indeed ruined all he had strived to build.
