[Buddha-l] Re: Buddhist pacifism

[curt]

Richard P. Hayes wrote:

>On Sun, 2005-10-16 at 16:32 -0400, curt wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Looking at what Buddhists actually do is more important than is ever
>>acknowledged by the people who insist that "Buddhism is inherently
>>pacifist".
>>    
>>
>
>Looking at what any group of people actually does is the worst place to
>look for what they ought to do. If one looked. for example, at what
>Americans do, one would have to conclude that the Constitution requires
>invading foreign countries for no defensible reason, detaining suspected
>enemies of the government indefinitely without trial, and passing laws
>that place no obstacles at all in the way of major corporations while
>making it almost impossible for the poor to make a legal living.
>  
>
I don't think we are talking about what Buddhists "ought to do". We are 
trying to decide whether or not the Buddhist religion is inherently 
pacifist. As far as what Buddhists "ought to do" - well, they should all 
be a whole lot more like me, in my opinion. Now, back to your 
Constitutional example. If we wished to tackle the question "is the U.S. 
inherently democratic", for instance, then we would not want to base our 
answer solely, or even primarily, on the words written down on paper 
(er, parchment) in the Constitution. We would look first and foremost at 
how the U.S. conducts itself as a nation. The answer, by the way, is no. 
Even if we wanted to answer the question "is the U.S. Constitution an 
inherently democratic document" we should feel free to take into account 
such things as (a) slavery, (b) women's rights, (c) indigenous rights, 
(d) voting rights, (e) direct election of the executive and judicial 
branches, etc. Any close examination of the Constitution shows that its 
primary concern is the protection of property rights. Some people (like 
the people who currently run planet earth) believe that protection of 
property rights = democracy. Many other people would disagree. As to 
whether or not the U.S. "ought to be" democratic I would tend to say 
yes, but I also have my doubts. "Democracy" has become something of a 
fetish for people - what does it really mean? I think it was Emma 
Goldman who said "if voting actually changed things they would make it 
illegal."

But an even larger concern of mine is that there seems to be a 
"Protestantizing" tendency here to reduce Buddhism down to a set of 
texts that anyone who wants to can just come up and examine and make of 
what they will. I call this "Protestantizing" because it goes even 
further than mere "Christianizing" and appears to have its intellectual 
roots in the obsession with the so-called "Bible" by the people who led 
the so-called "Reformation", one of whose primary axes to grind was 
direct and equal access for all to the "holy scriptures". That's why I 
think the strange analogy of Buddhism (a Religion) with the Constitution 
(a piece of writing) came so immediately to Richard's mind (well, 
perhaps he stewed for hours - but, no, time stamps do not lie so it 
looks like he stewed at most 25 minutes). Traditionally the Dharma has 
not been viewed as identical with what is written in the Tripitaka - 
with the interpretation treated as a separate thing that everybody gets 
to do on their own. The correct explication of the Dharma has always 
been the job of the monastic Sangha and their (the Sangha's) 
interpretation has always been viewed as much a part of the Dharma as 
the words themselves. Whether one thinks this is a good idea or not is a 
completely different matter.
 
In the interest of full disclosure I should point out that I generally 
do not rely on anyone else to tell me what Buddhism "is" or "means". But 
I also don't go around trying to foist my own interpretation of Buddhism 
on the world as what Buddhism "is". I think there are many, possibly 
infinitely many Buddhisms. "Pacifist Buddhism" is one of them, of course 
(or possibly many of them, or possibly infinitely many). My beef is with 
people who want to argue that "Pacifist Buddhism" IS Buddhism, period. 
While "traditional" Buddhism, in which the monastic Sangha gets the last 
word on what the Dharma "is", is not my cup of tea, I can't imagine how 
anyone could ever seriously assert that it "is not" Buddhism or worse 
yet, that it is not "correct Buddhism".

