Debating a monk is dukkha

Have you ever tried to point out to a monk that he just might be full of shit? It’s not an easy thing to do, because let me tell you, some monks are very adept at turning the tables and making you out to be the problem, that it’s your delusion operating here, not theirs.

I stumbled into such a debate after seeing a post on the Heartland Singapore Facebook page. It was referring to a post at buddhavacana.net, which appears to be a message board. There are other, blog-like pages on this site, but it doesn’t appear to be very active. Anyway, you can read my heresy by following the link I provided.

The gist of this began with a question emailed to the monk administering the page: “Can a gay person be ordained as a monk/nun?”

Bhante Shi Chuanguan replied with this: “Heterosexual men and women have to transcend their heterosexual desires if they are going to be ordained. Similarly, gay person can be ordained as a monk/nun, as long as this person can transcend this inclination.”

Me thinks I detect a double standard here.

As an aside, the Venerable Ashin Sopaka had a very pithy comment on the Heartland Facebook page, to which I will return later. But my response on the forum was to say I thought the answer provided, as well as an answer provided by another presumed monastic, was drawing a distinction between straight people seeking ordination and gays seeking ordination, that each was to be treated differently.

The Bhante said that straights had to “transcend their heterosexual desires,” while a gay person had to “transcend this inclination.”

This inclination? So the straight person need only renounce his or her sexual desires, while the gay has to renounce being gay? In other words, renounce his or her sexuality. What’s up with that?

You can read my entire reply on the message board, as I waxed very eloquent and pontificated like a true queen in heat. Perhaps that was a bit rash, because Bhante replied and suggested that, “Your inference that there is such a prejudicial idea is what is prejudicial.”

Moi? OK, OK, you can read my reply to that bit of obfuscation, because clearly this Bhante wanted to paint me the ignorant dualistic thinking bitter fag and a poor victim of all that nasty hate in the world, which, I would point out, often begins with narrow-minded and atavistic interpretations of religious doctrine by Paleolithic thinkers such as him. But I digress.

What I want to do is now return to Ashin Sopaka’s comment on the Heartland Facebook page. Ashin Sopaka succinctly points out that apparently the requirement to enter the monastery and seek ordination is to already be an enlightened being. Doesn’t the requirement that a gay first “transcend this inclination” mean that one must have renounced all notion of self, which can only be achieved upon enlightenment?

Seems to me that all the monastic code requires is that the monk or nun abstains from any form of sexual activity. That living in a monastery is the venue through which a monk or nun practices the doctrine to eventually transcend all fabricated notions of identity, whether they are sexual or otherwise. What “inclinations” remain in the unenlightened mind is irrelevant to anyone else in the monastery, as it is the duty of the monk or nun to peel back the layers of delusion and clinging within his or her own mind to ultimately attain freedom.

I’m sure Bhante Shi Chuanguan is a very wise man and knows his Dhamma pretty well. But his understanding of gay people, in my opinion, is no better than your average homophobe.

Update: I am pleased to say that Shi Chuanguan replied to my comments in a manner suggesting that we are coming together to a closer understanding.

Who will watch the watchers?

A recent story in the Chicago Tribune has rightly outraged many. The specter of clergy sexually abusing minors has revealed itself in the Sangha, as well as the pernicious practice of enabling the monk perpetrators through “sending them away” to places where they wind up re-offending. The sad thing, in my mind, is that you could substitute “priest” wherever you see “monk” and “Catholic Church” for the temple’s cited. It’s the same enabling behavior: rather than directly dealing with the offender, he is shuffled off to re-offend.

But don’t get carried away with that analogy.

Our reactions to this story, which by the way is not “new” because even this specific event has been developing for more than a decade, reflect both our bewilderment and our anger. But while for many of us our initial reaction is to “rage against the machine,” where does it get us? Is that our best response?

It is easy to see parallels in this situation, which I repeat is nothing new, with what’s happened in the Catholic Church. Both have traditions in which the clergy take vows of celibacy and both are dealing inappropriately with violations of that vow through secrecy and shuffling clergy around. But the similarity ends there.

