Buddhist Warfare, chapter 5

Brian Daizen Victoria provides a refreshing counterpoint to the previous essays in his “Buddhological Critique of ‘Soldier-Zen’ in Wartime Japan,” in that he pulls no punches when he flatly states that nowhere in the basic tenets of the Buddha’s teachings is violence condoned or justified. In fact, he admits that he is attacking the concept that Buddhism is innately violent and that the teachings support violent actions under certain circumstances. His target – Japanese Zen.

“I come to the conclusion that, by virtue of its fervent if not fanatical support of Japanese militarism, the Zen school, both Rinzai and Sōtō, so grievously violated Buddhism’s fundamental tenets that the school was no longer an authentic expression of the Buddhadharma.”

Them’s fighting words coming from a self-identified Zennie himself: Victoria states that he is a Mahāyāna Buddhist in the Sōtō Zen tradition.

Victoria’s basic critique is that the dharma was corrupted by teachings that came to be known as “warrior Zen.” At the root of this is the idea that the warrior must extinguish the self completely and be totally devoted to the emperor. Victoria cites what Yamazaki Ekijū (chief abbot of the Buttsūji branch of the Rinzai Zen sect) wrote at the end of a book by Zen-trained Lt. Col. Sugimoto Gorō.

“Buddhists say that one should have faith in the Buddha, or Mahāvairocana, or Buddha Amita, but such faith is one that has been captured by religion. Japanese Buddhism must be centered on the emperor; for were it not, it would have no place in Japan, it would not be living Buddhism. Even Buddhism must conform to the national structure of Japan. The same holds true for Śākyamuni’s teachings.”

Victoria reveals that this line of reasoning is more than just ethnocentrism, because at the heart of this notion is that one group of living, sentient beings is superior to another group of living, sentient beings.

“To purposely inflict pain and suffering, let alone death, on one segment of beings under the guise of benefiting another part, however defined, can never be a part of a Buddhism rooted in the teachings of its founder.”

An important distinction ought to be noted here. What Victoria exposes is more than just a mere twisting of the Dharma to justify violent acts. The entire concept of warrior Zen, and other similar schools of thought, is a corruption of the Dharma so severe that it justifies identifying entire nations as enemies worthy of slaughter.

Victoria notes that this is based on a flawed interpretation of the Buddhist concept of no-self, which I hear often repeated by many others, to mean that there is no self at all. Victoria quotes scholar-priest Walpola Rahula to explain:

“According to the Buddha’s teaching, it is as wrong to hold the opinion ‘I have no self’ (which is annihilationist theory) as to hold the opinion ‘I have a self.’ Why? What we call ‘I’ or ‘being’ is only a combination of physical and mental aggregates, which are working together independently in a flux of momentary change within the law of cause and effect … there is nothing permanent, everlasting, unchanging and eternal in the whole of existence.”

A simple Buddhist concept – there is no permanent self – is corrupted into there is no self at all, and if there is no self at all, imagine what heinous acts can be justified? Not long, as Victoria reveals with an excerpt from the Rinzai Zen master Takuan addressing a patron, the highly accomplished swordsman Yagyū Tajima no Kami Munenori:

“The uplifted sword has no will of its own, it is all of emptiness. It is like a flash of lightning. The man who is about to be struck down is also of emptiness, and so is the one who wields the sword. None of them are possessed of a mind that has any substantiality. As each of them is of emptiness and has no ‘mind,’ the striking man is not a man, the sword in his hands not a sword, and the ‘I’ who is about to be struck down is like the splitting of the spring breeze in a flash of lightning.”

Gee, seems like a lot of people forgot about the Kalama Sutta, which guides us to test assertions to determine if they are true and comport with the Dharma. And as Victoria points out, it appears that many have forgotten the Buddha’s words in the Dhammapada:

“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.”

