Buddhism: The Dalai Lama on ‘appropriate violence’

From a recent interview with India Express, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is speaking about nonviolence as a motivation more than a label of particular actions. The interviewer asks:

• Your Holiness, you also use the example of a man coming to shoot you. You say one has to do something, but instead of shooting him in the head, maybe, one could shoot him in the leg.

Shooting in the head means killing.

• But shooting in the hand or leg is self-protection?

That’s right. Also, if that person is alive, then perhaps you may tease him a little about it later (both laugh).