Monks Behaving Badly: Explaining Buddhist Violence in Asia
direct.mit.edu
direct.mit.edu
The paper addresses this well, Buddhist ethics are situation and pacifism isn't absolute nor it means to accept whatever others do. Pacifism *is not* passivism.
Plus, Buddhist states may twist what means to be a monk, after all, being a monk becomes a position of power in a religious state... Just like in any other religion.
10/10 paper
scan HN page => go to discussion based on article title (5%) => go to actual article based on discussion (5%)
Buddhism is anti-violence. I can't believe I need to make this argument here. Folks, if you're going to make statements, please do your research first. [1]
> Gananath Obeyesekere, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, said that "in the Buddhist doctrinal tradition... there is little evidence of intolerance, no justification for violence, no conception even of 'just wars' or 'holy wars.' ... one can make an assertion that Buddhist doctrine is impossible to reconcile logically with an ideology of violence and intolerance" [2]
[1] https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/study/nonviolence.html
[2] https://books.google.dk/books?id=iAy5jsBAF0oC&pg=PA181&redir...
I'm not sure how you can even qualify an idea or religion as violent or anti-violent, other than by the behavior of it's adherents.
It's clear to me there are violent fanatics in all reglions, I can't believe I have to make THAT argument here.
Buddhism (and to a certain extent Hindusim) are treated with an orientalist view where Westerners assumes they are somehow more "peaceful" than their religions, but they ain't.
1. The teaching itself
2. The clerical institution, often fused with and distorted by state power
3. The practice as understood and lived by ordinary people
1 always remains "highbrow" and isolated from the stresses of 2 and 3; and it's 2 and 3 that set the tone of a religion.
The problem of the discussion here is that some participants are claiming that Buddhism is not anti-violence which is like going around claiming that Christianity/Islam is not anti-polytheism.
The Five Precepts, starting with "I undertake the training-precept to abstain from onslaught on breathing beings," make no exceptions, under any circumstances.
Here’s a verse from the Dhammapada, the short poetic summary of the Buddha’s teachings:
All tremble at the rod,
all are fearful of death.
Drawing the parallel to yourself,
neither kill nor get others to kill.
All tremble at the rod,
all hold their life dear.
Drawing the parallel to yourself,
neither kill nor get others to kill.Factually incorrect. Many religions are explicitly against another religions and degrade any non-believers, just like Hitler did with jews to make the general public do horrid things.
Of course, this does not mean Buddhism is for violence in the common sphere of human activity.
Then again, just because some people's doctrine does not encourage violence doesn't give others a free ticket to bash on them for doing so.
The "let's go back to origins" approach is not a Western invention, the existence of Chan/Zen proves it quite clearly.
> A. K. Warder notes that the Mahāyāna Sūtras are highly unlikely to have come from the teachings of the historical Buddha, since the language and style of every extant Mahāyāna Sūtra is comparable more to later Indian texts than to texts that could have circulated in the Buddha's putative lifetime. Warder also notes that the Tibetan historian Tāranātha (1575–1634) proclaimed that after the Buddha taught the sutras, they disappeared from the human world and circulated only in the world of the nagas. In Warder's view, "this is as good as an admission that no such texts existed until the 2nd century A.D."
I certainly do regard the actual expressions of faith by its many communities, but not all are correct, and one need look no further than to compare the actual root texts to the monstrous actions of people determined to burn the world down in its name. You are invited to do so for yourself, as the Buddha has always done, and compare the words to the actions of those who claim lineage.
> na haneyya na ghātaye
There is the Pali in a handful of words. Now you have the tools to discern for yourself: what does it tell us to do or not to do?
Then Shaolin monks have some explaining to do
We can have a semantic discussion about what "Buddhism" in "Buddhism is anti-violence" means exactly (What the text says? What scholars (which?) interpret? How Buddhists (which?) behave?), but that's kind of a boring discussion.
IMHO "$religion is anti-violence" (or "$religion is violent", for that matter) is not that important.
when state privileges group $X ... a $sample_size of members of $X abuse their privilege.
If one is already able to achieve all of that they won't even need to become a monk, because they've already achieved what they wanted to.