But this didn’t happen specifically or uniquely to Japanese warrior Zen; this corruption of the Dharma began much earlier in China with the Ch’an school that preceded Zen, which Liang Su criticized in the eighth century:

“Nowadays, few men have true faith. Those who travel the path of Ch’an go so far as to teach the people that there is neither Buddha nor Dharma, and that neither good nor evil has any significance. When they preach these doctrines to the average man, or men below average, they are believed by all those who live their lives of worldly desires. Such ideas are accepted as great truths that sound so pleasing to the ear. And the people are attracted to them just as moths in the night are drawn to their burning death by the candle light (italics added by Victoria).”

Victoria also flatly denies that a bodhisattva could possibly kill any other living being and have that killing justified. Victoria acknowledges the Mahayana concept of expedient means which seems to create loopholes for “compassionate violence.” To portray this, he cites the Lotus Sutra and the story of the burning house in which a loving father deliberately lies to save his children’s lives. What is interesting about this parable is that instead of it being used to explain how telling a lie may be necessary to save a life, it is used to show that the Buddha was a liar! The “lesser” vehicle really wasn’t true at all, asserts the Lotus Sutra; the Buddha only taught it as an expedient mean to bring believers to the “greater” vehicle.

Victoria concludes this chapter with a dire warning to we Westerners as we adopt Buddhism into our culture.

“As Buddhism continues its spread in an easterly direction (i.e., to the ‘West’), one critically important question is, how much of Buddhism’s historic proclivity to condone warfare as a function of the Buddhadharma will spread with it?”

Saigon suicide or supreme renunciation?

My unintended hiatus from blogging has been extraordinarily unsatisfactory. While I can certainly continue to write posts, I am hampered because I don’t have access to my image library until I purchase a new laptop and have my data from my old laptop transferred. My preference is to accompany my posts with images I made, photographs I took. I know I could get an external drive and just have the hard drive from my former unit removed, a route I may eventually take should I take much longer in determining what laptop to purchase. But today, I have a subject and I have an image (not my image, mind you).

As I have mentioned in the past, I have been reading the Lotus Sutra, the Leon Hurvitz translation. Along with this, chapter by chapter, I have been reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s, “Peaceful Action, Open Heart: Lessons from the Lotus Sutra.” Today I read the chapter “The Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King.”

Thich Nhat Hanh’s commentary on this chapter revealed something to me I had not known, and that is the Vietnamese monk who self immolated on a Saigon street in 1963 did so based on this particular chapter of the Lotus Sutra. For years this riveting image troubled me. Why would a Buddhist monk commit suicide? Because that is how I, and I imagine many others, viewed this act – suicide.

The monk’s name was Thich Quang Duc, with whom Thich Nhat Hanh had a personal relationship. Thay, a familiar name used to address Thich Nhat Hanh, had studied with Thich Quang Duc and had for a time stayed at the monk’s temple. But before detailing the background leading to this spectacular act, an image that spread throughout the world nearly as quickly as the flames spread about and consumed the monk’s body, let’s examine the root of this seemingly desperate action.

This chapter describes how the bodhisattva Seen with Joy by All Living Beings transforms into the Medicine King Bodhisattva. Thay’s description of Seen with Joy by All Living Beings as being someone who brings joy and happiness to others just by his presence includes the suggestion that we probably all know or have encountered such a person before. When I read that, I immediately thought of my late Uncle Alvin. As a child, I remember seeing him with others and regardless of whether it was an adult or a young child, everyone he met smiled and was happy.

This bodhisattva studied with the Buddha Pure and Bright Excellence of Sun and Moon and came to realize a state of deep concentration in which he understood clearly that his body was just one of many bodies he would have. Contemplation of the body as body is one of the key parts of the meditative practice with the goal of understanding that “I am not my body, my body is not me; body is just body.” While on one level I understand this idea, I have not “realized it.” Seen with Joy by All Living Beings did realize this ultimate truth and, using supernatural powers, he made many offerings to the Buddha Pure and Bright Excellence of Sun and Moon. But after this, Seen with Joy by All Living Beings decided he would make a final offering of his own body through self-immolation, before which he made this vow:

“Those buddhas who cough or who make a sound by snapping their fingers are informing all this world and this world sphere in all 10 quarters. These and other miraculous qualities do they show who have compassion for the world, thinking, ‘Now how shall they joyfully bear this scripture at that time, when the Well Gone One is at peace? For many thousands of millions of cosmic ages will I speak the praises of the sons of the Well Gone Ones, who shall bear the supreme scripture when the leader of the world is at peace.’”