The Catholic Church is a world-wide organization with a central authority. Its entire administrative structure is based upon this authority, and while the Vatican moves agonizingly slow, it is an authority to which congregants can turn to petition or seek to influence. There is a dearth of similar administrative structures or hierarchies for Buddhism in America, and with Theravada, there are none.

This is not a “Theravada” problem as it is not an institutional problem. Theravada, or the way of the elders, is not broken. Theravada is no more broken than Zen is broken, the latter of which has also seen its share of sexual misconduct among its clergy. To say that there is a problem within Theravada that needs to be addressed is no different from the one made by the editors of “Buddhist Warfare,” that Buddhism has a problem with violence.

There is a problem, yes, but not with Theravada per se.

With the Catholic Church, it is an institutional problem because the failure of appropriate response lies within the institutional hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. But there is no “institution” of Theravada. All the individual congregations have their own boards that answer to no higher authority. Proclamations of “Theravada, fix yourself” are specious and meaningless.

Whose problem is it then? Because clearly this is a problem that requires our attention. While I knew how I felt, I didn’t know how to respond. So I asked four monks who reside both in the U.S. and Southeast Asia. What can a layperson do? Are there oversight organizations that can be pressured? Reasoned with?

While I have not heard back from all of them, the responses I did receive were simultaneously unsurprising and vexing. It goes back to the culture issue: many of these congregations are based upon an ethnic community that doesn’t have the same tradition of openness and confrontation that we have in America in particular and in the West in general. And the other issue is what ecumenical or administrative organization is there that exists to exert pressure on? When you’re angry, who do you shout at? Who has authority over these sanghas?

Shravasti Dhammika replied, in part, to my query with the following: "I have long been an advocate of the idea that ultimately, to move ahead, Western Buddhists will have to gently and politely ‘part company’ from traditional Asian Buddhism. The values, assumptions and attitudes of the two are just too different...We Westerners have enough problems of our own, getting involved in ethnic Buddhists’ wastes energy, leads to resentment and changes nothing. Let’s walk our own path."

While I do not subscribe to the notion of Hinayana – the Lesser Vehicle – when describing Theravada or the Thai Forest Tradition, the way it is manifested, the practices that it adheres too, certainly make it come off as a teeny-weeny wagon mired in twisted and misogynistic doctrine.

And after viewing the vibrant and at times acrimonious discussion at Sujato’s blog regarding secular Buddhism versus traditional practices, I am increasingly of the mind that Buddhism in America needs a Reformation of its own.

This is an important question for American and other Western Buddhists as more and more Westerners adopt Buddhism while at the same time its various iterations are increasingly co-existing literally closer to each other: Thai and Cambodian Theravada temples within blocks of Tibetan meditation centers that are close to Zen groups operating in store fronts and SGI groups meeting informally in homes in many neighborhoods. No longer are the various schools and vehicles physically separated by countries or other much larger geographic divisions. For crying out loud, I bet 90 percent of the non-Buddhist world thinks that the Dalai Lama is the leader of all Buddhists!

Many of us may rebel against the idea of a “centralized” Buddhist structure that oversees congregations and establishes parameters, and there is merit in their worry. But if Buddhism is allowed to gradually erode into a populist practice in which anyone who writes anything and gets it published is suddenly a guru who doesn’t know or care a whit about Dhamma, then we all might was well start dropping acid right now and walk the road of hedonism and nihilism, because that’s where such a road leads.

Conversely, Buddhism cannot be and never really was a fixed doctrine. Frankly, most of the Vinaya the Buddha made up as he went along, reacting to certain situations that arose at the time. Now that the Buddha’s gone, however, the Vinaya and Tipitika are treated like some sacrosanct text that cannot be changed and even contemplating a review of it would be considered heresy.

Yet it is this blind allegiance to doctrine that gives us a Thai Forest Tradition that can’t come to grips with ordaining women, a Zen culture in which the teacher is considered infallible, a Mahayana sentiment filled with bodhisattvas that can’t pay their own bills but they’re gonna save every sentient being, and a Tibetan culture that deifies superstition.

