[Buddha-l] Quaker peace testimony and Buddhist pacifism

[jkirk]

".............For some this might
include learning to use weapons, but the ideal would be to learn to defend
oneself, and the nation, in ways that require neither killing nor harm."

In my readings of Gandhi, he never advocated that anyone learn to use 
weapons.
If he did, then he was being self-contradictory (or he was going through one 
phase that got revised in a later phase of his ethical self-development). 
Instead, he strongly advocated self-defense, as well as satyagraha 
"offense," as "non-violent resistance" and that is what I referred to.

This was also what ML King taught his followers to adhere to. They were not
to take up arms.

Contrary to what Gandhi advocated and spent most of his life trying to
embed by his own example into the minds of India's independence movers,
Buddhism in some texts, at least, it seems to me, does allow resort to arms
under certain circumstances. But I cannot find that the canonical writings
bear a singular position on the matter.
Still,  it's not really appropriate, perhaps, to compare one individual, 
Mahatma
Gandhi, to an entire historical tradition like Buddhism!

Joanna


===============================================
>
> Contrary to what Joanna reported, I recall finding a passage in Gandhi's
> writings in which he declares that a nation's failure to defend itself 
> when
> attacked would be folly, In his writings on satyagraha, he says that 
> everyone
> in this world should learn the art of self-defense. For some this might
> include learning to use weapons, but the ideal would be to learn to defend
> oneself, and the nation, in ways that require neither killing nor harm. 
> There
> are several statements to this effect in the volume by Gandhi entitled
> <cite>Non-violent resistance,</cite> which is a collection of writings by
> Gandhi on the topic.
>
> It seems to me that what Pennington, Mendl and Gandhi advocate is quite 
> close
> to what one finds in most Buddhist writings on the subject. And so I still
> find myself puzzled by Paul Fleischman's attempt to distinguish between
> pacifism and non-violence. It still seems to me that he is torching a 
> straw
> man.
>
> -- 
> Richard P. Hayes
> Department of Philosophy
> University of New Mexico
> http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes
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