Violence has many levels and resistance arises in all of them.

Ananda observed that a girl got a fish with her fishing pole. The fish was struggling to get out.
The girl reacted with fear and amazement at the same time. Her friend; who was watching the scene was laughing out loud. After 30 or some seconds, the girl unhooked the fish and it was let go. The fish was thrown almost lifeless into the Ocean again.

Was that violence?
The consciousness of those girls is unable to perceive suffering and struggle from another being.

The girl’s intention may not have been to torture the fish, her intentions may have been to have “fun.”
“After all it is just a fish and the laws do not prohibit to torment a fish,” she may have learned at school.

Human laws and beliefs are of no consequence in the way life operates.
This issue is related with consciousness.

In Nature there is killing, although that is not the label used.
It is called “eating to survive.”

Humans may have a different view on that. Killing for profit may be just called “earning a living.”

As we can see, there are different perspectives according to different states of consciousness.

It is the way it is, but certainly there are consequences.

There is violence in a family, when someone’s perception of an issue in life is not acknowledged but rather “corrected” to fit someone’s view of what is correct under the threat to punish them, to disinherit them or to cast them away.

There is also personal violence when any level of our being is not fully respected. For instance the pursue of the “perfect body” through exercise and diet could bring a disease, it could bring an injury. That is unnecessary suffering, but our consciousness may not be able to catch that and rather use the masochistic cliché: ”No pain no gain.”

Asceticism is another way of inner violence if the body is not accepted in all its wholeness and holiness but rather when is viewed only as a means to obtain something in the future such as “illumination.”

Our thoughts could bring violence when there is rejection of what is for the sake of what “should be.”

As we could see violence exists in many levels and that is why it needs to be observed and understood.

Typically we have been taught to react.
There is a reactionary mentality in society because changes do not happen “right now.”

Malcom X, a human rights activist; is quoted as saying: “ I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American Black’s man problem just to avoid violence.”

Malcom X was assassinated.

Many times we forget about timing and that every occurrence in life does not happen all of a sudden but it has a process for being built and a process to disappear. To respect that process is to align with Nature, the Universe.

Changes will happen, because life is change but the greatest and most influential change, is the change of consciousness.