Nonviolence as a Form of Caring in Buddhist and Posthumanist Contexts: Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being

In the context of the Buddhist tradition, Ruth Ozeki's novel A Tale for the Time Being engages in advocating nonharm (traditionally referred to as nonviolence). Meanwhile, most of the novel's Western readers will presumably share the intuition that if nothing else can provide effective protection, the use of violence is permitted in self-defense or even morally obligatory in defense of another. The essay tries to reconstruct in detail the novel's moral standpoint on nonviolence/nonharm in the light of its two important Buddhist intertexts - the fairy tales by Kenji Miyazawa and the teachings of Eihei D & omacr;gen - and consider it in the dual context of Buddhist ethics and the (posthumanist) theory of relationality. Arguably, nonharm can be morally justified as a form of caring on the Buddhist metaphysics, while the theory of relationality, as proposed by such posthumanists as Donna Haraway or Rosi Braidotti, might prove insufficient for the purpose.