As Seen with Joy by All Living Beings’ body slowly burned, it sent a light throughout the world. The gist of all this is that the Buddha Pure and Bright Excellence of Sun and Moon was so pleased that he said he would leave this world to enter Nibbana and that Seen with Joy by All Living Beings would take his place as the Medicine King Bodhisattva.

Fast forward to Vietnam circa 1963. Thich Nhat Hanh reports in his book, “Peaceful Action, Open Heart,” that Thich Quang Duc had been writing many letters to the government in Saigon to end its persecution of Buddhists. Despite Vietnam being overwhelmingly Buddhist, its president at that time, Dihn Diem, was a Catholic, a relic of the days when Vietnam was a French colony. President Dihn Diem had banned celebration of Vesak, the Buddha’s birthday. Christmas, instead, was declared a national holiday. Despite his many peaceful attempts to persuade the government to rescind its edict, Thich Quang Duc was rebuffed. On June 11, 1963, he sat down on a busy Saigon street, poured gasoline over his body, and in a serene meditative pose, he lit a match.

In a few months, Diem was ousted in a military coup. Of course, not all was well again in Vietnam as there were many bloody years still ahead. But reporting of Thich Quang Duc’s act was so quickly spread around the world others noticed, perhaps for the first time, that the people in a small country in Southeast Asia were suffering.

A person who commits suicide does so out of desperation; it is a selfish act to relieve oneself of his or her own personal suffering. Thich Nhat Hanh explains that Thich Quang Duc’s act was not selfish, but done for the benefit of others, out of compassion for the suffering of his countrymen. For most of us, this concept is probably difficult to grasp. I know it is difficult for me. But on some level, I get it.

And yet, when I think about Thich Quan Duc and what he did, and then think about my own practice and my own understanding of the Dhamma, I am acutely aware of how I am so like an infant; a whore for sensual pleasure, so easily distracted by the ephemeral enticements of this world.

Do not lie, except when …

There's a conflict regarding Right Speech has been gnawing at me for some time, and I’ve still yet to find a satisfactory resolution. And perhaps unsurprisingly, this conflict shows up when examining how the Pali canon treats the issue of lying versus how it is discussed in Mahayana texts.

In the Lotus Sutra, there are numerous examples of “expediency” when it comes to telling lies. The parable of the father saving his children from the burning house is a good example. He tells his children a lie to lure them out of the burning house to save their lives. The lie is that he has beautiful carts drawn by different animals for his children to play with. However, when they come outside, there is only one cart. The implication in this metaphor is that the Buddha taught other methods of attaining release as an expedient device to show his followers eventually there was really only one vehicle to follow.

Later in the Lotus Sutra there is another story of a physician whose children took poison while he was away. He prepares a cure, but not all of his children take the cure; they are satisfied merely with the fact their father has returned from his absence. So the doctor concocts another expedient device by leaving again, this time having a false message relayed back to his children that he had died. Because he was dead, they would need to take the medicine to remove the poison, which they did. He then returns to show that he did not die; rather he lied to them to get them to do something beneficial for them.

This again alludes to the Buddha teaching the “lesser vehicles” as an expedient device to lead followers to the “greater vehicle.” All quite convenient, if you ask me. But snarky comment aside, I get the message: telling a lie can be skillful if the lie gets another to do something beneficial.

