*Sightings* 11/22/2010

* Buddhism and Violence*

– Martin E. Marty

Buddhism and Islam came off as the two  ¢â‚¬Å“faith communities ¢â‚¬  to whom other
Americans feel least warm, according to a Faith Matters survey of 2007.
Robert Putnam and David Campbell ponder this in *American Grace: How
Religion Divides and Unites Us, *which *Sightings* has visited twice before.
Mormons come in third as a stimulator of  ¢â‚¬Å“least warm ¢â‚¬  feelings among others.
The authors comment that negative media attention hurts Mormons and Muslims,
but  ¢â‚¬Å“Buddhists do not get the same negative media attention ¢â‚¬  as do those
two. So something else must account for the negative ratings of Buddhism.

Reach for your search engine, Google or otherwise, and ask  ¢â‚¬Å“which religion
is most peaceful? ¢â‚¬  Once you get past the answers of apologists ¢â‚¬”of course,
Muslims think Islam is, and Christians think Christianity is ¢â‚¬”it ¢â‚¬â„¢s clear that
Buddhism is seen as most peaceful. What gives? Read on in the polls and
interviews and you will find that Buddhists are kept at a distance by some
because they *are* at a distance from others. Buddhists profit from their
distance. If familiarity breeds contempt against Muslims, unfamiliarity also
does not help them or Buddhists. Despite this picture derived from those
polls and interviews, one still has to ponder: Jews, Christians, and Muslims
suffer in the media because their texts and traditions are often so warlike.
Ask your friend who practices Buddhism why it does not suffer? Answer:
Because its texts and traditions breed peace.

As an equal opportunity admirer and critic of the  ¢â‚¬Å“faith communities ¢â‚¬  on
this subject, I also have wondered how Buddhism gets its peaceful
reputation. A review by Katherine Wharton of two books, *Buddhist Warfare*and
*The Six Perfections *illuminates. *Buddhist Warfare*, says Wharton,  ¢â‚¬Å“forms
an accurate history of violence in the name of religion, ¢â‚¬  and cites sutras
which shock, since they  ¢â‚¬Å“justify killing with detailed reference to the
Buddha ¢â‚¬â„¢s central philosophical tenants. The book therefore presents a
uniquely Buddhist  ¢â‚¬Ëœheart of darkness. ¢â‚¬â„¢ ¢â‚¬  Brian Victoria ¢â‚¬â„¢s essay in *The Six
Perfections* brings the issue to modern times: D. T. Suzuki (d. 1966),  ¢â‚¬Å“the
most influential proponent of Zen to the West in the twentieth century . . .
gave his unqualified support to the  ¢â‚¬Ëœunity of Zen and the sword. ¢â‚¬â„¢ ¢â‚¬  Between
ancient and modern times, as another contributor to these symposia finds and
cites, was Chinese monk Yi-hiuan, who urged his hearers to  ¢â‚¬Å“kill everything
you encounter, internally as well as externally! Kill the Buddha! Kill your
father and mother! Kill your closest friends! ¢â‚¬ 

In the eyes of many apologists and observers, the Buddhist concept of
 ¢â‚¬Å“emptiness ¢â‚¬  is, from a distance, a guarantor of peace, over against the
fullness of Warrior-God texts in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But
Wharton is convinced by these books that  ¢â‚¬Å“emptiness ¢â‚¬  can and does also
promote violence, and is not by itself the solution.

Now, why does *Sightings*, which keeps track of celebrations of peace and
reconciliation, so often point to violence in texts and traditions? To give
aid and comfort to  ¢â‚¬Å“the New Atheists, ¢â‚¬  who solicit our aid in killing all
religion(s) to assure peace? Hardly. To suggest that condemning Muslims (or
specific others) because of the violence of some among them is unfair?
Partly. Most important it is to provide a basis for hope for those who work
on ecumenical or interfaith grounds and to point to the reconciliatory texts
and work on the basis of them, but without illusions. Respondent publics
agree that the religious texts point finally to shalom, peace,
reconciliation. Their final promise deserves attention all along the way.
The final word might come first.

*References*

* *

David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam, *American Grace: How Religion
Divides and Unites Us *(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010).

Michael K. Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer, editors, *Buddhist Warfare* (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

Katherine Wharton,  ¢â‚¬Å“Buddhists at war: The dark side of what is often thought
to be the most peaceful of
religions, ¢â‚¬ 
*The Times Literary Supplement*, September 29, 2010.

Dale S. Wright, *The Six Imperfections: Buddhism and the Cultivation of
Character *(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

*Martin E. Marty’s* biography, current projects, publications, and contact
information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

 ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬

UPDATE:

*Sightings** 12/2/2010*

*Making Violence Buddhist*

– Benjamin Schonthal

In a recent *Sightings* column Martin E. Marty drew attention to a feature
of Buddhism that many Americans find startling: there are Buddhist texts
that seem to legitimate war. Marty ¢â‚¬â„¢s observation contravenes a commonly-held
belief that Buddhism is exclusively a religion of peace, one whose tenets
reject the use of violence. Yet, Buddhism hasn ¢â‚¬â„¢t always enjoyed this
reputation. Victorian-era Orientalists saw Buddhism as a religion of
pessimism, self-denial, even life-abnegating rejection of the world. During
World War II, Buddhism was identified by some as motivating Japanese *
kamikaze* pilots.

