The School of Emptiness (nyavda) raised still other arguments to legitimize killing.137 In a stra translated into Chinese as early as the third century, Mañjur attempts to exonerate a repented matricide, claiming that the vacuity of the thoughts that drove the criminal to his crime did not undermine the essential purity of his mind (citta-mla-viuddhi). His sin did not prevent him from being accepted into the community.138 In the Ratnakta stra, while five hundred bodhisattvas are repenting their past sins, which prevented them from attaining “profound patience,” Mañjur approaches and takes a sword and acts as if he wants to kill the Buddha. The Buddha then praises him for this, saying because everything is an illusion, even emptiness, there isn’t any more of me than there is of anyone else. There exists neither human person (pudgala), nor living being (sattva), nor father or mother, nor saint (arhat) or Buddha, nor the Real Law or the Community. … There is therefore no more a crime than there is a criminal, and if Mañjur had killed the Buddha, it would have been a right killing. In fact, what is the Buddha if nothing other than a name, without substance, without reality, misleading and empty like a phantasmagoria [mya]? There is no more a sinner than there is a sin. Who could be punished for killing? Between the sword and the Buddha there is no duality.139
This line of thought had long been rooted in India.140 Yet it corresponds to China’s long-standing Taoist code of ethics, which was built on the dialectic of opposites. This line of thought is often found in Chinese (and Japanese) texts from the Dhyna school, and even in such precursors of this school as the great Houei-yuan (334–416). Fortunately, a dialogue that Houei-yuan had with a Chinese layperson, on the question of retribution for one’s actions, has been preserved. In it, this layperson asks him the following aporia:
The Buddhist canonical texts make killing other living beings a sin which has hell as punishment. The infernal judgment responds to it like a shadow or an echo. I have some reservations about this. The body is only made of four elements: solid (the earth), liquid (water), gas (fire), and plasma (wind). They coagulate to form the body which serves as the resting place for the soul. … And yet, although the soul depends on the body to exist, in theory it is no less a celestial absolute without it[?]. Between the soul and the body, there is but the difference of subtlety and rudeness. Certainly the soul presents no place wherein it can be wounded. If we destroy the body, this does not annihilate the soul. It is as if we destroyed just the water or the fire elements existing in their natural state in the cosmos.141
Here is a fragment of Houei-yuan’s response:
If we admit that the Other and I are identical, and that there is no opposition between our two minds. Then, from the point of view of the transcendent absolute which is one, swords that crisscross are neutralized and there is no conflict between weapons that bang together. Not only does someone who injures others do no harm to the soul, but there is certainly no living being that is killable. It is in this sense that, when Mañjur took up his sword, he was able to have the appearance of going against Buddhist morality, but in reality, he was abiding by it. Although we will have brandished the halberd all day long, there is no place the blade can land.142
Above, we saw frantic appeals for (spiritual) killing uttered in the ninth century by the Dhyna master Yi-hiuan, the founder of the Lin-tsi sect, in the name of freedom.143 Also, we are familiar with cases concerning the contemporaries Nan-ts’iuan and Kouei-tsong, who did indeed put to death living beings—by cutting them in two, the first a cat, the second a snake—in order to demonstrate before the very eyes of their disciples the mortal danger of all duality.144 In the Zen sect in Japan, they interpreted the argument for taking another’s life as “attempting to bring the other’s Buddha nature to life” (Buddha nature exists in virtually every living being), “by putting an end to the passions that lead astray and keeping the vision of this nature in mind.”145 Yet once we have “seen,” once we have become aware of the essential purity that is the foundation of our being, then what do these precepts matter, and what are moral codes good for? At the point when “every precept is swiftly and completely observed,” then the question of killing and not-killing would become inconsequential. There is no more existence than non-existence, no more life than death. No one kills, no one is killed. As the Japanese treatise on morality states, in accordance with Zen:
[K]eeping track of a difference between killing and not killing violates the arguments. In this sense, what is for the auditors [in other words, for the Lesser Vehicle] the observance of the arguments, is for the bodhisattva a violation of the arguments. This is a complete reversal of values.146
Asaga classifies the ethics of the Great Vehicle as “deep.” They make killing an act of charity. This “deep” quality sometimes leans toward the fantastic. The Cloud of Jewels stra (Ratnamegha stra) is a dialogue discussing the bodhisattva, in other words, the saint of the Great Vehicle. It was translated into Chinese on four occasions, twice by monks from Bna (Funan, Cambodia), in the sixth century, a third time in the era of the Empress Wou from the Tang dynasty, at the end of the seventh century, and last, in the time of the Song dynasty, at the beginning of the eleventh century.147 The original Sanskrit is lost, but some fragments of it have been conserved in an anthology from the seventh century.148 In it we see exposed most notably different uses of “skillful means” (upya-kaualya), one of the attributes of a bodhisattva. This is roughly its principle: the ends justify the means.
