Monday, December 29, 2014

"Buddhist Warfare": Is Buddhism A "Religion of Peace"?

This post is now almost five years old, but it is still one of my all-time favorites. Original post-date: Jan. 1, 2010.
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Uh, compared to what?
When Muhammad and his Companions succeeded in their military conquest of what is today Saudi Arabia, they commanded that the practice of all non-Muslim religions would be henceforth forbidden. Polytheistists, Christians, Jews and anyone else who refused to convert had to leave or be killed. This policy has been continuously in place in the land of Islam's foundation ever since, by the express order of the founder of that religion. To this day, by law all citizens of Saudi Arabia must be Muslim. [See, for example, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam by Israeli scholar Yohanan Friedman, especially chapter 3.]

Prior to the Islamization of Arabia it had been a place where Pagan polytheists lived side by side with Jews and Christians. Here, religion was debated freely, and individuals were free to make their own religious choices, and free to change their minds. It was precisely this freedom that gave Muhammad and his Companions the opportunity to spread their new ideas.

Centuries earlier Christians had gained political power in the Roman world in the early 4th century AD with the ascension of Constantine to the throne. Immediately, they sought to impose their religion by force on the entire population of the Roman Empire, which at the time may have comprised as much as 1/4 the human race. Respected historians have described the violent intolerance of the early Christians in the harshest possible terms, such as the following:
[T]he determination of the Christian leadership to extirpate all religious alternatives [was] expressed in the silencing of pagan sources and, beyond that, in the suppression of pagan acts and practices, with increasing harshness and machinery of enforcement.
[Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries]

Persecution was an unavoidable consequence of Constantine's act in adopting Christianity. Two of the chief points in which this faith differed from the Roman State religion were its exclusiveness and the vital importance which it assigned to dogma. The first logically led to intolerance of pagan religions, the second to intolerance of heresies, and these consequences could not be averted when Christianity became the religion of the State.
[J.B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire]
Edward Gibbon, in his The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, famously attributed the success of Christianity first and foremost to "the inflexible, and if we may use the expression, the intolerant zeal of the Christians." But Gibbon, and the same is true of Bury and Macmullen as well, emphasized not only the intolerance of the Christians, but the tolerance of the Pagans whose religions the Christians sought to (and largely succeeded in the attempt to) extirpate.

Gibbon explicitly contrasted the "intolerant zeal" ushered in by the triumph of Christianity, with the prevailing "religious harmony of the ancient world" that preceded it. This "harmony" often exceeded mere toleration, in fact, so that "even the most different and even hostile nations embraced, or at least respected" each other's religious traditions. J.B. Bury puts it like this: "The purpose of the official cults in the pagan State was to secure the protection of the deities; these were liberal and tolerant lords who raised no objection to other forms of worship; and toleration was therefore a principle of the State."

Ramsay MacMullen, in his Paganism in the Roman Empire speaks of the "accommodation, fraternal welcome, courteous referral, or punctilious deference" that was shown by Pagans to each other (that is, to Pagans of widely different cultures and nations, often worshipping very different Gods in very different ways). MacMullen points out that this terrestrial good behavior was a reflection of what ancient Pagans assumed was a similar harmony in the Heavens: "until Christianity introduced its own ideas. Only then, from Constantine on, were Gods to be found at war with other Gods." [p. 93]

Michael Jerryson: From Clueless Dupe to Self-Righteous Debunker
I apologize for the above brief history lesson. The problem is that many highly educated people are either completely unaware of the historical record when it comes to the violent intolerance of Christianity and Islam, or they feign such ignorance when they find it convenient to do so. A case in point is Michael Jerryson, co-editor of a recent scholarly anthology on Buddhist Warfare.

Until quite recently (2006 or thereabouts) Jerryson apparently had been suffering under the delusion that Buddhism is an otherworldly religion whose hundreds of millions of adherents were all committed pacifists. The surprising thing (not really, though, if you have ever met many western "Buddhist scholars") was that Jerryson had acquired this ridiculous conception of Buddhism while supposedly "studying" the religion as a graduate student!