But does that conflict with the Pali canon when it comes to the teachings about lying in the suttas? I don’t think you can get any clearer than what the Buddha told his son Rahula:

“… Rahula, when anyone feels no shame in telling a deliberate lie, there is no evil, I tell you, he will not do. Thus, Rahula, you should train yourself, ‘I will not tell a deliberate lie even in jest.’”

I get that too; perhaps even more so than the “expedient device” concept presented in the Lotus Sutra. Because if we believe that something is being done to accomplish a greater good, then we can rationalize anything we say or do. History is filled with examples of when cruel and horrible acts were justified because a “greater good” was being sought. So I’m just not convinced that the teaching about “expedient devices” within the Lotus Sutra is a skillful one. But I admit the jury is still out.

Forming a skillful response

We Buddhists have recently been faced with a challenge of faith, so to speak. Public figures from all across the globe have publicly commented on Buddhism in ways that many of us consider, to put it mildly, ignorant. There was the Rev. Rony Tan in Singapore of the Christian evangelical group Lighthouse, who used the dubious example of an allegedly former monk as an opportunity to denigrate Buddhism; there was Brit Hume of Fox News who inarticulately suggested that Tiger Woods ought to abandon his Buddhist practice and turn to Christianity where he would find the type of forgiveness that Hume suggested Buddhism did not have; and more recently we had Bill Maher who used Tiger Woods’ adulterous activities as an opportunity to bash Buddhism so clumsily that the normally erudite Maher sounded like a 12-year-old who asserts he’s an expert on sex after his first orgasm from masturbating.

We Buddhists who also happen to be gay are quite familiar with this type of ignorance. We’ve heard it from the people who like to lump homosexuals with pedophiles, suggesting that the terms are interchangeable; who assert that allowing same-sex couples to marry will surely lead down a slippery slope to humans marrying animals, that the institution of marriage will be so irreparably harmed that no decent straight person would want it; who stridently fight to deny us equal protection under the law, wrongly asserting that our “condition” is voluntary and chosen, failing to recognize that their protected religious affiliation is also voluntary and chosen; and who, when these straw men are knocked down, finally resort to that last refuge for those who have no rational argument by saying that homosexuals are sinful deviants who are despised by their deity because the Bible tells them so.

How do we respond to such ignorance? Should we respond to such ignorance? What could happen if we fail to respond to such ignorance?

John over at Sweep the Dust, Push the Dirt, recently asked these questions, which provoked a lengthy discussion in the comments to his post. You should take the time to read the responses if you haven’t already. Very interesting.

There are several passages in the Buddhist canon – from both the Pali texts and Mahayana sutras – that provide us clear guidance in this matter so we don’t need to debate when or how to respond to these situations.

First, there is the Brahmajala Sutta, in which the Buddha guides monks how to respond when someone misrepresents or disparages the Buddha, the Dhamma, or the Sangha.

“Bhikkhus! If others should malign the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Samgha, you must not feel resentment, nor displeasure, nor anger on that account.

“Bhikkhus! If you feel angry or displeased when others malign the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Samgha, it will only be harmful to you (because then you will not be able to practice the dhamma).

“Bhikkhus! If you feel angry or displeased when others malign the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Samgha, will you be able to discriminate their good speech from bad?

“No, indeed, Venerable Sir!” said the bhikkhus.

“If others malign me or the Dhamma, or the Samgha, you should explain (to them) what is false as false, saying ‘It is not so. It is not true. It is, indeed, not thus with us. Such fault is not to be found among us.’”

In the chapter titled Fortitude within the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha’s followers acknowledge that there will be times when they shall encounter people who “shall have much overweening pride and shall covet offerings, though their unwholesome faculties shall increase and they shall be hard to teach and convert, yet we, rousing the strength of great forbearance, will read and recite this scripture, bear and preach it, write and copy it, and in a variety of ways make offerings to it, not begrudging even bodily life.”

The chapter on Fortitude goes on with the many bodhisattvas proclaiming their understanding that an “evil age” will come when “…ignorant men … that revile us with foul mouths, or attack us with knives and staves … Men of twisted wisdom, their hearts sycophantic and crooked, (who) say they already have attained what in fact they have not yet attained, their hearts being full of pride.”

