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?”

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.

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?