Jerryson's eyes were opened, though, in 2006 when he traveled to a region of Thailand where a series of deadly attacks against Buddhists by Muslim terrorists had recently taken place. Jerryson had been excited when he heard of these attacks because he was sure that this would provide a wonderful demonstration of the miraculous powers of Buddhist "peacemaking" against those nasty Jihadis. However, when Jerryson arrived on the scene he was mortified to find Buddhists actually -- horrors -- defending themselves!!

As soon as he recovered from the deep swoon that must have resulted from the initial, terrible shock, Jerryson immediately knew what had to be done. The world had to be told the truth: Buddhim has a dark side!! Jerryson simply could not stand the thought that there might be others who did not know the terrible, hidden secret that he had just discovered first hand: that Buddhism is not a pacifist religion after all.

Jerryson himself tells this story, with a straight face, in a literally self-promoting entry by him at the religiondispatches.org website (dated January 12, 2010), pushing his book. The article breathlessly claims that whereas previously "some of the great interpreters" of Buddhism have engaged in an outrageous fraud by promulgating "the notion of a purely mystical and otherworldly Buddhism", Jerryson will now reveal the sordid "history of Buddhist violence and warfare." He does this, naturally, not to bury Buddhism, but to "humanize" it.

Jerryson claims that he was the unsuspecting victim of "a very successful form of propaganda" being propagated by Walpola Rahula, the Dalai Lama and D.T. Suzuki. I will get back to those three great Buddhist teachers in a moment, but first I want to point out that Jerryson's stupidity and lack of intellectual curiosity are obviously no one's fault other than his own. Even worse, all he has done is trade in one fairy tail, that Buddhism is a purely pacifist religion, for another one: that Buddhism is just as violent and intolerant as Christianity and Islam.

Jerryson claims that there was a "Buddhist propaganda" campaign throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, to convince people of the terrible lie that Buddhism is a "religion of peace". The star witnesses that Jerryson calls are all certainly well-credentialed. But have they ever said what Jerryson claims they have said?

Walpola Rahula (1907-1997) wrote the following in his most famous book What the Buddha Taught:
This spirit of tolerance and understanding has been from the beginning one of the most cherished ideals of Buddhist culture and civilization. That is why there is not a single example of persecution or the shedding of a drop of blood in converting people to Buddhism, or in its propagation during its long history of 2500 years. It spread peacefully all over the continent of Asia, having more than 500 million adherents today. Violence in any form, under any pretext whatsoever, is absolutely against the teachings of the Buddha.
[What the Buddha Taught, p. 5]
The above quote might at first appear to lend some credence to Jerryson's claim, but that would only be true if critical reading skills are no longer being taught (or, better yet, required for admission) in graduate schools, or at least at UC Santa Barbara. The first and last sentences in the above paragraph are statements of opinion, whereas the middle two sentences are statements of historical fact.

Moreover, the first three sentences in that paragraph are all very specifically concerned with "tolerance", "understanding", "persecution" and most specifically with the lack of any reliance on violence in the spread of Buddhism throughout Asia. The last sentence, by contrast, makes a sweeping statement about Buddhism's view of all violence whatsoever. It is certainly a leap to go from (1) the claim that Buddhists preach and practice tolerance and understanding and do not engage in violence in the name of religion, to (2) the claim that "Violence in any form, under any pretext whatsoever, is absolutely against the teachings of the Buddha."

Any critical reader will note that the examples given by Rahula in the first three sentences do not prove the sweeping claim of the final sentence. It should also be apparent that even if the final sweeping claim were proven false, that would not amount to disproof of the far more limited claims of the first three sentences.

In fact, taken by itself, this one paragraph is not sufficient to tell us what Rahula's position on "violence" is. There are other places where he reiterates his conflation of Buddhism with pacifism, as when he states that "It is too well known to be repeated here that Buddhism advocates and preaches non-violence and peace as its universal message, and does not approve of any kind of violence or destruction of life. According to Buddhism there is nothing that can be called a 'just war'."

But Rahula also makes frequent, and always approving, mention of "the great Buddhist Emperor Asoka of India" who set a "noble example of tolerance and understanding." In fact that is taken from just a half page or so prior to the four sentence paragraph quoted above. Rahula explicitly states than an absolute commitment to "non-violence, peace and love" did not interfere with Asoka's ability to "administer ... a vast empire in both internal and external affairs."

