Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume I - Part 4
The impersonal Truth, precisely because it is impersonal, can contain quite opposite things. There is a truth in Ahimsa, there is a truth in Destruction also. I do not teach that you should go on killing everybody every day as a spiritual dharma. I say that destruction can be done when it is part of the Divine work commanded by the Divine. Non-violence is better than violence as a rule, and still sometimes violence may be the right thing. I consider dharma as relative; unity with the Divine and action from the Divine Will the highest way. Buddha did not aim at action in the world, but at cessation from the world-existence. For that he found the eightfold Path a necessary preparatory discipline and so proclaimed it.
It [Ahimsa] had nothing to do with the Yuga [at the time of Buddha], but with the path towards liberation found by Buddha. There are many paths and all need not be one and the same in their teaching.