[Buddha-l] Compassionate Violence?

[James A Stroble]

On Thu, 30 May 2013 12:07:37 -0400
"Dan Lusthaus" <vasubandhu at earthlink.net> wrote:

> > Of course, this is based on a belief in
> > the efficacy of force in producing peace, which is what I have not
> > found any Buddhist argument for.
> 
> You will find it laid out in detail in the Bodhisattvabhumi section
> of the Yogacarabhumi -- and picked up by many Chinese and Tibetan
> commentators (e.g., Kuiji and Tsongkhapa), on the justification for
> killing a tyrant.
 


Thank you, Dan.  Maybe my difficulty is in this being a Yogacara
innovation, one that I at a least do not see a source of in earlier
Buddhism.  But the other misgiving is the grounds for the
justification. 

> The assassination early on of a Tibetan king who
> was persecuting and, Tibetans believe, preventing Buddhism from
> taking root in Tibet by a monk, is considered one of the heroic
> founding moments of Tibetan Buddhist history, and the monk who did it
> is a national hero; the Bodhisattvabhumi passage is cited as his
> doctrinal justification. Paul Williams' book on Mahayana Buddhism
> discusses that. 

I have looked at Carmen Meinert's and Jens Schlieter's articles, in
_Buddhism and Violence_,  on the Langdarma story.  There does seem to
be a conflict, or ambiguity, between the notion of upaya in
compassionate violence or "liberation through killing" and the defense
of the dharma. Two justifications that just serendipitously coincide?  
  
> When the US entered Afghanistan in response to 9/11,
> chasing out the Taliban that been persecuting non-Muslims and
> oppressing Muslims not adhering to the standards they insisted upon,
> Tibetans supported the US actions by alluding to the
> Bodhisattvabhumi's doctrine, equating the Taliban with tyrants. Check
> the buddha-l archives -- I have spelled it out here a number of times
> in the past.
Which Tibetans?  I must have missed the citation. 

> Mark Tatz deals with it in his book on Asanga's ethics,
> I have a piece coming out in a book on Levinas and Asian Thought that
> cites the key passages, etc.
> 
> Dan 

Is that the title of the forthcoming work?  I look forward to getting a
copy.  

I have read Tatz's book.  The upaya question comes up again, and maybe
this is where my question lies.  If a tyrant is overthrown, especially
by violent means, is the motivation to save the tyrant from the karmic
consequences of their own actions (with the bodhisattva taking the hit
altruistically), or is it to prevent the harm in a more general sense,
a matter of collective karma?  The latter gets us into the
instrumentality of violence for political purposes. 

Derek Maher's article in _Buddhist Warfare_ on the Fifth Dalai
Lama is interesting in this regard.  In the _Song of the Queen
of Spring_, the 5DL argues that the recent war was conducted by
a bodhisattva, or defender of the dharma, Gushri Khan, as
compassionate action. In the later _Good Silk Cloth_, the
justification changes, according to Maher:
   "The later discourse pays greater attention to the types of concerns
   that are encountered in standard just-war theory, elaborated by both
   Christians and Muslims once they found a need to create governments."
That is, political violence is "responsible reactions to others'
improper actions",  or in other words, it is not the compassionate
concern for the moral/spiritual well-being of the enemy that justifies
violence against them, but the practical concern with the consequences
of their actions.  



-- 
Yours, 

James Andy Stroble
Leeward Community College