Faced with such calumny, the bodhisattvas proclaim, “Out of veneration for the Buddha, we will endure all these evils. By them we shall be addressed with derision … Such words of derision as these we will all endure with patience… We, venerating and believing the Buddha, will don the armor of forbearance and, to preach this scripture, will endure these troubles.”

This forbearance is anchored in the Four Ways of the Bodhisattva, which Thich Nhat Hanh describes as first being able to “dwell in a place of action.”

This means, “practicing patience and seeking harmony with others in everything that you do. If you are patient and tolerant of others, then you can create peace and joy for yourself, and thanks to that, those around you will also feel peaceful and joyful. Patience is not a weakness, but a stance of moderation and restraint. You do not try to force people to adopt your views,” says Thich Nhat Hanh in his book, “Peaceful Action, Open Heart: Lessons from the Lotus Sutra.”

Thich Nhat Hanh goes on to say that we shouldn’t directly engage “those who have worldly power, who practice wrong livelihood, or who have wrong intentions. This does not mean that you reject such people, but you do not seek them out to try and convert them.”

Developing and sustaining such restraint so that our responses are skillful is no easy task. We can be easily duped by ego into believing our intentions are correct and, subsequently, our actions are skillful. Which is why it is helpful to consider the Buddha’s teaching to his son Rahula on the importance of clearly reflecting on our intentions and actions not just before we engage in them, but during and after, discerning if what we are doing is, in fact, skillful and beneficial.

So out of all this, we see that responding to these and other events can be done skillfully, that we needn’t be silent doormats. But our response needs to be tempered and evenhanded for it to be skillful, something I struggle with all the time. Because what is the Dhamma? It is merely a raft we use to carry us across the river of samsara to the side of freedom. Once we cross that river, we abandon the raft. So if we become passionate about the Dhamma, that results in us clinging uncomfortably to something that we must ultimately let go.

Accepting the disease to bring the cure?

After a lapse, I have resumed my reading of the Lotus Sutra. Actually, I think I am “reading” too many Buddhist texts and commentaries all at once, and that tends to interfere with the flow. But while reading Chapter 8 in the Lotus Sutra, the “Receipt of Prophecy by Five Hundred Disciples,” I found a passage that immediately got me thinking of the recent discussion about alcohol use in general by lay practitioners and by some monastics.

For example, Nathan at Dangerous Harvests has this post about a monk who has a bar where he pours drinks while dispensing Dhamma. The intention appears to be reaching a younger demographic and attract it to Buddhism, even if it means the temporary encouragement of breaking the precepts. And at Sweep the Dust, Push the Dirt, John has a post about alcohol consumption in general by the laity that also included a video of a rapping monk.

These methods could be reasonably explained as “expedient devices,” a phrase frequently mentioned in the Lotus Sutra. The idea, as I understand it, is that methods may be employed that on the surface may appear to be Wrong View, but which are justified by the end goal of presenting the Dhamma to as many people as possible and convert them to the “pure Dhamma;” a sort of Buddhist style of the ends justifying the means.

The relevant passage in the Lotus Sutra that got me thinking about this follows:

“Inwardly concealing their bodhisattva conduct and outwardly showing themselves to be voice hearers, though of slight desires and disgusted with birth-and-death, they are in fact, and of their own accord, purifying Buddha lands. Showing the multitude that they (themselves) have the three poisons (greed, hatred, delusion), and also displaying the signs of wrong views, my disciples, too, in the same way, by resort to expedient devices rescue the beings.”

This is a very interesting passage to me for a couple reasons. One is the simplicity of the idea that if you want to save beings from suffering, you must go to where they are suffering. This concept is not uniquely Buddhist. Jesus, for example, intentionally hung out with the poor, money lenders, prostitutes and lepers – all classes of people that were viewed with disdain and fear by the larger “pious” population. Jesus, as we recalled, allegedly changed water into wine so that a wedding party could carry on.

