[Buddha-l] Buddhism & War: Use of Force and Justifications

[Dan Lusthaus]

Mahinda,

You can start here

http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/%7En-iyanag/buddhism/buddhism_war.html

with Nobumi Iyanaga's summary of Demieville's essay on Buddhism and War
(and, if you can read French, get a copy of the original article).

There follows some excerpts from previous discussions on this topic on
buddha-l  -- we keep returning to this subject, probably because one of the
things that attracts Westerners to Buddhism is the carefully constructed
image of Buddhism as a nonviolent tradition.

One might have the same illusions about Christianity as the religion of the
Prince of Peace if one didn't know actual Christian history, and neglected
to read the New Testament carefully (the apostles were armed and cut off a
Roman soldier's ear when the soldiers came to take Jesus after the last
supper).

Buddhist history is not as blood-drenched as Christian or Islamic history,
but it's not spotless either. They precipitated and organized peasant
revolts in China and Japan, assassinated each other (too frequently!) and
others (the assassination of a Tibetan king unkindly disposed toward
Buddhism is hailed in Tibetan history as a major and positive milestone in
paving the way for Buddhism in Tibet), and for Buddhist support and
participation in armies, one need look no further than Brian Victoria's two
books on Zen in Japan (with their constructed doctrinal and "canonical"
justifications).

It is very instructive to keep in mind the genesis of those books. Victoria
went to Japan as a Methodist missionary from the US Midwest, but after a
year or so there, became a Buddhist and took ordination in Soto. Those were
the days of the Vietnam war. One of the things that attracted him to
Buddhism was the image of pro-peace anti-war sentiment. So he joined some
anti-Vietnam protests in Japan. He was told repeatedly by the Soto powers
that be to cease and desist such activity, and certainly not attend such
things dressed in his robes. Think about that: he was expressely forbidden
to protest war AS A BUDDHIST. Confused and dismayed (and continuing to join
the protests, which got him into ever deeper water), he was informed by
others that that is the way it has always been in Soto and the other
Japanese Buddhist groups; if he thinks this is bad, he'd be amazed to know
what went on during the war (WW II). But they were always vague and evasive
about what actually did go on during the war. That led to the research that
became his two books -- discovering that many of the venerated figures in
the Soto school were right-wing, antisemitic [yes, Richard, I dare use that
word -- Victoria's got a whole chapter on it] fascists, and, as he was
discovering first hand, that was NOT ancient history but present today.
Comic, if you think of it: Hippies opposing the war and expressing their
alternative morality by venerating antisemitic fascists!

There are numerous sutras and sastras that provide a variety of
justifications and conditions under which killing, etc., are permitted. Some
Buddhists tried to interpret these sources as setting the bar so high for
the conditions that would have to be met before an actual killing would be
permitted, that for pratical purposes it should be considered forbidden. But
others disagreed.

Bhavaviveka, Yogacarabhumi, Tsong-kha-pa are only some of the better known
sources that take up such a discussion in earnest. For instance, usually the
texts make it an important stipulation that one who engages even in
justified murder will have to spend a long time in a miserable hell
(conversely, one of the righteous motives for murdering someone who might
kill, or to prevent others from killing him, is to save them from having to
go to hell). But when it's truly justified, even this is given a wink -- in
a potent image Bhavaviveka says that the righteous murderer will indeed go
to hell, but before he even gets there, he will disappear and be pushed back
up, like a silk moth pushed up as it alights toward a flame -- that is, he
will spend no time there at all.

Dan Lusthaus