>  
>
>> But the "Buddhism is inherently pacifist" argument largely 
>>consists of quotations intended to convince to us that Buddhists were 
>>always supposed to "believe" that all violence is wrong (and please pay 
>>no attention to all those piles of dead bodies over there.)
>>    
>>
>
>You misconstrue the argument made for pacifism. This argument is rather
>simple and has nothing at all to do with belief. It has everything to do
>with practice based on the observation that harming others causes
>dukkha. And since the objective of Buddhist practice is to avoid dukkha,
>harming others is inconsistent with positively effective Buddhist
>practice. That is not a creed. It is a sample of applying elementary
>logic.
>  
>
The simplicity of the argument is its downfall. It is so simple that one 
must conclude that if anyone (including the Buddha himself) had ever 
actually thought that this is what the practical import of the Buddha's 
teaching was supposed to be, then we would find ample evidence of this 
interpretation being advocated and implemented for the last 2500 years 
throughout all the parts of Asia in which Buddhism has been influential. 
"Been influential" includes  things like entire countries that are run 
by monks - like Tibet. But all we get is quotations, and interpretations 
of Buddhist "ideas". This reveals a consistently "Christianizing" 
approach to Buddhism, which explains why people who hold this view are 
completely incapable of dealing with Buddhism as it actually exists and 
has existed throughout its history. Christianity (or at least the 
dualistic subsect of Christianity that wiped out all the others and from 
which all current Christians are spiritual descendants) teaches people 
to view "other" religions in terms of their "beliefs" - because that's 
the way Christianity has defined itself, as a "belief system". If a 
religion is a belief system then we study it by asking "what do these 
people believe?" and leave it at that. But if we take a broader view of 
Religion as a set of ideas, practices and experiences - all of which are 
manifested in how people actually live their lives, then when we see the 
incarnation of Avalokitesvara, the Boddhisattva of Compassion, as the 
head of state of a country with a standing army, a prison system, 
capital punishment, etc, well we factor those things in when weighing 
the "ideas" about non-violence that these people espouse.

>  
>
>>That argument, by the way, has the, hopefully unintended, side-effect of 
>>promoting a view of Buddhists as the most hypocritical people in the 
>>history of hypocrisy.
>>    
>>
>
>Not really. It simply makes it obvious that Buddhists have not been much
>better than anyone else at following the practices recommended for
>them. 
>  
>
But this is unfair to Buddhists - and reveals another "Christianizing" 
element in the "Buddhism is inherently pacifist" approach. Westerners 
who are in a culture in which the predominant religious paradigm is 
Christianity have a tendency to apply a very jaundiced viewpoint (more 
than justified in the specific case of Christianity) to all other 
Religions equally. In fact, however, Buddhism probably has had a 
"gentling" effect on Asian cultures - and here again King Asoka can be 
seen as an example. Just because we can find no evidence of "Buddhist 
countries" embracing the extreme ideology of pacifism, doesn't mean - 
not by a long shot - that there's no evidence that Buddhism has had a 
positive impact, and has encouraged people to avoid needless violence. 
Only if we come from the extreme viewpoint of pacifism, combined with 
the "all Religions are just as corrupt as Christianity" attitude, do we 
overlook the possibility that Buddhism has made the countries it has 
influenced more peaceful. Peter Harvey in his chapter on "War and Peace" 
expresses the opinion that Buddhism has had just such a positive 
influence in Asia (in his book on Buddhist Ethics). Personally I think 
it would be inconceivable to even speculate that such a thing might be 
true in the cases of Christianity and Islam - but here I am sure that 
many Christians and Mulsims, as well as others, would disagree.

>  
>
>>Even more embarrassingly, it puts its proponents in the position of
>>being the ones who are going to explain what Buddhism is really
>>supposed to be - to people who have been practicing it for 2500 years.
>>    
>>
>
>Not at all. Rather, it puts people who understand the practice and
>follow it in the position of offering help to those who have failed to
>understand the practice and to follow it.
>
>  
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>>You don't need a Buddhist to tell you what you will find when you
>>already know exactly what you are looking for.
>>    
>>
>
>Quite true. If one does not look for a non-violent way of being in the
>world, one will never find it. Buddhists have no monopoly on that
>insight, nor have they claimed to have one.
>
And one doesn't have to be a pacifist to look for non-violent ways of 
being in the world. In fact, I think that pacifism does not help people 
avoid violence at all. To avoid violence one must deal with the world as 
it is. Pacifism by its nature requires people to ignore basic realities 
about our existence.

- Curt