Abstract
In spite of the teachings of the Vinaya, Buddhist history includes a pragmatic approach to killing in the context of warfare. As a timely collection of essays by the established scholars on Buddhism, Buddhist Warfare provides answers to three questions. Why have some Buddhists ignored Buddhist principles of non-violence? How have Buddhists justified and interpreted their use of violence? How are we to best contextualize Buddhist justifications of a pragmatic approach to killing?
This edited collection has an introduction, eight chapters consisting of case studies, and a conclusion. Buddhist Warfare offers a simple definition of violence—“inflicting physical injury or death on another person” (6), and the focus is on “pragmatic Buddhists,” “those calling themselves Buddhists” (127). Chapter 1 is a translation of Paul Demiéville’s classic 1957 essay entitled “Buddhism and War,” which surveys military monks and the justifications for killing in East Asia (especially China and Japan). The remaining chapters deal with justifications for pragmatic Buddhists’ killing in India, Tibet, and Mongolia, the dynamics of soldier-Zen in Japan before and during the Second World War, patriotism and Buddhism in the years following the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and cases studies of military monks in Thailand and Buddhist soldiers in Sri Lanka. Finally, Bernard Faure’s “Afterthoughts,” points to potential themes for future research.
On the basis of interviews with Buddhists in Thailand, Jerryson finds that there are different views on whether the killing of an enemy produces karma. One of the most praiseworthy contributions of this collection is that it succeeds in contextualizing four kinds of justifications or strategies for pragmatic approaches to killing found in Buddhist traditions. One approach is to selectively quote the Vinaya of Buddhism. For example, the Venerable Juzan illustrated Buddha Śākyamuni as a nationalist, in order to justify Buddhists’ pragmatic killing (141). However, when Buddha Śākyamuni’s homeland was in critical danger, Śākyamuni “did not mobilize the members of the sangha as monk-soldiers to defend his country” (126). Second, the pragmatic Buddhists advocated the concept of compassionate killing, times when it is “the bodhisattva’s duty to commit the sin of killing so as to prevent another from doing so” (42). However, the pragmatic Buddhists made efforts to extend and secularize a bodhisattva’s compassionate killing. For instance, Juzan “quoted a passage from the Yogācāra bodhisattva precepts text to demonstrate that one may kill others if the killing is for the sake of saving more lives” (142). Juzan ignored an essential principle that mortal beings are not qualified to conduct compassionate killing.
In addition, some advocates of compassionate killing used Satyakaparivarta sutra to justify that companionate killing could be conducted by Buddhist kings when all other means have failed. However, this justification is also questionable, as “the Sūtrasamuccaya itself contains later interpolations,” and its internal content “was also likely changed” (60). Moreover, “there is no sign that the kings addressed by this sūtra were regarded as bodhisattvas” (70).
As Xue Yu discusses in his chapter on the Korean War, Buddhists approached the question of killing in terms of nationalism, safeguarding the dharma, and a calculus of saving lives through taking some. In the modern era, reinterpretation of a basic precept against taking a life was rationalized with Buddhist ideas, and necessary in “fulfilling the constitutional duty of citizens to defend their nation against invasion” (142). In the case of China in the Korea War, Chinese Buddhists had to make hard compromises, voluntarily or by force, and made “unconditional sacrifices for the sake of defending the nation, even at the expense of sacrificing their religious commitments” (140). In the case of Japan in the Second World War, some leading Japanese Buddhists valorized Buddhist soldiers’ killing on the battlefield. As a result, many Buddhist soldiers were sent to the battlefield where nearly 3 million Japanese soldiers died, and their troops killed more than 20 million Chinese and other victims. Another kind of rationalizing of killing was achieved by denying foes the status of human; “the notion of nonhumans has played an important role” (222) in the history of Buddhist warfare. In the 1970s, a leading Buddhist monk named Phra Kittiwuttho publicly perceived that the use of violence against Communists was justified since, in his opinion, “a Communist was the living embodiment of Māra” (189).
In Brian Victoria’s view, historically, when Buddhist leaders align themselves with political rules, the “sangha has become corrupt and degenerate” (128). A root cause of Buddhists’ involvement in killing lies in the fact that the sangha has too close relations with the politics of their day. At the same time, as Michael Jerryson argues, when Buddhists are linked with politics and the military in countries such as Thailand, a common “catalyst for Buddhist violence might be an attack upon a Buddhist monk,” which then leads to retaliation (14). The ongoing religious conflicts involving Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar and Thailand make this point.
Buddhist Warfare represents an important contribution to Buddhism studies in general and Buddhist violence in particular. It not only expands readers’ understanding of a pragmatic approach to killing adopted by many Buddhists, and the various ways in which such actions are rationalized and justified, given the importance of precepts against killing. This collection of essays is a foundation for scholars and students interested in reaching an understanding of the presence of political violence in various traditions of Buddhism.