There is no evidence, nor has anyone, including Rahula, ever claimed, that Asoka disbanded his armies altogether, or in any other way renounced the basic right of national self-defense. Rather, Asoka renounced conquest, which is a very different thing!

Over 12 years ago Matthew Kosuta produced a thorough study of "The Military in the Pali Canon", in which he documented that while there is a "pacifist ethic" in Theravada Buddhism (of which Walpola Rahula is a modern representative), this "ethic" has always "coexisted" with "a strong military tradition ... side by side with the Buddhist ideal."

Kosuta's conclusion is that the Pali Canon (which is as close as one can get to the "original" teachings of the historical Buddha) "recognizes that, in a mundane perspective, the military is ever present, of high prestige, and even necessary in some circumstances for the protection of Buddhism." Kosuta tries to have it both ways by also claiming that "ultimately ... the military is not conducive to Buddhist ethics." But the facts Kosuta presents speak clearly: there was nothing new, or in any way "propagandistic", about Walpola Rahula's statements concerning non-violence. Whatever contraditions there might be in Rahula's position on violence have always been intrinsic to Buddhism's relationship to the "real world"!

What of the Dalai Lama? The message of non-violence that he has promoted is different from that of Walpola Rahula in two important ways: (1) His Holiness does explicitly renounce Tibet's right to military self-defense, and (2) this aspect of the Dalai Lama's message of non-violence is at variance with historical precedent in Tibetan Buddhism. But, nevertheless, the Dalai Lama's statements on non-violence do not support Jerryson's bizarre claim of propagandistic deception.

The Dalai Lama has not sought to mislead people about the historical position of Tibetan Buddhism with respect to self-defense. In fact, much of the Dalai Lama's argument concerning non-violence has always been directed precisely at his fellow Tibetans, many of whom believe that Tibet should fight against the Chinese just as Tibetans have always fought against foreign threats in the past. One of the most prominent critics of the Dalai Lama's pacifism was his own older brother, Taktser Rinpoche, who participated in military resistance to the Chinese occupation of Tibet in the 1950's and 60's.

Anyone with any real interest in Tibetan Buddhism will quickly learn that Tibet, which has been a Buddhist country for over a thousand years, has never been a pacifist nation. Tibet is far more accurately described as a warrior nation, and this did not change all that much when it became a Buddhist nation. That is not necessarily something that Tibetan Buddhists brag about, but it is the historical reality. But rather than bothering to study the history of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism, it appears that the sum total of Jerryson's knowledge of the subject is simply what he has gleaned from the "santaclausified" version of the Dalai Lama in the mainstream media, which merely demonstrates Jerryson's own incuriousness.

Finally, the Dalai Lama himself has at times conceded that even his pacifism is not absolute. In particular, on the question of terrorism His Holiness has on multiple occasions since the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks, indicated that a purely non-violent approach is not sufficient to respond to and protect against terrorism.

So once again there is no basis for Jerryson's claim to have been duped by the Dalai Lama, any more than he was tricked by Walpola Rahula. But what about D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966)? This is surely the weakest of Jerryson's "witnesses". Anyone at all familiar with Suzuki's writings knows that he was an ardent admirer and proponent of "Samurai" style Zen, of the Rinzai school variety. Only a moron could possibly make the claim the D.T. Suzuki engaged in "Buddhist propaganda" to convince the world that Buddhism is pacifistic. In fact, only an abject fool could for a moment believe that modern Japanese Zen is in any way pacifistic.

Of course there were a great many abject fools studying Japanese Zen during the 60' and 70's. Many of them are today among the most well known Zen teachers in the West. It is one of the great mysteries of the 20th century how it came to be that apparently none of these Zen students ever bothered to ask, "What did you do during the war, Roshi?" But whether or not they did ask such questions, and regardless of the answers given if they did, it was an open secret that if there had been any Japanese Zen Masters who openly opposed their government during the period of Empire and War they did not live long, certainly not long enough to travel to California after the war.

Here is what D.T. Suzuki wrote under the heading "Zen and the Samurai", which is the title of Chapter IV of his Zen and Japanese Culture:
It may be considered strange that Zen has in any way been affiliated with the spirit of the military classes of Japan. Whatever form Buddhism takes in the various countries where it flourishes, it is a religion of compassion, and in its varied history it has never been found engaged in warlike activities. How is it, then, that Zen has come to activate the fighting spirit of the Japanese warrior?

