The Dhammapada’s injunction against harming others

The Dhammapada’s injunction against harming others turns a compact Buddhist teaching into a practical ethical challenge: because living beings share vulnerability, another person’s suffering cannot be treated as morally distant. The narrator, who is not a Buddhist convert, singles out these sayings while considering whether Tadamasa Goto is seriously studying the Noble Path. Their force lies not in a promise that wrongdoing will automatically be punished, but in a demand to recognize other people as beings like oneself.

The Teaching and Its Argument

The narrator introduces the passage through the Hokukyo, which he describes as a collection of Buddhist sayings. He imagines that Tadamasa Goto, if serious about studying the Noble Path, will encounter it, and says that there are passages he would like to highlight for him. The injunction begins with shared susceptibility: “All beings quiver before violence.” It adds that all beings fear death and love life, then turns resemblance into a demand for restraint: “Remember that you are like them” and “As they are like you.” The sequence makes compassion a conclusion drawn from common experience, rather than a special kindness reserved for those one already favors.

The passage’s questions sharpen that reasoning. “Then whom would you hurt?” is followed by “What harm would you do?” The questions do not ask whether harm can be justified by a hierarchy of status or power; they challenge the impulse to set another person outside the circle of moral concern. The final lines make the argument consequential: “He who seeks happiness” by hurting others who also seek happiness “Will never find happiness.” In this formulation, harming others is not merely a violation imposed from outside. It contradicts the end the aggressor seeks.

The Narrator’s Ethical Frame

The narrator’s interest in the sayings sits alongside a candid uncertainty about religious belief. He reads Buddhist sutras but says he is not a convert and does not believe in karma or reincarnation. He would like to believe that good is rewarded, evil punished, and truth ultimately prevails, but considers the world evidence that such outcomes are not assured. The injunction against harm therefore matters without requiring faith in a cosmic system that will balance the scales.

His account of atonement likewise stresses action over verbal absolution. He finds sense in the idea that “The only way to really atone for doing wrong is to do the right thing,” adding that an apology alone is not enough. The verse’s ethical demand fits this standard: recognizing another’s humanity cannot remain an abstract sentiment if harmful conduct and its consequences continue. At the same time, the passage offers no guarantee that right action will repair every injury or secure justice. Its claim is narrower and more demanding: a person seeking happiness through the suffering of others undermines that pursuit.

The Injunction Beside Exploitation

The book places this moral language in the context of the narrator’s reporting on foreign women exploited in Japan. A woman described girls from Poland, Russia, and Estonia who appeared to be working under duress; she said they were forced to work without pay and likened their condition to slavery. The narrator’s subsequent conversation with a police officer made the gap between recognition and protection explicit. The officer said a woman who came forward would have to be arrested for working illegally on a tourist visa and deported, even though her testimony might help authorities act against the men running the business. The narrator objected that such a prospect would discourage witnesses, while the officer answered that the law had to be enforced.

The narrator later describes a recurring enforcement bind. Women often knew little that could identify those responsible: they might not know who had victimized them, where they had been held, or the names of Japanese people involved. Police cited the women’s limited Japanese and illegal work as obstacles to testimony and prosecution; after owners were arrested, the women were often deported, making it harder to build cases on other charges. The result, as the account presents it, was that the people most directly harmed could be treated as immigration violators while stronger cases against traffickers remained difficult to establish. Read beside the injunction, that pattern exposes a practical test of non-harm: the principle’s reach depends on whether institutions see victims as people needing protection, rather than chiefly as cases to process or witnesses to use.

From Moral Attention to Action

The narrator applies the same concern through reporting and personal assistance, though he acknowledges the limits and compromises involved. He obtained a copy of a government-funded International Labour Organization study that criticized Japan’s failure to punish traffickers or care for victims; the government had ordered the report kept under wraps. The Yomiuri Shinbun published his story on its front page on November 19, 2004, and he followed it with another article the next day. A source told him that the coverage had prompted drastic revisions to a government plan intended to strengthen victim protection. The narrator regarded the result as a small but real instance of journalism making a difference.

His help also extended beyond publication. He spent substantial portions of his pay assisting women he met, sometimes arranging discreet access to abortion services or paying for airfare. He admits that this involvement breached the rules of journalistic objectivity: he had been told not to get involved, but he did. These actions are not presented as a complete answer to exploitation, nor as proof that compassion alone can overcome legal and evidentiary obstacles. They show instead how the injunction can move from recognition toward conduct, while the narrator remains aware of what he could not accomplish. Beside his account of women being harmed and then exposed to deportation, the Buddhist passage becomes a standard for judging both individual cruelty and the systems that leave vulnerable people without effective protection.