Things have changed in the monastic community and many of us may not be aware of that. Arun from Angry Asian Buddhist reminded me of an excellent point. In the past, families in Asia sent their children to the Sangha for education, but nowadays, education has been largely secularized. Trips to the Sangha are less frequent. In fact, it is losing support in some regions. Add to this the growing desire and pressure to succeed in life, to get a professional degree; in the past those motivated to learn, think abstractedly and were of high intelligence were attracted to the monastic tradition, but has that attraction disappeared? And if so, how is that affecting the quality of those who do enter the Sangha to seek ordination? If all the smart and ambitious ones are going to graduate school, what does that leave for the Sagha in terms of new recruits?

Granted, the Sangha has done great things for young men who made poor decisions, drank excessively, gambled, used drugs, etc. But some of these men are also being ordained and sent off to the U.S. to guide their own community of immigrants and do so on their own without guidance or support. These young men are placed in positions of authority to watch over a devout and, most likely, naïve congregation.

Who is watching the watchers?

In the meantime, young women and boys are preyed upon by those whom they thought they could trust.

Perhaps it is time that Buddhism in America takes a look at how physicians are managed. Medical doctors who received their degree overseas, but who desire to practice in the U.S., are treated just like residency students and required to go through a residency program before being licensed here. I know two medical doctors, one who received his degree in the Philippines and the other who received his degree in Taiwan. Both are licensed physicians in their home country, but for them to practice in the U.S. they must go through a residency program here just like someone fresh out of an American medical school.

But someone trained to be a Buddhist cleric and ordained in Thailand, Nepal, Japan, or anywhere else can come here and start a congregation with virtually no oversight.

Maybe that needs to change.

Making a chai tae out of a kathoey, or real man out of a fag

Got a sissy-boy child? Send him to a reparative therapist who attests he or she can “straighten” your boy out. Even if it kills him. Literally.

These types of “clinics” and “therapists” were fairly common in the not-too-distant past in the United States, but for the most part have been professionally ridiculed as not only ineffective, but as psychological quackery and mental torture. There remain a few who still push this dangerous fake therapy, the most infamous being the laughable George Rekers.

More recently, similar clinics have turned up in Malaysia, which is led by a homophobic Islamic (is that redundant?) government that has for years been trying to convict a dissident of sodomy. These clinics were for “sissy boys” and asserted they could turn your sissy boy into a real man. Unsurprisingly, many reparative therapists took up the torch – oh, how ironic – to practice this voodoo psychology in Malaysia where they found a willing client: The Malaysian government, which allegedly forced boys into the treatment centers. Despite international condemnation, the Malaysian government essentially replied with a hearty “fuck you.”

A side note: To really understand Malaysia’s antipathy toward gays, you need to know the history behind the government’s attempt to denounce and prosecute dissident Anwar Ibrahim. The government wants to get rid of him so badly, but the only thing they can come up with is an accusation of sodomy.

But I digress. Because that’s not the end of it. While it may not surprise you that conservative Christian groups and Islamic groups continue to support efforts to change one’s sexuality, it may surprise you to learn that Buddhist organizations, teachers and even various Sanghas have been involved in reparative therapy as well. And a recent news report of a particular Thai Sangha’s involvement in treating so-called “ladyboys” infuriates me no end, as this strikes me as a complete corruption of the Dhamma as well as some of the worst kind of homophobia I’ve seen.

To get a good grasp about how this issue operates in Thailand and most of Southeast Asia, one needs to understand both how the Sangha fits into Thai culture, as well as understand the history of the kathoey, or ladyboy, both in Thai culture and Buddhist history. For this explanation, I’m going to rely heavily on a work by Peter A. Jackson called “Male Homosexuality and Transgenderism in the Thai Buddhist Tradition.” Granted, this work dates back to 1993, but it nonetheless presents excellent background on this issue.

