[Buddha-l] Buddhism & War

[jkirk]

. Makes one wonder about the value of non-self-defense.
>
> I thought that it was the Buddha's teaching that there is no self
> to be defended.
>
> --
> Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH
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Depends on what's meant by "self"  in the concept "self-defense."
In the case of making war, the concept obviously does not refer to the 
notion of anatta.
As Tessa Bartholomeusz's essay indicated, in Sri Lanka the monks 
participating in the war against the Tamil minority consider that 
self-defense means defense of the dhamma, and by exension of Sri Lanka as 
the holy land of dhamma. I wonder if a similar argument was made by the 
Tokugawa shogun when he decided to stop the advance of Christianity in Japan 
by arresting and executing Christians (but this is a only a guess. Let's say 
the argument "could have been" made). But also, Buddhism in Japan seems 
never to have adopted a strictly pacifist attitude.