The other reason, however, is the danger inherent in such an “expedient device.” The Buddha mentions that these “future Buddhas” that he is talking about are “disgusted” with the cycle of birth and death despite the fact that they still possess “slight desires.” That, in my view, is a dangerous concept for a deluded mind to grasp onto. The key, it seems, to being a successful bodhisattva attempting anything like this is to have clearly cultivated a personal disgust with the cycle of birth and death, because without that sentiment but still possessing “slight desires,” venturing such a path of liberating others and bringing them to the true Dhamma would surely fail with one’s own demise.

Even those listening to the Buddha talk of this admit their own delusions at thinking they had already found liberation.

Now, of course, if this passage is the origin of such “expediencies” such as the monk with the bar, that would mean one needs to accept the validity of the Lotus Sutra, that what it states is indeed what the Buddha said.

I am interested in your thoughts about this. Is there a test for us to employ to see if such teachers are sincere and not just fellow schmucks spreading delusion? Or is the Lotus Sutra itself a form of expediency, solely written by authors who wanted some loopholes in the Dhamma to accommodate their own personal delusions, and not at all related to anything the Buddha taught?

What is love?

Love is a tricky – and sticky – emotion that does everything from creating bliss to confusion and even anger. And when we lose love, the sorrow can be overwhelming. It is one of the sources of dukkha that the Buddha talked about: we fear separation from the beloved.

From the Sammaditthi Sutta:

“And what is stress? Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; not getting what one wants is stressful. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are stressful. This is called stress.”

And from the Maha-parinibbana Sutta:

“Yet, Ananda, have I not taught from the very beginning that with all that is dear and beloved there must be change, separation, and severance?”

The entire Piyajatika Sutta is about this, describing how it is the people we love and care about that are the primary source of our sorrow because any change in them, their loss, or even just the thought of losing them, causes distress.

I have been reading the Lotus Sutra, which has a really quite amazing chapter in it regarding love called “Belief and Understanding,” also known as the “Parable of the Destitute Son.”

The Cliff Notes version of this chapter is a wealthy man loses his son while his son is still a very young man. The son abandons the family to wander about, eventually running out of luck to wind up living destitute. The father gave up searching for him and settled in a town where the father became enormously successful in business – so successful that even the heads of government paid homage to him. Fifty years after his son disappears, the son returns, although he cannot remember who his father is or what he looks like. He sees this rich man and thinks he’d better leave or someone might think he’s trying to steal something. The son attempts to sneak away, but his father sees him and recognizes him. He sends out servants to stop his son, but the son becomes so frightened, thinking that he’s being accused of stealing, that he passes out from fear.

The father realizes that his son has lived for so long away from home, and has lived such a hard life, that the son would never believe that he was heir to this rich man. So when the son wakens, the father tells him he is free to go. This overwhelms the son with joy, that he isn’t going to be imprisoned and falsely accused. The father then sets out to slowly express his love, first by showing the son compassion, offering him a menial job of sweeping dung, providing him with very basic housing. Over time, the son comes to trust and respect his father, but refuses to come live within the household, staying instead in his tiny hut. But after 20 years, the son’s responsibilities have been elevated to the point that he is then tasked with taking an accounting of his father’s wealth without any supervision. The son honors the task and takes an honest accounting, not stealing anything. Then just before the father dies, he reveals to everyone that this ragged man is in fact his son and shall inherit all his wealth. At this time, the son is ready to recognize his true father and accept the love that he’s offered him all along.

This is a really powerful parable for me because it shows so well how someone with such deep love for another can have the resolve and the patience to express it, to do so without pressure, without clinging, by leaving the object of that love – the man’s son in this case – completely free. It is very difficult to love someone in this manner, but it is the only true way to love someone.

I would like to thank my friend Jimmy Huang for the image posted with this blog. He has an amazing eye for photography and he has graciously granted me permission to use his photos from time to time.