There remains a very strong link between the Sangha and lay community in SE Asia, where families in Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia send their boys to the Sangha for short periods where they learn Dhamma and live as a novice monk. Some decide to stay. Most return to their families and lay life. This is such a strong tradition that a recent survey revealing that many Thais no longer support the Sangha like they had in the past has made headlines in the local press.

Many may have a perspective that Thais are generally very tolerant and accepting of homosexuality. After all, sex clubs have been ubiquitous in Bangkok and Pataya (not as much so in Phuket), and if you type the search terms “ladyboy” and “Thailand” into Google, you’ll get a plethora of results for various websites offering a variety of services performed by such ladyboys.

True, there are no laws against homosexual activity in Thailand as there are in Malaysia to the south, but to conclude that homosexuality is widely accepted in Thailand would be very unskillful. It’s not uncommon for Thai police to raid gay bars just for the hell of it, much like police did in the U.S. during the 1950s and 1960s. What made the attitude different in Thailand from that in the West, Jackson points out, was the Thai attitude toward homosexuality was largely diffused: it lacked a specific target. The AIDS epidemic in Thailand changed all that; it gave people who initially harbored vague feelings of antipathy toward homosexuals an opportunity to target aggressive hatred.

But where did this seed of homophobia come from? Believe it or not, it came from several Thai Buddhist teachers from the past whose homophobic interpretations of the Tipitika have been carried forward by more recent members of the Thai Sangha. As was largely the case with Christianity and Biblical texts, the Buddhist canon contains sections referring to certain, specific sexual activity and attitudes. But given the fact that there was no Western concept of homosexuality 2,500 years ago in Asia, modern Buddhist “interpreters” have tended to force the concept of homosexuality onto Pali terms and descriptions of activity that appear similar to what the Western mind labels as “homosexual.”

Another thing to keep in mind is the Pali canon, and Thai Buddhism in particular, contains a very strong anti-sex message directed specifically toward monks.

“That which is called methunadhamma is explained as: the dhamma of an unrighteous man (asattapurisa), the conduct of the common people, the manners of the low, dhamma which is evil and crude, dhamma whose end is but water, an activity which should be hidden, the dhamma which couples should perform together.” (Vinaya, Vol. 1, p.49)

While the message was strident, it did not differentiate between forms. All types of sex were covered: it didn’t matter what a monk stuck his penis into, such activity always carried the same result – the monk had failed and was usually expelled from the Sangha. But a distaste for all forms of sex, even among the laity, found its way into the commentaries of many Thai Buddhist writers. Jackson writes:

“Significantly, contemporary Thai Buddhist views on laypersons' sexual behaviour are often more proscriptive and extreme than attitudes reflect in the Pali canon or in traditional or popular Thai accounts of Buddhist doctrine and ethics. Phra Buddhadasa's work has been especially influential among educated and middle class Thai Buddhists. However, his views on sexuality are at variance with Thai Buddhism's traditional distinction between lay and clerical ethical conduct. The ethical extremism of Phra Buddhadasa and other contemporary Buddhist reformists in Thailand such as Phra Phothirak results from a clericalising trend whereby ethical demands traditionally made only of monks are now increasingly also being required of laypersons.”

This anti-sex attitude remains to this day not only in the Thai Sangha, but to a large extent within general Thai society among the laity in the form of homophobia.

The term "kathoey" in Thai loosely translates as "ladyboy" and has a somewhat interesting history in Buddhist literature. The term has been translated to include everything from hermaphrodites to being a descriptive term for a weakling or eunuch. The Pali term pandaka has been used to describe virtually any sexual deviant, but was most frequently used to describe homosexual activity. Jackson writes:

“But whether or not Buddhism has been instrumental in influencing the development of the popular Thai notion, a very similar mixing of physical and psychological sex, gender behaviours and sexuality occurs both in the Pali terms pandaka and in the Thai term kathoey. Both terms are parts of conceptual schemes in which people regarded as exhibiting physiological or culturally ascribed features of the opposite sex are categorised together. If Buddhism was not the source of the popular Thai conception of kathoey then at the very least it has reinforced a markedly similar pre-existing Thai cultural concept.”