And again I'm not singling out monks in particular, lots of non-buddhists did that too as did the Chinese that conquered them just under a more intellectually polished reasoning.
Edit: I was asking sincerely, I have trouble discerning meaning with statements like this sometimes. I apologize for the confusion, and I didn’t mean any accidentally implied negative sentiments toward OP. I thought there may have been a relatively unknown history behind the statement
For example, if you look at Thai Buddhism during the era that produced Pol Pot, you would see that fairly intense violence was a cultural norm as long as it was being used as a tool to teach or discipline rather than in anger.
>All
>tremble at the rod,
> all
>are fearful of death.
>Drawing the parallel to
> yourself,
>neither kill nor get others to kill.
>
>All
>tremble at the rod,
> all
>hold their life dear.
>Drawing the parallel to
> yourself,
>neither kill nor get others to kill.
— Dhammapada 129–130
>A disciple has faith in that teacher and reflects: 'The Blessed One in a variety of ways criticizes & censures the taking of life, and says, "Abstain from taking life." There are living beings that I have killed, to a greater or lesser extent. That was not right. That was not good. But if I become remorseful for that reason, that evil deed of mine will not be undone.' So, reflecting thus, he abandons right then the taking of life, and in the future refrains from taking life. This is how there comes to be the abandoning of that evil deed. This is how there comes to be the transcending of that evil deed.
— Samyutta42.8
And on and on and on. [1] You would absolutely expect other humans, who might live by codes with no such prohibitions, to behave differently.
[1] https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/study/nonviolence.html
I can give you a similar interpretation by Wirathu or Anagarika Dharmapala that justifies the use of violence against those who supposedly stray against the path.
Quoting Buddhist theologians and scholars is not the same as quoting the suttas themselves, which I have done. Please stop making false claims here.
Just like how you quote a western raised and educated theologian's interpretations and translations.
This isn't to say Buddhism is a violent religion, but to deny that there is a very mainstream thread of majoritarianism in two of the largest Buddhist countries is ridiculous.
Edit: Cannot reply, but every group that uses a majoritarian lens in Buddhism uses the Upayakaushalya Sutra to justify their violence as an action for the greater good.
Fundamentally, a religion is about the interpretation, not the texts themselves.
And denying that Buddhist violence (that too backed by mainstream Buddhist ideologues in the largest Buddhist practicing countries in the world) is ridiculous. The 2019 riots in Sri Lanka, the Rohingya genocide, the whitewashing of the Burmese and Thai Military juntas, the whitewashing of dictatorship in Sri Lanka, and multitudes of other similar actions by the majority of the Sangh in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand highlights a significant strain of violence in Buddhism just like any other religion.
> Sabbe tasanti daṇaḍassa sabbe bhāyanti maccuno Attānaṃ upamaṃ katvā na haneyya na ghātaye. Sabbe tasanti daṇaḍassa sabbesaṃ jīvitaṃ piyaṃ Attānaṃ upamaṃ katvā na haneyya na ghātaye.
> This isn't to say Buddhism is a violent religion, but to deny that there is a very mainstream thread of majoritarianism in two of the largest Buddhist countries is ridiculous.
I never denied "majoritarianism". I denied that Buddhism condones violence, both in a plurality of Buddhist cultures and in the suttas themselves.
You appear hellbent on conflating humans doing bad things on behalf of religious causes with Buddhism itself, which does not, in any way, condone any of the acts you've highlighted.
> $massacres highlights a significant strain of violence in Buddhism
If I tell you that a book that declares in the strongest possible language that no harm shall be done to rabbits was in fact a trick of the demiurge and that only true believers could discern the true message for why the mass murder of all rabbits in the world was good and then I tell you that I am the Prophet of the Book, the religion and its teachings would not change. I would just be some idiot who had murdered all the rabbits in the world.
The one who had lied and cheated and schemed would be responsible, not the author of the book or their teachings. They would have created a Bizarro World of their own creation that took its root in the misery of their own heart.
This Bizarro World is not Buddhism, was never Buddhism, and could not be Buddhism and I have the evidence from the words themselves that Buddhism is not of genocide, of hatred, and of bloodshed.