The fourth kind of skillful means consists in “the removal of remorse” (kauktya-vinodana). Herein lies the definition that we read in all the Chinese versions of the stra. When a saint, a bodhisattva, meets a criminal guilty of the five sins worthy of immediate damnation (patricide, matricide, killing a saint, etc.) or of other serious sins, and finds him so racked with remorse that despair has taken possession of him and any rehabilitation seems impossible for him, the saint, using his miraculous powers (abhij ), will transform himself (before the very eyes of the dejected criminal) into a son, and proceed to commit patricide and matricide. After this, he will resume his previous form. Thus the bodhisattva demonstrates that, after committing two of the sins worthy of immediate damnation, he has lost none of his privileges of sainthood.
Consequently, the dejected criminal concludes that perhaps his crimes were not as unforgivable as he had previously thought. He will begin again to hope, and the saint, taking advantage of this, teaches him how (thanks to Buddhism) he can redeem himself from his most ominous sins. This is what the work of conversion and edification entails, which ultimately will lead the guilty party to salvation.149
This dramatic text is famous in China because of the Empress Wou, one of the most spectacular figures in China’s national history, who reigned from 690 to 705. She is suspected of citing this text to justify a multitude of assassinations she had perpetrated in order to ensure her continued power.150 Also famous for her devotion, her Buddhist bigotry is manifest in the various excesses in which she indulged throughout the course of her extraordinarily colorful career. The Empress Wou chose a Herculean ironmonger as her favorite person, a kind of Rasputin who caught her eye in the Lo-yang market. She made him a Buddhist monk to ensure his entrance into the imperial palace, and then bestowed upon him thereafter all kinds of other redundant responsibilities, most notably that of generalissimo of her armies against the Turks. Nonetheless, it was under the command of this strange monk that a committee of translators drafted the Chinese version of the Cloud of Jewels. Earlier, I summarized the passage about the magical killings from it.151
The Empress Wou did not kill her father or her mother. Still, according to her contemporaries, she had the deaths of two of her sons and numerous relatives of her husband (the Emperor Kao-tsong of the Tang dynasty) on her conscience. We have no positive proof that she made good use of the erroneous Mahynist morals of Cloud of Jewels to alleviate her conscience. But since she passed herself off as a bodhisattva, and even as an incarnation of Maitreya, some passages (like the one on the magical kil
lings) might have been perfectly applicable. This is how Buddhists from the Ming dynasty understood this matter. A long note inserted into the version from the Buddhist canon, printed during the Ming dynasty, refutes with indignation the authenticity of this passage and denounces it as horrid blasphemy against filial piety, interpolated for the Empress Wou’s own use.152 What else could the prudent editors from the Ming dynasty have gotten wrong? This passage is certainly not apocryphal and indeed must have figured in the original Sanskrit of the stra.153 It simply attests to one of these deviations in which all reasoning may get lost from time to time. In the West, we have done much better in this regard.