Jackson further states that the term kathoey has largely transformed in general Thai vernacular to be used to describe any gay man, whether a cross-dresser or straight-acting, so nowadays it essentially translates as "fag."

It is unfortunate that so many Thai commentators and their subsequent followers developed and promoted such anti-gay sentiments as there are some very interesting references in the Pali canon to the Buddha showing great tolerance toward those whose sexual identity did not follow the norm.

There was Ananda, the Buddha’s cousin and personal attendant, who allegedly was born a kathoey in many previous lives and who became an arahant shortly after the Buddha became enlightened. And there is the story of Vakkali, who was enamored with the Buddha. The Buddha rebuked Vakkali for constantly staring lustfully at the Buddha, but his rebuke was not a “stop looking at me that way gay boy,” but rather, stop falling into the trap of sensual attachment. Nonetheless, the Buddha told Vakkali to go away. Jackson writes:

"Vakkali was so shattered by this command that he attempted to kill himself by jumping off a mountain. But deva or spiritual beings informed the Buddha of Vakkali's dejection and he quickly went to the monk's aid in time to save him from committing suicide. With an extremely brief exposition of the dhamma, 'The eyes see dhamma,' the Buddha gave Vakkali the insight he needed in order to attain enlightenment and he immediately attained arahantship."

Nonetheless, there is a proscription against ordaining a pandaka that is attributed to the Buddha based on a tale in the Vinaya about a monk who was running around the Sangha asking the young monks to “fuck me, fuck me.” When they didn’t oblige, the pandaka went to the elephant stables and again pleaded with the men there to “fuck me, fuck me.” When the Buddha heard about this, he expelled the pandaka because he was concerned what the lay community might think about the Sangha. This has created considerable controversy today over whether openly gay men should be allowed to be ordained.

Now we arrive to the year 2011 when effeminate boys are being sent to Sanghas where monks are attempting to transform them from being pandaka or kathoey into real men, or chai tae. At work here is probably centuries of indoctrinated homophobia.

The renunciation of sexual desire, whether same-sex or opposite-sex, is for the monastic community and has everything to do with renouncing sensual pleasure of all types. For the monks to teach these “ladyboys” to become "real men" would mean guiding these boys in the ways of hetero sex. The fact that monks would even venture into that territory at all with young novices strikes me as a serious corruption of Dhamma, as well as a particularly virulent form of homophobia sustained by reactionary abbots who don't know what to do with the ordained ladyboys in their midst.

And again we come back to the psychological trauma such reparative therapy can create in young minds. This isn’t the ending of suffering, this constitutes the nurturing and encouragement of suffering. Many of these boys will simply reject the efforts and return to their previous ways after they leave the Sangha. But others may likely be so traumatized that they commit suicide or develop seriously self-destructive behaviors. From being happy, these boys are “transformed” into miserable waifs.

Shameful. Shameful. Where is Rahula when you need him? Where is the water dipper?

Buddhist Warfare, chapters 2, 3, and 4

I know that I said that I would write a post about each chapter in “Buddhist Warfare”, but as I am reading the collection, I’m realizing that I’ll never get through it if I stick to that. So there will be times, such as this one, when I combine various chapters into one post and others when a post will be devoted to a single chapter.

One of the book’s editors, Michael Jerryson, mentions in the Introduction two key questions critical to how a reader interprets the contents of the book: “How can Buddhist scripture be interpreted for warfare? And how is it interpreted for warfare?”

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 readily follow this line of thought by focusing in rather specific ways. Of course, the danger with such specificity is that the argument gets lost in the larger context: do the examples cited in these chapters represent fairly the core teachings of the Buddha? In my opinion, they most certainly do not.

Chapter 2, by Stephen Jenkins, is titled “Making Merit through Warfare and Torture According to the Ārya-Bodhisattva-gocara-upāyyavisaya-vikurvana-nirdeśa Sūtra,” which means the conclusions of this chapter are based entirely on this single sutra. It is essentially a sutra filled with rationalizations, but it is worth pointing out the connection this sutra has with earlier writings in the Pali canon.