In Japan, Zen was intimately related from the beginning to the life of the samurai. Although it has never actively incited them to carry on their violent profession, it has passively sustained them when they have for whatever reason once entered onto it. Zen has sustained them in two ways, morally and philosophically. Morally, because Zen is a religion which teaches us not to look backward once the course is decided upon; philosophically, because it treats life and death indifferently. This not turning backward ultimately comes from teh philosophical conviction; but, being a religion of the will, Zen appeals to the samurai spirit morally rather than philosophically. From the philosophical point of view, Zen upholds intuition against intellection, for intuition is the more direct way of reaching the Truth. Therefore, morally and philosophically, there is in Zen a great deal of attraction for the military classes.
Much more could be said. But this is already much more than enough time and effort wasted on such foolishness.

10 comments:

Sean said...

Islam's implacable, unprovoked jihad against Buddhism

Hesiodos said...

Very good summary. Fortunately I knew of the Japanese Buddhist connection before getting the airy-fairy versions taught to me so was not disillusioned. I like what you wrote about Paganism. Do you think the "live and let live" attitude can stand against the "My way or the Highway" types of religion, such as Islam, et al?

Apuleius Platonicus said...

I think it is definitely a challenge to find ethical ways to deal with religious traditions, such as Christianity and Islam, that are intrinsically intolerant and violent.

However, it is not necessarily any more challenging that finding appropriate responses to fascism and other political ideologies that are intrinsically dangerous.

108maya said...

It doesn't seem like you have read the book, and I assume you haven't contacted the author.

Perhaps this is the best place to start? I read the report on Religion Dispatch, and I did not see what you saw.

You call him out for using the term "propaganda." Information, in itself, is propaganda, and I guess it depends how you interpret this word. If you take it in the Foucaltian sense, then yes, it is undeniable that a religious adherent will write "propaganda" about their specific religion. Hell, that is what you are doing right now (and what Jerryson did with his article).

You also appear to suggest you know more about the southern Thai conflict than him-- something I deeply suspect, since he seems to be one of the only ones writing on that subject.

Overall, what troubles me is that you are pontificating (which I guess is what a blog is for) about things you do not seem very well informed about.

For instance, Mark Juergensmeyer wrote a very good book called Terror in the Mind of God, which does a adequate job of covering Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Sikh and other religious forms of violence. Thus, I doubt he or Michael Jerryson need a history lesson in this area.

It also doesn't sound like you have read Donald Lopez' Prisoner's of Shangri-La, or the recent work on Buddhism and Science. These are very scholarly and careful research on the history of how we in the united states constructed Tibetan Buddhism.

Tessa Bartholmeusz, H.L. Seneviratne, Stanley Tambiah and others have written extensively on Walpola Rahula and his promotion of Buddhism militarism in Sri Lanka, and there is a virtual riverbed of sources on Japanese Buddhist militarism linked to Shaku Soen and D.T. Suzuki.

Did they reflect any of this militarism in their books, no-- as you aptly point out, and perhaps that is what Jerryson is getting at.

I just don't get the ad hominen attacks, especially in light of your apparent naivete about the book, the author, and these subject matters.

Apuleius Platonicus said...

108maya, as you correctly point out, it has already been well-established that Walpola Rahula was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a strict pacifist. The works you cite were published 5 (Bartholmeusz), 10 (Seneviratne), or almost 20 (Tambiah) years ago.

And none of the above sources tell us anything that a thorough study of the Pali Canon itself doesn't readily reveal, as Matthew Kosuta showed very nicely in his Master Thesis over 12 years ago: Buddhism has always been accepting, to some extent, of the necessity and even the "prestige" of a "strong military tradition."

And as I pointed out in the original post no one in their right mind EVER mistook D.T. Suzuki for a pacifist. Or a monastic, for that matter. Perhaps Jerryson doesn't even know the difference between D.T. Suzuki and Shunryu Suzuki? I wouldn't be surprised.

108maya said...

Apuleius Platonicus- so your critique is that Jerryson overassumes the general public's perception/understanding of Buddhism? It sounds as though you are more critical of his assumptive audience, than of the scholarship produced. This might be a valid point, and I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Apuleius Platonicus said...

