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33 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Documenting the obvious, March 16, 2010
This review is from: Buddhist Warfare (Paperback)
It is self-evident that homo sapiens are violent. Some homo sapiens are Buddhist. So what other point might there be to an inquiry of Buddhism and violence except to ask, Does Buddhism promote violence?
_Buddhist Warfare_ features eight American and two European Buddhist scholars describing incidents of violence by Buddhist monastics, ranging from 17th century Tibet to 21st century Sri Lanka. The claim repeated in the essays, in the introduction, the conclusion, and in the book's marketing is that Buddhism has an undeserved reputation for pacifism. Not one of the academics represented here addresses the cause of our apparent misunderstanding. Perhaps we have reason to believe.
Westerners as a whole, it will be admitted, are largely ignorant of the history of countries where Buddhism is a majority religion. If they knew something about Asian history they would know there is no end to the list of wars and atrocities committed by people claiming to be Buddhists. Several examples are provided in this volume, including the amusing story of the Chinese Buddhist Airplane. But one need not read history to make such a discovery, only the news from southeast Asia.
It is also true that Buddhism is different from the Abrahamic monotheisms, whose primary teachings are replete with acts of war, genocide, and torture, committed either by God's followers with God's permission or encouragement or done even by God himself. To Westerners raised on such stories violence might seem to be a natural if not necessary component of religion, but there is no such equivalent in Buddhism. The Buddha doesn't wipe out Jains or Hindus with floods or other natural disasters, nor send against them armies of soldiers, pests, or disease. He does not command, but teaches. He does not condemn, but encourages. There is no hurry to save your soul - not only don't you have one, there will be future lifetimes during which you can work out your salvation. There is no end time, only time enough to end suffering.
As Brian Daizen Victoria reminds us, the Buddha was a man who lived his principles. He avoided conflict, dissuaded a king from making war, and never rallied the monks to protect his birth country when it was threatened with conquest. It should be remembered that the Buddha lived at a time of great unrest and violence, a time when it seemed anything but opportune to practice pacifism.
It's also worth noting that none of the authors represented in this volume quote the Buddha advocating or justifying violence. What sutras and texts they do quote were composed centuries later by Mahayanist philosophers.
It's only in the Afterthoughts, within the last five pages of the book, that one of the editors finally gets around to saying something meaningful:
"The Buddhist apologies of violence presented in this book are mostly contextual, [sic] in other words, they owe as much, or more, to the cultural context as to Buddhism per se."
That is, there's not much of a case to be made of Buddhism as a system of thought or practice causing or promoting violence.
That leaves us with a collection of eight essays about violence committed by people represented as Buddhists, stories from Tibet, China, Japan, and Mongolia. If you don't already know something about Buddhism and the histories of these countries, then these essays won't be terribly informative. If you do, the details - even in their totality - are hardly revelatory.
Despite a rather suspect claim, ("a uniform latent tendency in Theravadin Buddhist traditions for justifying violence"), Michael Jerryson's reporting from Thailand, and Daniel Kent's from Sri Lanka, raise perhaps the most interesting questions posed in this volume. How is a monk living in a violence saturated environment to respond? Does he withdraw and abandon the laity, or does he engage and try to find ways to help those caught in the violence, even the soldiers themselves?
In his impassioned condemnation of Zen nihilism, Victoria concludes with a question such monks may ask themselves, a question addressed to all who follow the Buddha's path:
"Am I really willing to make nonviolence the standard for my own personal conduct and, to the extent that I can individually influence it, the standard of conduct for the nation (and world) to which I belong?"
That so many people - East and West - regard Buddhism as a peaceful religion is not spurious stereotype but a testament to the teachings of the Buddha and the billions of practitioners who have over two and a half millennia struggled to uphold the ideals he lived and taught.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Is Buddhism a Peaceful Religion?, October 12, 2011
This review is from: Buddhist Warfare (Paperback)
Buddha stated: "All men tremble at punishment, all men fear death; remembering that thou are like unto them, do not strike or slay.
All men tremble at punishment, all men love life: remembering that thou are like unto them, do not strike or slay." -The Dhammapada "When a warrior strives & exerts himself in battle, his mind is already seized, debased, & misdirected by the thought: 'May these beings be struck down or slaughtered or annihilated or destroyed. May they not exist.' If others then strike him down & slay while he is thus striving & exerting himself in battle, then with the breakup of the body, after death, he is reborn in the hell called the realm of those slain in battle. But if he holds such a view as this: 'When a warrior strives & exerts himself in battle, if others then strike him down & slay him while he is striving & exerting himself in battle, then with the breakup of the body, after death, he is reborn in the company of devas slain in battle,' that is his wrong view. Now, there are two destinations for a person with wrong view, I tell you: either hell or the animal womb."- Buddha (Samyutta Nikiya XL11 Pali Canon) And then the Dalai Lama: "Forgiveness doesn't mean forget what happened. ... If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures." -Dalai Lama "It is difficult to deal with terrorism through non-violence." -Dalai Lama "Theoretically speaking, in order to achieve great benefit for a greater number of people, you can use a violent method. This is true in Vajrayana and Mahayana Buddhism and is one of the things that separate these schools from Theravada Buddhism." -Dalai Lama "There is a famous story about the five hundred merchants crossing the sea and the leader of the merchants realized that one of the wanted to kill all the people on the boat. So in order not only to save the people on the boat but also to save this man from committing the sin, the lead merchant took on the sin of killing the murderer before the action took place." -Dalai Lama "Yes. It's a unique aspect of Mahayana Buddhism, even from ancient times. One reason that ancient Hinayana (Theravada) monks argued that Mahayana was not taught by Buddha was that in the Mahayana there are teachings that say that there could be occasions where even killing could be permitted." -Dalai Lama from the