This sutra presents the dialogue between an ascetic named Satyavaca Nirgranthaputra and a king. Satyavaca also appears in the Majjhima Nikaya as the ascetic Saccaka. Jenkins says the two suttas in the Majjhima Nikaya in which Saccaka appears describe him as “a clever and aggressive anti-Buddhist debater.” When he engages the Buddha in debate, Saccaka asserts that his material form is self, perception is self, formations are self, and consciousness is self. The Buddha’s reply to Saccaka shows the connection to the later Mahayana sutra, which is to ask Saccaka if a king has the authority to execute those who ought to be executed; Saccaka replies that a king has this type of authority.

However, the Buddha asking this question doesn’t necessarily mean that the Buddha agrees that a King should exercise that authority. He is merely developing an argument using terms familiar to Saccaka to refute the ascetic’s assertion that body is self, that perception is self, that formations are self, and that consciousness is self. The trick gets Saccaka to agree that a king has such power, but then the Buddha asks Saccaka whether he has such power to control or determine his own form. Saccaka is silent and remains silent despite the Buddha repeating his question three times. The Buddha even warns Saccaka that to refuse to answer results in one’s head being split into seven pieces, whereupon a thunderbolt-wielding spirit shows up with the obvious intent of doing just that if Saccaka fails to reply.

Is this then an example of the Buddha forcing Saccaka “under threat of death,” as Jenkins suggests, to admit that a king has the power of execution? Or was the Buddha seeking to have Saccaka realize that his body is not self because he doesn’t have the authority of a king to demand what form he shall take? That he has no control, like a king, to direct his feelings, etc.? And is not the language used by the author of the sutta, written well after the Buddha’s death, reflective of the imagery associated with rural south Asia at the time? Was there really a thunderbolt-wielding spirit threatening to split Saccaka’s head open? Or was this colorful language added to add drama to the sutta?

Granted, run-of-the-mill people at the time, and to a large degree today still, believed these spirits to be real entities capable of interfering with their lives. To suggest that the presence of such language is evidence of a violent nature within Buddhism is more than a bit of a stretch in my view, however.

Jenkins then goes on to extrapolate from the later Mahayana sutra evidence of how a king is guided in the proper method of war and use of violence. There are some fairly twisted rationalizations here in my view, particularly the concept of “compassionate killing,” which Jenkins notes that the Buddhist scholar Michael Zimmerman writes is “incompatible with basic Buddhist ethics.”


The conclusion of this essay is particularly problematic. It starts with, “General conceptions of a basic Buddhist ethics broadly conceived as unqualified pacifism are problematic. Compassionate violence is at the very heart of the sensibility of this sutra.” (italics mine)

With this paragraph, Jenkins makes a broad statement and backs it up with one sutra, a sutra that in fact is not considered authentic in the Theravada tradition despite the effort Jenkins took at the start of his essay to describe the sutra’s history, influence and importance within Mahayana.

Chapter 3 is filled with some very interesting history about Tibet and Mongolia. In “Sacralized Warfare: The Fifth Dalai Lama and the Discourse of Religious Violence,” Derek F. Maher examines the historical writings of the Fifth Dalai Lama and shows how they were constructed to support the violent war mongering of Gushri Khan. I don’t doubt for a minute the historical accuracy of the essay. What I doubt is its suitability as evidence of an innate violent nature to Buddhism.

This chapter details quite excellently what happens when politics is mixed up with religion - you get a holy mess. Because that’s what you have with Tibetan Buddhism for the most part: religious leaders who are also political leaders. And the fact that certain Tibetan schools fought wars against other Tibetan schools only demonstrates how rampant religious chauvinism was in Tibet; it by no means offers credible support that the Buddha’s teachings allows for such militaristic behavior.

In fact, the Buddha was quite clear just before his death when Ananda asks him who will lead the sangha after his passing. The Buddha said he would name no leader because there was nothing to lead. Buddhism is all about examining and knowing oneself, controlling oneself, of being harmless so that one can attain release. It's about being a better person so other living beings can be at ease. It was never about becoming the top dog school or sect and waging war against contrary opinions. But people are people and humans have a penchant for violence.

