How ancient Indians fought wars

The ancient culture of India is a very exemplary civilization for many things. Many things happened there and they thought about them very deeply. But there's a principle rule in yoga, in the Vedic knowledge, and you see it embodied in the namaste. The namaste actually means, I see each living being as divine, each living being as valuable. And to the best of my ability, I'm going to preserve them and their life while I have mine. The term for this in Sanskrit is ahimsa. Ahimsa doesn't mean non-violence, that's a must be done. And so, in ancient India, there was a principle that if a conflict arose that required armies, soldiers, people with weapons, people trained in harming and killing, essentially protectors, if protectors ever had to fight, they never involved citizens who are considered to be innocent. Innocent because they cannot defend themselves, they're not trained to do so. This is so important and so obviously difficult for us to understand now. But what the ancients used to do is, in order to have a conflict, trained soldiers with their weapons would go to a field. This is how they did it in India. What we would consider a playing field, like a football field, soccer field. And they would line up there in front of each other and they would have a moment of conflict or a day of conflict. And so many people would be injured or killed, maimed, disabled. But the people in the conflict were only soldiers, only protectors. It's just like in our body, we have an immune system which has particular cells that fight against invading organisms and things that shouldn't be in us. But not all the cells in the body are fighting cells, are white blood cells. But this concept of an immunity and the notion that human civilization, we are so vulnerable. Have you not seen in the films of what's going on right now? Families, mothers with six children. Can you imagine trying to move six children out of harm's way with the sophisticated weapons that we have now? But even then, even back in the times that I'm talking about in India, they understood this principle that all that was sacred in life was sacred to everyone. Even if you were temporarily opposed to them for some particular reason, that didn't mean that they weren't human beings and weren't sacred and weren't deserving of respect. It only meant somehow, because this is the nature of material life, you were having a conflict. On an everyday basis, you would try not to make that be harmful, hurtful, or violent. But in the rare circumstances when actual military conflict was necessary, the only civilized way to do this is to send soldiers prepared for and trained in combat out on a field and consider that that conflict, like a sporting event, someone will win and someone will lose. The issue on which we were, in this case, voting, having our warriors fight for us, because we're not trained. Even in those days, a person untrained in weaponry would not stand a chance in the presence of a warrior. One warrior could kill 100 people who were not trained as warriors. Now, one mistake and we can kill a whole city. What we're witnessing right now is supposed to be a very important lesson for all human beings to stop and reconsider that we have to find another way to act out this conflicted and quarrelsome nature that is inherent to us. We actually have to find a way to do that, that doesn't go down the road we're going down now. Cause us to destroy the very tender feelings, the very reason that anyone might fight in a conflict is to protect someone that they love and adore. And so, in ancient times in India, understanding this, the soldiers went out in the field and fought the political fight. In other words, if our politics leads to a conflict that cannot be resolved, we have to have a non-destructive alternative. And so, in India, civilians were never harmed. This was the ancient way. Now, sadly, that's not been true for the rest of the civilizations that have been going throughout the world and conquering and colonizing.