More recently, Buddhism ¢â‚¬â„¢s pacific nature has been impugned by followers of
events in Sri Lanka who observe that, over the course of the island ¢â‚¬â„¢s
thirty-year civil war, Buddhist terms and themes were invoked regularly by
hawkish Sinhalese politicians to call for more aggressive military action
against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). For example, in an
interview on the BBC in March 2009, Keheliya Rambukwella, the spokesman for
the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defense described the government ¢â‚¬â„¢s military
campaign against the LTTE as follows:  ¢â‚¬Å“Our exercise is noble because we need
to eradicate the source of human suffering. When you are on a noble path
there are certain sacrifices that we all do to uproot the cause of
suffering. ¢â‚¬ 

The quote is striking because it uses Buddhist idioms to describe military
action. Rhetorically, the statement links the Sri Lankan army ¢â‚¬â„¢s offensive to
the core ethical doctrine taught by the Buddha in the Pali *Tipitika*, the
four  ¢â‚¬Å“noble truths ¢â‚¬  which Buddhists must follow to achieve
enlightenment. Rambukwella ¢â‚¬â„¢s statement equates the LTTE with *dukkha*, the phenomenon of worldly
suffering which Buddhist practice aims to overcome. It links the course of
military operations with steps along the noble eightfold path, the system of
moral action and mental cultivation that the Buddha preached to his
followers. In short, it describes the war with the LTTE as analogous or
equivalent to the pursuit of Buddhist religious goals.

Does Rambukwella ¢â‚¬â„¢s statement represent a distortion of Buddhist doctrine or
one, among many, possible interpretations? To answer either way seems
unsatisfactory. By dismissing the spokesman ¢â‚¬â„¢s statement as illegitimate (a
cynical, instrumental use of Buddhism), one exempts Buddhist ideas of any
complicity in rationalizing or moralizing violence. By treating the
spokesman ¢â‚¬â„¢s statement as a *bona fide* expression of Buddhist piety, one
normalizes a rather idiosyncratic, not to mention non-traditional, use of
Buddhist concepts.

One solution is to bring human actors and religious institutions back into
the picture. After all, it is not religion that acts. Humans map religious
concepts onto violent actions through discourse. As Mark Juergensmeyer and
others have pointed out, there is an undeniable convenience to so doing:
religious concepts are suitable justifications for violence because war
provides a congenial metaphor for piety. Buddhism is no different.
Self-cultivation in Buddhism as in other religious traditions is conceived
as struggle*. *Buddhist virtue is understood as defeating craving, desire,
and ignorance. It only takes a short interpretive leap to homologize ethical
struggle to physical conflict.

What distinguishes the Sri Lankan defense spokesman ¢â‚¬â„¢s use of Buddhist ideas
from, for example, that of the Dalai Lama is not the validity of his
interpretation, but its relationship to authorized institutions through
which Buddhist texts, practices and concepts are glossed, transmitted and
(re)produced. We may thus say that Rambukwella ¢â‚¬â„¢s translating of military
action into Buddhist idioms may be interpretively valid, but it is
notauthorized by most Buddhist ecclesiastical institutions in Sri
Lanka. Similarly, the September 11 hijackers mustered an interpretation of Islam
which may have some valid scriptural referents, but which is not authorized
by most of the world ¢â‚¬â„¢s Muslim institutions.

Why then has Buddhism tended to be exculpated from links with violence in
popular media while Islam has not? One difference lies in how Western media
have depicted the two religions as institutions. Islam is routinely
presented as a singular, unified, institutionally-coherent religion with the
possible exception of the Sunni-Shi ¢â‚¬â„¢a split. Buddhism, on the other hand, is
presented as anti-institutional, a religion of individual, self-guided
practitioners. Using these models, popular media interpret Muslims ¢â‚¬â„¢ actions
deductively, as reflecting the dictates of some monolithic Islam, while
interpreting Buddhists ¢â‚¬â„¢ actions inductively, as expressing the actors ¢â‚¬â„¢ own,
personal views about Buddhism. Media outlets thus allow Buddhists more
interpretive diversity, making it more difficult for a single Buddhist to be
seen to speak for Buddhism as a whole. Of course, this discursive binary is
wildly inaccurate. But it has remarkable power and persistence in popular
culture.

In thinking about religion and politics  ¢â‚¬” and violence is politics continued
by other means, as the saying goes  ¢â‚¬” we must be cautious not to lose sight of
the *people* who are acting, and to examine closely their relationship with
complex and heterogeneous institutions of religious authority. We also must
take seriously the speech act. Under what circumstance are actors
permittedby audiences to speak for a religious tradition? To do so is to recognize that there are no
predetermined* *links between Buddhism or Islam ¢â‚¬”or any religion ¢â‚¬”and
violence. It is people who link them.

*Benjamin Schonthal *is a PhD candidate in History of Religions and a Martin
Marty Center Junior Fellow.

———-

*Sightings* comes from the Martin Marty
Centerat the University of
Chicago Divinity School.