[Buddha-l] Dharmapala

[andy]

OK,  I have finished the recently published "Buddhism and Warfare",  and I 
have several questions to pose to Buddha-l.  (And besides, seems quiet here 
lately.) 

First, Faure's concluding remarks are acceptable, but non-commital.  We seem 
to be faced with a distinction between a posited Universal Buddhist Ethics 
that is maintained by Victoria, and either a contextualism that says that 
Buddhism is what it is in any particular cultural milieu, or a suggestion that 
the underlying metaphysics of Buddhism is, as Faure puts it, violent and 
sacrificial? 


"could the dharma, or ultimate reality, be intrinsically violent? Would that 
not explain figures such as Vajrapani and the "Bright Kings", emanations of 
the cosmic Buddha, who are represented as fierce beings bent on destroying the 
gods or demons they were supposed to convert or tame? " p. 223


So Secondly:  what support is there in Buddhism for the notion of the  
"defense of the faith"?   I have multiple reservations about any claim that 
there is such, outside of the normal institutional motivations. That would 
only be contextual Buddhism.  

The co-option of indigenious divinities makes sense, politically, but is there 
an imperative to protect the dharma by violent means?  This seems to 
contradict the very nature of Buddhism, regardless of the cultural context it 
finds itself in. 

I teach military ethics, and one of the main points I try to get across to my 
students is that violence never settles political issues, and so the only 
possible justification for it is that it makes possible the political (or 
preferably, intellectual) resolutions of differences.  Buddhism has always 
seemed to me to be the one religious tradition that recognized that.  Am I 
going to have to change my mind?   
-- 
James Andy Stroble, PhD
Lecturer in Philosophy
Department of Arts & Humanities
Leeward Community College
University of Hawaii

Adjunct Faculty 
Diplomatic and Military Studies
Hawaii Pacific University 

_________________

"The amount of violence at the disposal of any given country may soon not be a 
reliable indication of the country's strength or a reliable guarantee against 
destruction by a substantially smaller and weaker power."  --Hannah Arendt