Buddhism, however, does not.

Chapter 4, “Legalized Violence: Punitive Measures of Buddhist Khans in Mongolia,” provides more evidence of the politicization of the dhamma. As Vesna A. Wallace clearly states in this essay: “By legislating social and ritual practices that were in accordance with Buddhist teachings and monastic rules and by introducing penal measures for the infractions of both monks and laypeople, Mongolian legislators converted Buddhist teachings and practices into state law.”

This isn’t evidence of a violent nature to Buddhism; rather, its evidence of how a theocracy was established in Mongolia around Buddhism. Wallace also provides examples of class division within Mongolian culture.

“The Russian ethnographer Pozdneyev, who visited Mongolia in the late nineteenth century, mentions a case in which a Mongol noble punished one of his serf’s sons for not making adequate progress in his studies as a Buddhist novice by tying him naked outside the tent during a winter night. When the boy died as a consequence, the nobleman was merely fined eighteen animals.”

Mahayana writings such as the Golden Light Sutra were seized upon by rulers because they provided an excuse for ruthless rule. “The Golden Light Sutra is perhaps the most adamant about the king’s duty to destroy evil deeds and inflict penalties on the evildoers in conformity with their crimes. If a king were to ignore any evil deed and neglect his royal duty, lawlessness and wickedness would increase, unfavorable asterisms and planets would rule, meteor showers would fall, evil demons would arise, and natural disasters, diseases, and foreign armies would ruin his kingdom.”

Now, if I were and king and that was my spiritual guidance, of course I would do what I thought would prevent evil demons from arising and foreign armies ruining my domain! And I, as such a king, would also like the ambiguity of the Golden Light Sutra, as it would allow me wide interpretation.

“(I)t leaves room for multiple interpretations concerning the degrees of punishments the ruler may implement in his task of upholding the law. It indirectly suggests that punishment enforces not only the law of a given society but also the laws of nature. For these reasons, the Inner Mongolian author Rashipuntsag referred to the Golden Light Sutra in his work ‘Crystal Rosary,’ declaring that Dharma laws do not prevent one from punishing criminals. He argued against Confucians who claimed that the state could be ruled only by means of secular laws because the law of Dharma was too weak to punish criminals, because it advocates compassion.” (Italics mine)

I’m looking forward to writing about the next chapter, because in that one, the author flatly states that any sect of Buddhism that justifies violence in any way is a false teaching and a corruption of the Buddha’s words.

Buddhist Warfare, Chapter 1

In the song, “With God on Our Side,” Bob Dylan sings of how peoples and nations rationalize war against each other, that their aggression is necessary and justifiable because they have God on their side. This notion of having God on your side is an important concept when looking at the first essay in “Buddhist Warfare,” a piece written by Paul Demiéville titled “Buddhism and War.”

Demiéville correctly points out how the Dhamma has been rationalized throughout the centuries following the Buddha’s death. One of the simplest rationalizations, he notes, is that life is suffering and if killing ends life, then it also ends suffering. This rationalization, Demiéville shows us, is at the heart of many Mahayana traditions that largely developed in China where a militaristic culture already existed and which was ready to co-opt Buddhist doctrine to lend legitimacy to its politics (kind of sounds like the Republican Party in the U.S.).

The author points out how China, Japan, Korea and other parts of East Asia already had well-established warrior cultures that were largely supported by Confucian thought. The rulers and warlords adopted Buddhism to gain a military advantage, rationalizing and altering the teachings to show that their actions were right and good and their enemy’s actions were wrong and evil. At the same time, Buddhist monks were looking for political favoritism and weren’t shy about re-interpreting the Dharma to please their kings. Even the Buddha walked a delicate line regarding this issue (which is covered a bit more in the next article in the book).

During the first thousand years CE in China, for example, we see may Buddhist cults arise each with militaristic behaviors and practices led by charismatic monks who professed to have supernatural powers. This made these monks very attractive to the rulers and warlords who saw befriending and supporting such monks and their followers as politically astute.