book, The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama by Thomas Laird Why are the Buddha's teachings so different from the Dalai Lamas? But, I need to say first, that this isn't just about the Dalai Lama or Tibetan Buddhism, but it does show degeneration in Buddhism in the Tibetan Buddhist sects, but this degeneration also takes place in other forms of Buddhism. According to a 7th Century Chan text the, Treatise on Absolute Contemplation: "Killing is evil only in the event that the killer fails to recognize his victim as empty and dream-like. On the contrary, if one no longer sees his opponent as a living being separate from emptiness, then he is free to kill him at will." These teachings came to be because Buddhism was actually hijacked by Confucianism and Taoism in ancient China. Dogen, a Japanese Zen Buddhist Master, observed this and said that Taoism and Confucianism were inferior to Buddhism. What few people know is that Lao-tzu instructed one of his would be students to "kill seven people, including the latter's own mother and father." Knowing this Dogen said: "The Tathagate, for his part, based his teachings on the need for great compassion. Where, then, did Lao-tzu find the basis for his treacherous teachings?" There is also the Mahayana Buddhist doctrine of "skillful/expedient means," which allows teachers "to adapt their message to the needs and capacity of their audience." The story in the Lotus Sutra that is used as an example is that of the burning house, and of the child who would not come out, so the parents then lie to the child in order to get him to come out of the house as an act to save him. This was always meant to be used with compassion and wisdom, but this doctrine is not benign, because it has been used over the centuries by teachers to justify breaking the precepts, thereby causing harm to others. One example is how such teacher cut the finger off one of his disciples to teach him a lesson. Then there in the book by the 5th Dalai Lama, Song of the Queen of Spring: "while he does not explicitly employ the justification that particular acts of violence ought to be understood as beneficial and compassionate toward their target, he makes such arguments elsewhere in the text...Still, the main thrust of the language surrounding the khan is directed toward justifying his warfare by virtue of his identity as a righteous-warrior king, a man who is rhetorically connected to many of the post potent emblematic figures in the Indo-Tibetan symbolic universe." This above text is, "suggesting that highly advanced Buddhist yogins may be able to undertake acts of violence that serve salutary ends without themselves experiencing afflictive emotion." This was never Buddha's teaching, but throughout history some Buddhist teachers have learned to justify war, especially in Asian countries where the sangha has to serve aggressive leaders. The Zen school has also been deeply influence by the Mahayana belief that there are two levels of truth, conventional and ultimate. By placing emphasis on the ultimate conventional truth they have devalued human life to the point that it became worthless. Yet, while the self is "ultimately empty:" One has to take into account the fact that the pain and suffering is real, which is the conventional truth. But Zen leaders collapsed these teachings into one teaching, which was never intended by the Buddha, who always taught that compassion was most important. So, while Buddha taught peace, the incorporation of the Mahayana texts changed Buddhism. And while I would like to think that this did not affect the Theravada teachings, I learned this of the Theravada Thai Buddhist monks: "Modern Thai and Sri Lankan monks rely on the Abhidhamma of the Pali Canon that emphasizes intention and claims that, if the killing is committed with the right state of mind (detachment or compassion), it entails no karmic consequence and therefore can be considered to be a wholesome act." (Buddhist Warfare page 214.) So this makes killing a selfless act in that one is not killing out of hatred or anger but out of compassion for one's fellow man. But I have a hard time believing that Buddha meant for "intention" to be used as a justification for killing others in battle, because, for one, he says to never slay another being. Then during his life, his actions were always consistent with what is stated in the Dhammapada. He always tried to prevent war, as in his successful action to prevent King Ajatasttu from attacking the Vajjians. Even when his own homeland was at stake, he did not mobilize his sangha to fight. So is Buddhism peaceful? It certainly has that reputation. I believe the intentions of Buddha were peaceful and compassionate but since then the teachings have greatly taking a downward turn, and so now you have many teachers speaking about peace, but they are actually talking out of two sides of their mouths.
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12 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Buddhist Warfare - A good book to help understand buddhist violence, March 14, 2010
This review is from: Buddhist Warfare (Paperback)
Buddhist Warfare is a collection of essays on Buddhist traditions around the world. The first chapter is actually translation of an essay by Paul Demieville (1957), who was one of the most importand Buddhist scholars of his time. One interesting point Michael Jerryson writes in the introduction is that Demieville's important essay in 1957 has not been substantially developed since, and thus we can assume this is the purpose of the book.
In contrast to the previous reviewer, I do not feel this is "judeo-christian" propaganda. Quite opposite of this, the various scholars in the book write critically about violence spawned by Buddhist monks, whether they are Sri Lankan, Thai, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Tibetan, or Indian.
Jerryson writes in the Introduction that people in the United States and Europe do violence to Buddhists by painting them as completely pacifistic and non-violent. The motis operandi of the volume is to provide data to the contrary, showing that Buddhists are people, and like any other tradition, has episodes of violence.
I am not sure if this is deliberate or not, but the essays follow in chronological order of their content (with the exception of Demieville's translated chapter), with essays on Indian, Tibetan, Mongolian, Japanese, Chinese/Korean, Sri Lankan, and Thai Buddhist episodes of violence. Bernard Faure writes the last chapter, which is more a response than a conclusion. He reviews the points made by the various contributors, and then brings forth some innovative and alternative ways of considering the relationship between Buddhism and violence.
There are not many books that discuss Buddhist monastic violence-- which is really the focus of the essays, not lay Buddhists, which I suppose would make for a different book. Buddhist Warfare is quite balanced and offers some very important points about Buddhism. I would highly recommend this to anyone who wishes to know the historical significance of Buddhism (not just the theories and doctrine, although the book addresses these as well).
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