How Should Enemies be Dealt With?

Hindu (ॐ) depiction f Lakshmi (लक्ष्मी)
surrounded by two elephants (गज)

How Should Enemies be Dealt With?
Monday – August 24, 2026

Should enemies be treated with contempt, should they be shown any kind of mercy? These are questions that are very current, and I suppose that they have been with us for some time when we consider the history of the previous couple of centuries. Now, some may say that indeed, you must slay each and every enemy, that you must treat them like vermin, that you must suffocate the air until you have reached the good graces of every single one of them, really until you have eliminated each and everyone of your enemy, until the air has become your domain. Now, this would perhaps be in keeping with the Code of Hammurabi, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But I would perhaps attempt to hedge between the Code of Hammurabi and basic human decency, not from a do-good liberal perspective, but from a traditional perspective, a perspective of a kind of solemn but insightful sage. Should we not ask ourselves in these days of warfare, in this world in arms, why we must have so many enemies to begin with? I suppose the matter of greatest concern in this regard should be whether or not we are the ones that have created "our enemies", or if we are simply the victims of other people's, other force's, wrath, rightfully or not? See, it would be one thing to assume that the band of ruthless and savage fanatics running around in the wrong neighborhood would be our natural enemies, not because we consider them out enemies per se, but because we have the mark, the unfortunate mark of being their enemies whether or not we like it, and this could surely be the case in our days considering all the multiculturalism and cosmopolitan confusion going on. See, when we are all made into rootless creatures at each other's throats, we are enemies by choice, but never by our own choice; this is the intention, the expressed intention, of the revolutionary elite.

    What I am trying to say is this: there are many people out there, out there in the big world, who simply do not approve of your kind, and they will hurt you, not because you have made them into your enemy, but because they have made you into their enemy. Now, the question then, as the heading goes: how should you deal with these people? Before I explain that, allow me to recite an example: if you come upon a strange man who decides to attempt to hit you over the head with a lead pipe, then you may not say that you made him into your enemy; instead, that man, that bum, made you into his enemy, which means that you need to somehow react to the situation, read "How do You Live in Security?". Now, even if you do not consider that man your enemy, you must take action, for you have now moved away from mere contemplation to pure action, away from potential and toward motion and eventually impact. Some may say: well, you must now use force against this man, but I never stated this. Yes, you can and perhaps you should use force against this man, and perhaps you should not show this man mercy, depending on the situation, but the question at hand is really how you can act with the right Bodhicitta in this situation, at any rate if you attempt to engage this man from a Buddhist point of view. I should add that I am not claiming that you should apply the Code of Hammurabi whenever you are facing an enemy, but what I am trying to suggest is that it does not matter how you face your enemies as long as you are capable of facing them head on. Once you can establish that you indeed have an enemy in front of you, then you must act.

    Now, I do not want people to take what I am writing here and run too far afield with it, but here are some suggestions you should take to heart whenever facing an enemy. I hold that all enemies can be generally put into one of two categories: enemies that you must face and enemies that you can choose to face another day. The first category is clear enough: you simply have no choice but to face them, and this could mean attacking them preemptively, which some men would consider to be a cowardly act. Now, the act of self-defence is seldom, if ever, cowardly, but sure enough I suppose there are certain dubious instances in which a certain modality of self-defence could be considered cowardly. But to move on to my suggestions. For one, I believe that you should stand down if the person you are attempting to defend yourself against has a higher rank than you, read "Hierarchy". Now, this rank only applies in a certain and well defined sense, and not in a sense that has to do with the concept of public or political rank. Now, some others may of course say that rank should not matter, read "My Views on Egalitarianism", but this should be of no relevance once you have decided to engage the enemy. Now, quite apart from the act of fighting enemies, I must also add that once you have defeated your enemy, you may be forced to continue to engage with him. For instance, if you defeat your enemy on the country side, then the treatment of him may need to be completely different from your treatment of him if you happen to defeat him in the city. It would be proper and appropriate to discard of your enemy in the city, for in the city he could recruit fellow bandits; but on the countryside, he would, generally, be unable to do this, thus making it unnecessary to completely discard of him. Now, even in the city a defeated enemy deserves some kind of respect, based of course on his rank: a warrior of higher rank should always receive more respect in defeat than a lesser warrior, a warrior of lower rank, such as a youth fighter. Now, if you end up slaying a man, you must turn to the doctrine, but in that event I would call upon you to either take his wife or send another man to take her, as you have now rightfully killed her husband, and now because her husband was killed, she is now widowed and without a husband, read all my notes on Polygyny here. There shall be justice in the land, read more about that here. I should also clarify here, before I move on, that by self-defence and "defeating enemies", I am in no way seeking to encourage anyone to engage in violence; here I am simply referring to extreme survival situations, and really situations that corresponds with something an urgency that should enable within anyone of a quite average modality a response that may seem violent and indeed can be violent.

Reginald Drax (AKA, M. C. Dutt) – August 24, 2026.