Dear Thay, dear community, I was wondering if it was ever okay to use violence to protect yourself or your loved ones from harm.

Violence means anger, fear. And when anger is there, fear is there, you are not intelligent enough, you are not peaceful enough to solve the problem. And you risk making the situation worse. When you have anger in you, that anger will push you to say or do things that will bring more suffering.

We know that when we are angry, we are no longer lucid in our way of thinking. And we cannot act or react in a skillful way in order to avoid destruction, our own destruction and the destruction of other people. And when anger and fear are in us, we have to learn how to recognize them in order to transform them.

If we can transform our fear, our anger, we will have the energy of compassion and understanding. And with that energy of compassion and understanding, we can very well help solve the problem and protect ourselves and protect the other people and protect the people we want to protect.

Suppose you are a policeman, a police officer, and your duty is to keep the peace. And you carry a gun. But if you have a lot of fear and anger in you, you will react in such a way that you can cause more damage than good. Because there is a lot of fear and anger in you, you may use your gun in such a way that can kill innocent people.

And if you are a policeman who is intelligent, who is peaceful, who is calm, and even if you carry a gun, you don't have to use your gun. You use peaceful means in order to settle problems. And that is why it's very important to learn how to be calm, to be compassionate. And compassion and calm is a very powerful energy that can help you solve problems.

We learned that in America, the number of policemen, police officers, who use their own gun to commit suicide is more numerous than the number of policemen killed by gangsters. Because police officers, they have a lot of fear and anger in them. They are very stressful. So even if they have a gun, they cannot help very much. And finally, they have to kill themselves because there is so much stress, so much fear and anger.

So the solution is not violence. The solution is compassion, intelligence. And even police officers have to learn nonviolence in order to do a better job. And Thay has already organized a retreat for police officers in the state of Wisconsin. And in that retreat, we saw police officers practicing sitting meditation, walking meditation, breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out, recognizing their feelings, their emotions, their anger.

It's a very difficult retreat, but very successful. Transformation and healing is possible because the police officers, they suffer very much. Also correctional officers, those who take care of prisons, they suffer a lot. And according to statistics, if you have worked twenty years as a correctional officer taking care of prisoners, your average life expectancy is only fifty-eight.

Your life is very short because you suffer so much stress, so much anger, so much fear, handling these prisoners who are full of violence. So we have to practice in order to reduce violence in ourselves and in the world. And we know that violence has not helped solving problems. The problem of Iraq, the problem of Afghanistan, the problem of the war in Vietnam, they have not been solved by violence.

So we have to learn. So in order to protect us and protect the people we love, we have to learn nonviolent ways. And it is possible. And that is the practice of true love. The example of the police officers in America who embody authority, who carry a gun, but they have to kill themselves. It means that violence does not work. Even a police officer has to practice nonviolence in order to succeed in their job. Please take the time in order to meditate on this.