[Buddha-l] Zen War Guilt/Zen and the Sword

[curt]

Jim Peavler wrote:

> On Aug 23, 2005, at 8:01 AM, curt wrote:
>
>>  In that context I would suggest that there
>> is absolutely nothing extraordinary about the complicity of the
>> Buddhist (not just Zen) establishment in the sins of Japanese
>> Empire. Where has Buddhism ever set itself up as a center of
>> opposition to an unjust political regime?
>
>
> This, of course, is not addressing Stephen Hopkins' question, which 
> was  asking for information about the "current state of play in regard 
> to  Japanese Buddhist recognition of their role in WW2 (and other  
> conflicts), and in regard to the vexed question of the evolution of 
> the  relationship of Zen and the sword?" (Not that your response needs 
> to  answer his question.)

I was suggesting that he might be looking in the wrong place and/or
asking the wrong questions. I don't think the hue and cry about what
Roshi did during the war can simply be taken at face value. One should
ask - what did these people expect? After all - has anyone ever claimed
that there was any kind of Buddhist opposition to the fascist Imperial
government - or anything even remotely resembling such a thing?

>> The reason why this is such an "issue" is that the generation of
>> naive hippies who adopted Zen in the 60's and 70's projected
>> their own half-baked pacifistic delusions onto their newfound
>> Religion - without ever bothering to check whether or not there
>> was any basis in reality for this assumption (but that is the nature
>> of projection and delusion, is it not?).
>
>
> I am sorry, but this doesn't seem to hold water, for me anyway. We 
> knew  of the associations between Japanese Zen and war (Hopkins 
> alludes to it  by mentioning DT Suzuki and Zen and the Sword), from, 
> not only DT  Suzuki, but from prominent Zennists who had actually 
> been, themselves,  victims of the Japanese at war (The famous -- in 
> the West, at least --  Diamond Sangha is a direct result of the 
> experience of its founder as a  prisoner of the Japanese during World 
> War II. So, yes, we HAD heard of  World War II, and Zen culpability in 
> lending itself to Samari warriors  and to modern Japanese 
> empire-building warfare were well known and  often discussed.

This only raises Aitken's naivete to a truly transcendental level. My point
is that all of this says much more about the western adherents of Japanese
Zen than it does about Japenese Zen itself. As you point out they had no
good reason to be "unaware" of the complicity of their teachers with the
fascist regime that reigned in Japan for over half a century. And yet they
now claim to be shocked, shocked at these "revelations". Nothing has been
revealed except their own willfull self-deception.

- Curt