2
Making Merit through Warfare and Torture According to the rya-Bodhisattva-gocara-upyaviayavikurvaa-nirdea stra
Stephen Jenkins
The impression of Buddhist pacifism is so strong that it has suggested to historians that it was a significant factor in the downfall of Buddhism in India. Buddhist kings would seem to be implicated in a hopeless moral conflict. No Ka seems to rescue the Buddhist Arjuna from the disempowering moral conflict that arises between a warrior’s duty and the values of ahis (nonviolence). However, we can see from the example of the rya-Bodhisattva-gocara-upyaviayavikurvaa-nirdea stra that Buddhist kings had conceptual resources at their disposal that supported warfare, torture, and harsh punishments. The exploration of its intertextual details opens up an ever-wider view of a sort of Buddhism strongly at odds with the pacifist stereotypes. Here, an armed bodyguard accompanies the Buddha and threatens to destroy those who offend him. Torture can be an expression of compassion. Capital punishment may be encouraged. Body armor and a side arm are among the most important metaphors and symbols of the power of compassion. Celestial bodhisattvas, divinized embodiments of the power of enlightened compassion, support campaigns of conquest to spread the influence of Buddhism, and kings vested with the dharma commit mass violence against Jains and Hindus.
The rya-Bodhisattva-gocara-upya-viaya-vikurvaa-nirdea stra, otherwise known as the rya-Satyakaparivarta, engages a variety of questions in relation to the violence of warfare and punishment. As the two different titles indicate, its name can be a source of confusion. Although it is cataloged under its long title, it is more often cited and better known as the Satyakaparivarta.1 I would translate the long name as “The Noble Teaching through Manifestations on the Subject of Skillful Means in the Bodhisattva’s Field of Activity.”2 The doctoral dissertation of Lozang Jamspal contains a translation and study. It is also the subject of a rich research article by Michael Zimmermann, who makes use of the Chinese translations and compares perspectives from the Hindu Arthastra and dharmastras.3 Lambert Schmithausen mentions it in passing in a sweeping article with which all students of Buddhism and violence should begin.4 I will synthesize their contributions and make some observations, corrections, and additions. Dr. Sangye Tandar Naga, the former head of research at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala, supported my own study. The merit of this work is largely due to him.
The stra was translated twice into Chinese less than a hundred years apart. According to Zimmermann, the chapter on royal ethics is missing in the earliest Chinese translation by Guabhadra. Zimmermann astutely notes that this type of omission does not necessarily indicate that a chapter is a later interpolation into a stra. I would add that this is particularly true here, since in China violent or erotic materials were frequently modified or omitted when translating Indian texts.5 Jamspal notes that the text is frequently cited in Indian Buddhist literature.6 Its most important citation is in the strasamuccaya attributed to Ngrjuna.7 Lindtner takes the attributions of the strasamuccaya to Ngrjuna by Candrakrti and ntideva quite seriously, and it has been often used as a key source for dating texts.8 This would seem to give the Satyakaparivarta an early date. However, dating texts according to their appearance in compendiums such as the strasamuccaya and iksamuccaya is highly problematic. This type of text, built around a catalog of stra citations, is very susceptible to interpolation and stras should not be definitively dated to Ngrjuna based on this alone. However, it is important to note that the section cited by the strasamuccaya, possibly as early as the second century CE by the enormously influential Ngrjuna, is from the very section on royal ethics which is not included in Guabhadra’s fifth-century Chinese translation. This could mean that the section is not an interpolation into the later version of the stra and may have been deliberately excluded by Guabhadra. On the other hand, it could be taken as evidence that the strasamuccaya itself contains later interpolations. Further, since the internal content of the stra was also likely changed, we do not know whether the rest of the chapter that may have been in Ngrjuna’s hands was the same as the one we have today.
