If you resort to violent methods because the other side has destroyed your monastery, for example, you then have lost not only your monastery, but also your special Buddhist practices of detachment, love, and compassion.
Buddhism does not accept a theory of God, or a creator. According to Buddhism, one's own actions are the creator, ultimately. Some people say that, from a certain angle, Buddhism is not a religion but rather a science of mind.
Each of you should feel that you have great potential and that, with self-confidence and a little more effort, change really is possible if you want it. If you feel that your present way of life is unpleasant or has some difficulties, then don't look at these negative things. See the positive side, the potential, and make an effort.
In the past, the respect people had for religion meant that ethical practice was maintained through a majority following one religion or another. But this is no longer the case. We must therefore find some other way of establishing basic ethical principles.
When I look at birds and animals, their survival is without rules, without conditions, without organization. But mothers take good care of their offspring. That's nature. In human beings also, parents - particularly mothers - and children have a special bond. Mother's milk is a sign of this affection. We are created that way. The child's survival is entirely dependent on someone else's affection. So, basically, each individual's survival or future depends on society. We need these human values.
Genuine happiness consists in those spiritual qualities of love, compassion, patience, tolerance and forgiveness and so on. For it is these which provide both for our happiness and others happiness.
What acts as a far more effective circumstance for generating compassion and what, in fact, rouses us from our comfortable meditation seat is actually seeing or hearing others - encountering others directly, not just conceptually in our imagination.