However true this may be, I am troubled by the way Demiéville portrays these histories as being “Buddhist,” laying the groundwork for the assertion that Buddhism itself is at fault for the arising of these warlike doctrines. These histories are no more “Buddhist” than Cromwell’s attacks were “Puritan” or even “Christian,” despite the fact that religious beliefs and doctrines played a key role in Cromwell’s war mongering. Demiéville’s citing the rise of the Shaolin and other warrior monks is not evidence of “Buddhist violence,” but rather evidence of people who identify as Buddhist being violent.

Demiéville also makes a few really weak assertions by drawing connections so vague as to be rightly ridiculed with uncontrolled laughter. For example he writes: “We know that the Boxers who rose up against foreigners at the end of the nineteenth century, and besieged the Peking delegation in 1900, were part of a secret society with more or less Buddhist origins.” Italics are mine. When I read that, I was like, WTF?

What I really found interesting was Demiéville’s mentioning of Yi-hiuan, a ninth-Century Chinese monk who is credited with the ubiquitous phrase, “Kill the Buddha.” It was revealing enough that he would cite the founder of the Lin-tsi sect to lend credence to the concept that Buddhism inherently lends itself to the arising of violent doctrines; but what really caught my eye was all the attention this part of the book garnered on the Internet. When you Google “Yi-hiuan” the results are dominated by a review of “Buddhist Warfare” by Katherine Wharton. Her referencing this particular item in Demiéville’s article was in turned referenced multiple times by many others, including an article by Marin E. Marty in The Christian Post, whose comments also get reprinted all over the Web. Kyle at The Reformed Buddhist had plenty to say about Wharton’s review, thanking Barbara O’Brien for her dissection of Wharton’s review and sophomoric conclusions.

I found this discussion interesting because of how it reflects something the Buddha warned Ananda about just before his death. Ananda asks the Buddha who will lead the Sangha after the Buddha dies, to which the Buddha replies that there will be no successor because there is no position to be succeeded. He directs Ananda and the others to be “islands unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves, seeking no external refuge…”

It is worth pointing out that transmission of the Buddha’s Dhamma was initially oral. The Buddha knew that writing down the Dhamma would present problems and he cautioned against those that would come in the future and change his teachings. And when things get written down, they can suddenly take on an undeserved credibility.

This seems to be what happened with Katherine Wharton’s review, which if you read it closely seems to suggest that the only part of “Buddhist Warfare” that she read was the chapter penned by Demiéville. Her words get picked up by others, such as Marty, and are spread about the Web and get read widely despite the suspect nature of her conclusions.

Even Demiéville shows how this happened with the development of Zen in Japan, which began as a very well-cultured and educated school of Buddhism that required strict discipline in the practice. These very traits were used by militaristic individuals, including Zen priests, to train soldiers in the correct use of weapons. This is cited as another example of the alleged warlike nature of Buddhist doctrine. These elements of Zen were in turn bifurcated into other schools and doctrines. Ryogen encouraged the preservation of the “real law,” or Mahayana, against the lesser counterfeit laws of the Lesser Vehicle, or Hinayana, that of the pratyeka-buddha, which he likened to be weed-like akin to underbrush that cannot rid itself. Nichiren advocated ignoring the precepts because if an action is protected by the Greater Vehicle, it was justified. Ergo, we see the development of the line of thought that killing and war can be justified as means to reach a higher, nobler end.

In the end, what Demiéville demonstrates are numerous fine examples of how individuals twisted the Dhamma to create their own lineage and to justify the elimination of enemies. These efforts were rewarded and protected by the rulers and the powerful of the times. But to use these examples to support the assertion that Buddhism condones violence, that it rationalizes violence, is in my opinion just plain wrong. Yes, there are “teachers” and those who founded new schools of Buddhism long after the Buddha’s death that advocate, condone and rationalize violent behavior, but to suggest that these new lineages are correctly interpreting the Buddha’s guidance on such matters is weak.