108maya: "so your critique is that Jerryson overassumes the general public's perception/understanding of Buddhism?"

Not at all. I am criticizing Jerryson for what he himself says, in particular for his delusional accusations against the Dalai Lama, Walpola Rahula and D.T. Suzuki.

Of course the general public needs to be better informed about Buddhism. But Jerryson is engaged in disinformation, and he uses the most transparent straw man arguments (based upon his own misconceptions of Buddhism, not those of the general public) in order to support his histrionic polemics about Buddhism's "dark side".

Maybe he should be interviewed by Pat Robertson on the 700 club -- that's the target audience most suited to his Buddhism-bashing.

108maya said...

I don't see how you are connecting the dots. If you want, take it in and dissect it, but I am just not seeing your argument.

In the Dispatch article, Jerryson writes, "Since the early 1900s, Buddhist monastic intellectuals such as Walpola Rahula, D. T. Suzuki, and Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, have labored to raise Western awareness of their cultures and traditions."

Do you think this is delusional-- or "Buddhist bashing"? I don't, and I think it is a stretch to argue that. He continues,

"In doing so, they presented specific aspects of their Buddhist traditions while leaving out others."

Is this the part you feel is delusional and Buddhist bashing? I think we have already covered in the previous comments how Rahula and Suzuki did not discuss the contemporary militaristic Buddhism they preached in their own countries. This isn't a bad thing, but I don't see how what he is saying is delusional.

Finally, Jerryson ends this section by saying,

"These Buddhist monks were not alone in this portrayal of Buddhism. As Donald S. Lopez Jr. and others have poignantly shown, academics quickly followed suit, so that by the 1960s U.S popular culture no longer depicted Buddhist traditions as primitive, but as mystical."

So he is now discussing Lopez's work, which from your comments I assume you have not read. Do you feel his depiction of Lopez's work is delusional? Or that Lopez is delusional?

You just really seemed worked up and your emotions seem a bit misplaced here.

Apuleius Platonicus said...

108maya: In my original post I specifically looked at each of the three teachers that Jerryson names. In each case there is no evidence that they misrepresented Buddhist teachings in any way.

(This is aside from the fact that one of these three "Buddhist monastic intellectuals" was not a monastic at all.)

I also referred to a 12 year old paper that shows clearly that the Pali Canon (which represents something very close to the original teachings of the Buddha) has always included teachings about nonviolence alongside an attitude of acceptance and even respect for the military.

I also pointed out that the most famous Buddhist political leader of all time, Asoka (whom Gandhi greatly admired), never acted in accordance with the strict requirements of pacifism, which would have required the disbanding of his armies and the explicit renunciation of the principle of national self-defense, which he never did.

Jerryson claims that he is the victim of an intentional effort to deceive him. That is the hallmark of paranoid delusional thinking. Fortunately he names names, and when we look at those who are supposed to be conspiring to deceive Jerryson, we find that they are simply teaching the Buddhadharma very much as it has traditionally been taught for 2500 years.

The bottom line is that Jerryson had created a false image of Buddhism in his head, and when he realized he had been wrong, he blamed Buddhism for not living up to his fantasies. The guy needs a reality check, but instead he has decided to go on a delusional crusade to warn us all against the terrible danger to humanity posed by the Dark Side of Buddhism.

Dogen Uji said...

Part of what creates this controversy in Western society is the view, some have, that religion and politics inherently access distinct and uniquely separate domains, mapping their aspirations onto separate goals. Not so, particularly in Asia (historically). Aside from Myanmar there are a plethora of examples: say pre-communist China and the grip of Confucianism on the Imperial Court or Sri Lanka and the involvement of select Buddhist monks in government. This also extends to the West, though not extensively acknowledged openly. But how about the Thirty Years War (historically) or in the USA (i.e. "In God We Trust") or hand on the Bible at inaugurations, etc... A living example can be found by going to: scholar.google.com and searching for "A look at the Burmese Buddhist Sangha involvement in politics: Is the Sangha a political party?" Yes, my thesis at ProQuest but the abstract should say enough, unless you just want a copy of the thesis. I thought of accessing "Buddhist Warfare" but was more concerned with the specific subject under consideration.