[Buddha-l] Dharmapala

[Dan Lusthaus]

Lance,

> I did find the manner in which you were summarizing some of the early
> Suttas in that particular post rather unpleasant and offensive.

Interesting. Mistaken, or wrong-headed, or problematic... maybe. But 
offensive? Really?

> I have not at all discussed later violence in Northern Buddhism.

None of us have. For fairly obvious reasons we have restricted ourselves to 
the portions of the book that address Theravada -- a couple of paragraphs in 
Jenkins' essay (with the implication, so far kept off stage and barely 
mentioned, that this gets developed in a Mahayana appropriation to arguments 
for making merit through war and torture; and that that appropriation had 
direct, real world consequences in Tibet and among the Mongolians, as well 
as in E. Asia); a few choice tidbits from Kent's essay on how Sri Lankan 
monks offer sermons to Buddhist soldiers (in response to the discussion of 
Duṭṭhagāmaṇī initiated on the list, since that is one of the passing topics 
in the essay, but hardly its exclusive concern); and the barest of mentions, 
without spelling out details, of Jerryman's essay on soldier-monks in 
present day Thailand. We have gone into more detail on the Pali texts 
involved than any of those essays.

>But I need to read the book before I can assess some points.

My sole purpose in this entire conversation is to encourage people to read 
that book, and, even more broadly, become familiar -- and comfortable --  
with the subject matter, since it is not going away. As additional instances 
and texts come into view, it will be increasingly harder to ignore. None of 
us wants to see this discourse controlled by polemicists, zealots and 
missionaries; thus we need to take it up ourselves and make sure it is done 
right.

> These are important questions when we discuss early Buddhism. You may
> find the arguments presented inconvenient and so wish to dismiss them as
> minimizing.

I have nothing against discussing them ad nauseum in an academic setting. 
I'm simply pointing out that in the world of Living Buddhism -- which is 
sometimes a topic for academics -- these quibbles are far less important 
than the version circulating in the public imagination, whether or not that 
version is in accord with a certain strict reading of the text or not. 
Academics, if historians, typically try to read "through" the hagiographic 
and mythic details to whatever kernel of historical information can be 
ascertained. Literary academicians might focus more on the cogency and 
connotations of the story as story. The devotee's reading will likely be 
closer to the literary reading, except the devotee with accept much of it as 
history, or as what is meaningful in history.

>>
> But are not the monks who preach to the army selected by the army ?

Perhaps in some cases. Kent focuses on some local temples, some of which 
have military bases nearby. It seems the soldiers choose them because of 
their proximity; some go to the monks who they grew up knowing. The monks 
themselves offer a variety of reasons for accomodating the needs of the 
soldiers, and there is no mention by Kent of any oversight or selective 
constraints on the part of the army or govt.

> And you think I don't know that ?

Please, Lance. Sometimes one spells something out not because one assumes 
the other person is unaware of the fact, but in order to make explicit 
something which, if not explicitly mentioned, might be overlooked in that 
specific conversation, or simply to remind and conjure up some important 
context in order to make a point based on it. And you know that!

> I have no doubt at all that some Buddhists in later periods have adopted
> martial modes. Moreover, it is clear that Buddhism was eventually able
> to mount a miltary response to and defense against the violent advance
> of Islam. Without that it probably wouldn't exist today.

Lance, here you have provided perhaps the most crucial point. You have now 
exposed the elephant in the room. The Thai soldier-monks were created 
precisely to shelter Buddhist civilians and monks from the Malay Islamic 
ethnic cleansing that is driving the Buddhists out of three southern 
provinces.

In the larger picture, the importance of this comes when we ask about the 
ultimate viability of Buddhism's professed pacifism. If that proposal is 
suicidal or untenable in a variety of real-world circumstances, then we need 
to think about the sufficiency of the proposed Buddhist answers to those 
circumstances. If Buddhism retains its appearance of pacifism by adopting 
accomodationalist strategies when the need arises [i.e., without abandoning 
the general pacifistic rhetoric and doctrines, it finds ways to accomodate 
the necessary violence], we should take note of that, and think about how 
that approach stacks up with approaches that adjust baseline doctrines and 
rhetoric to what gets deemed as restrained but necessary violence (Daoism in 
China would be an example). Does maintaining an accomodationalist posture 
while trying to hold to the pacifist baseline make Buddhism less prone than 
most other religions to violence, or has it been something else?

When Buddhism becomes identified with the State, it sanctions violence in 
one way or another. As you say, its survival has depended on that. These are 
exactly the sort of issues that await our studious attention.

Dan