When Ngrjuna addresses royal ethics, as in the Ratnval, he does not directly cite this stra.9 However, this stra says many things about military policy and punishment, through the mouth of a manifestation that should not be addressed by an ordained monk such as Ngrjuna. The citation in the iksamuccaya, attributed to ntideva some 600 years later, also comes from the section on royal ethics.10 In terms of evaluating the stra’s currency and influence, particularly the chapter on royal ethics, all we can say is that influential figures in the Mahyna tradition believed that its foundational figure, Ngrjuna, had cited the stra. Even if the stra evolved and changed, it would have continued to carry this pedigree. Tsong-kha-pa’s frequent citations and exhortation to study it seem to suggest that this is true at least in the Tibetan tradition and for the currents of Indian tradition that influenced it.11 Considering that the extent of Indian Mahyna stra literature may have been almost as daunting to ancient scholars as it is to modern ones, citation catalogs, such as the strasamuccaya and iksamuccaya, may have been more important in monastic education than the vast corpus of stras themselves. So the Satyakaparivarta’s presence there is especially significant. Having stated the qualifications, the best evidence is that this stra’s section on royal ethics was well known and influential since the second century through the influence of Ngrjuna and that its absence from the earlier Chinese translation was a deliberate exclusion. However, as usual in Indian Buddhism, the best evidence in such matters is highly subject to doubt.
On the Setting
With apparent humor and irony, this stra describes a dialogue between an ascetic called Satyavaca Nirgranthaputra and a king. A character by this name also appears in two Pli suttas as a clever and aggressive anti-Buddhist debater.12 In this earlier account of Satyavaca, he makes the mistake of challenging the Buddha to debate with highly insulting language. Subsequently, when he hesitates to answer a key question during the debate, the Buddha’s menacing armed bodyguard, Vajrapi, threatens to split his head open with a blazing vajra. The vajra was a handheld weapon that would later become the primary symbol of the power of compassion. The key question put to Satyavaca by kyamuni Buddha shows a connection to the later Mahyna stra. The question is whether an anointed king may exercise the power in his own realm to execute those who should be executed. The Buddha’s argument hinges on the fact that this is so. Satyavaca concedes that an anointed king could indeed exercise the power of capital punishment and he would be worthy (Pli: arahati) to exercise it. He strengthens the point by saying that this is true even for groups and societies that do not have such kings. So the Buddha forces Satyavaca, under threat of death, to concede that an anointed king both has and merits the power to execute criminals.
FIGURE 2.1 The Buddha engages an ascetic in his hut; a muscular Vajrapi, brandishing his sidearm, is nearby. Photo taken at the Peshawar Museum in Pakistan by Stephen Jenkins.
The violence of Satyavaca’s situation is typical and shows how dangerous the world of the Indian ascetics was imagined to be. Those who lost debates are often described as being swallowed up by the earth, drowning in the Gaga, or spitting up blood and dying. It was not uncommon for the stakes to be death or conversion. The threat to split someone’s head was typical of intellectual challenges and occ
urs often both in the Upaniads and in early Buddhist literature.13 The fact that the threat is taken very seriously is shown here by Satyavaca’s terror and the presence of Vajrapi, who often works violence on the Buddha’s behalf from early mainstream Buddhist literature to late Tantric literature. The legends of such debates often end in the forfeit of the losing community’s right to assemble, or even being forced to fund new monasteries for the opponent. The relations between groups of ascetics were seen as violently competitive, even involving espionage and assassination. The Buddha is depicted as an attempted murder victim on multiple occasions and even as the victim of a conspiracy to implicate him in a murderous sex scandal (Jtaka 285).14 One thinks of the attempted assassinations of the Buddha, the murders of ryadeva and Ngrjuna, the wizardly battles of ntideva and Dignga, Candrakrti’s involvement in warfare, etc. In the Pli account of Satyavaca, the shadow of deadly force hangs over the Buddha’s debate in the form of Vajrapi. If legend and scripture are any indication, the violence of the Indian Buddhists’ imagination, and probably the violence of their world, was extreme. It is no wonder that in Tibet debate has evolved into a highly physical, intellectual martial art.
Buddhist Warfare Page 7