The issue I (and others in this thread) am taking offense to is saying "Buddhism" as an organized religion is opposed to warfare, when several major and mainstream Buddhist movements view warfare as acceptable.
And denying the impact of Anagarika Dharmapala and the anti-colonial movement in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand had on that lens is ridiculous.
And don't get me started about Tibetan Buddhism (yes, a completely different tradition than Theravada Buddhism, though even Theravada Buddhisms have incorporated local traditions), when the SFF and ITBP have very successfully merged the protection of Tibetan Buddhism with combat service back in my ancestral state, and how both Chinese and Indian state organizations have been playing a great game around the core fundamentals of Tibetan Buddhism itself.
And you are clearly disregarding a paper written at NTU by scholars who specifically studied the rise of Buddhist nationalism in South and Southeast Asia.
Nationalistic deviations exist, have existed and will likely continue to emerge. These are Buddhist in name only — political appropriations of a tradition that fundamentally rejects violence.
The Buddha's teachings are available to anyone, can be practiced by anyone, and are unbound by culture, nation, or ethnicity.
> The ocean doesn’t accommodate a carcass, but quickly carries it to the shore and strands it on the beach. In the same way, the Sangha doesn’t accommodate a person who is unethical, of bad qualities, filthy, with suspicious behavior, underhand, no true ascetic or spiritual practitioner—though claiming to be one—rotten inside, festering, and depraved. But they quickly gather and expel them. Even if such a person is sitting in the middle of the Sangha, they’re far from the Sangha, and the Sangha is far from them.
— Anguttara Nikāya 8.19
What is it to be unethical? The First Precept, which prohibits the taking of life, is the first qualification of an ethical person and the first qualification to be a member of the Sangha: the community of Buddhist practitioners that includes laypeople, monks and nuns.
You continue to play a game of qualifying Buddhism under what cannot be qualified. When pressed for first-party sources justifying violence in Buddhism, you come up empty-handed and instead return to nationalistic violence flown under a false flag that is an abomination to Buddhism. You go on to then state that a majority of organized Buddhist faith allows for warfare and violence, which is false. It simply is not true that a majority of Buddhist denominations agree that warfare and violence are acceptable means of conduct.
If we say "we expect followers of X religion to be nonviolent because their holy texts explicitly say so" then I guess there aren't many religious people in the world. I see no reason to expect a self-identifying Buddhist to be less violent than a Christian or Muslim beyond pop culture stereotypes.
Sure, but at the end of the day, it is state backed Sanghs that set the tone, and the largest Sanghs (Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand) have aligned with an ethnonationalist view due to historical conflicts with Christian and Muslim evangelism, and how intertwined Buddhist revivalism was with their anti-colonial movements in the 19th and 20th century.
Buddhism in Western countries feels more "highbrow" and "humanist", but in the majority of countries where Buddhism has explicit state backing, it is majoritarian in nature due to the revivalist and anti-colonial movement in the 19th and 20th century, and it is those states that will set the tone for the religion, not a couple dozen thousand Westerners (excluding diasporas as they continue to follow their homeland traditons).
Technically, Buddhism is not a single religion, and even Theravada is not a monolithic tradition to get "the tone set by states". If anything, worldwide Buddhism is quite decentralized, and this has played a key role in preserving the Dhamma from being co-opted by state agendas.
But yeah you are right that in the end based on history you can’t expect them to behave any differently.
Anyone who thinks that Buddhism makes people somehow incapable of violence should look up history of Indochinese peninsula. Despite the fact it's one of the most Buddhist areas in the world, local kingdoms had no problem fighting each other, just like those in Europe or anywhere else.
'Democracy' (in practice a republic in places like US) is just a different religion. Without the devoutism of a segment of powerful 'believers', the religion in power switches to a different one.
> those priests who pretend to practice it while violating the tenants ('cops') are revered.
vs.
mentions of US and US events is the most strikingly conflicting one.
[1] Brian Daizen Victoria, Zen at War (New York: Weatherhill, 1997).
A number of the Buddhist nationalist movements in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, and Japan had/have ideological links with Hindutva and the National Conservative movement as well.