Buddhist Warfare
Page 14
If the above comments seem obvious to even beginning students of Buddhism, they were, sadly, not obvious to proponents of samurai-Zen like the famous Rinzai Zen master Takuan (1573–1645). Addressing his patron, the highly accomplished swordsman Yagy Tajima no Kami Munenori (1571–1646), Takuan wrote:
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” [kokoro], the striking man is not a man, the sword in his hands is 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.32
In Takuan, we have a priest, who even today epitomizes Zen “enlightenment” in Japan, telling us that the killing of a human being is of no more consequence than “the splitting of the spring breeze in a flash of lightning.” Compare these words with those attributed to Buddha kyamuni in the Dhammapada, a work dating back to the oldest stratum of the Buddhist stras:
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.33
In comparing these two quotations, one by the faith’s founder and the other by a disciple allegedly sharing the founder’s enlightenment, it is difficult to accept that both could be members of the same faith. I assert that they are not, for if ever there were a case when a teaching ought to be unequivocally rejected as “not Buddhism,” it is that of Takuan. Furthermore, many other noted Zen masters and scholars, up to and including D. T. Suzuki, have given their unqualified support for what has been traditionally expressed as the “unity of Zen and the sword” (J. zenken ichinyo). And a close (and deadly) corollary in their hands is the Zen teaching of the “unity of life and death” (J. shji ichinyo).
As is well known, the Zen sect has been deeply influenced by the Mdhyamika school of Mahyna Buddhism, with its teaching of two levels of truth, conventional and ultimate. However, by placing an exclusive emphasis on ultimate truth (Skt. paramrtha-satya), Takuan and the like devalued and delegitimized conventional truth to the point that human life effectively became worthless. Consciously or not, such Zen exponents failed to recognize that, as Bernard Faure noted, the Middle Way advocated by the Mdhyamika school insists on “the ‘simultaneous vision of the two truths,’ wherein each extreme keeps its distinct status. It does not always try to collapse them into one undifferentiated reality” (italics mine).34 In other words, while the self is indeed ultimately “empty” in that it is, like all phenomena, impermanent, the pain and suffering each one of us experiences are simultaneously all too real. Buddhist compassion must never be blind to addressing that pain, let alone serve to increase it.
Nevertheless, Zen leaders in Japan effectively collapsed these two truths into one undifferentiated reality, thereby providing Bushid with a corrupted metaphysical foundation. This foundation not only sanctioned killing, it also valorized the Zen-trained warrior’s willingness to die—in the process of taking life, in loyal service to his feudal lord—as the antinomian expression of full enlightenment. And should there be any doubt that Takuan’s teachings were subsequently incorporated into Zen support for Japanese militarism, we need look no further than wartime st Zen leader Ishihara Shummy, who said in March 1937:
Zen master Takuan taught that in essence Zen and Bushid were one. … I believe that if one is called upon to die, one should not be the least bit agitated. On the contrary, one should be in a realm where something called “oneself” does not intrude even slightly. Such a realm is no different from that derived from the practice of Zen.35
Imperial Army major kubo Kichi responded in enthusiastic agreement with Ishihara’s comments:
FIGURE 5.3 A 1937 cartoon stating, “Standing at attention is the same state of mind as Zen meditation.” Photo provided by Brian D. Victoria.
The soldier must become one with his superior. He must actually become his superior. Similarly, he must become the order he receives. That is to say, his self must disappear. In so doing, when he eventually goes onto the battlefield, he will advance when told to advance. … On the other hand, should he believe that he is going to die and act accordingly; he will be unable to fight well. What is necessary, then, is that he be able to act freely and without [mental] hindrance. (italics mine)36
During the Asia-Pacific War (1937–1945), Japanese soldiers of all ranks were indoctrinated with a program of Bushid-promoting “spiritual education” (J. seishin kyiku). This spiritual education was based on the metaphysical foundation of the unities of Zen and the sword, life and death. Once trained, Japanese soldiers were dispatched to the battlefield where nearly 3 million of them died “selflessly” even as they killed more than 20 million Chinese and other “selfless” enemies in the process.
The fact that, even in the twenty-first century (both in Japan and the West), this corrupted Zen understanding of selflessness has remained unchallenged (with only a few exceptions) cannot but be regarded as one of the world’s most successful religious deceptions. Although omitting the specifics, the Buddhist scholar and translator Thomas Cleary noted:
[M]ilitarism has distorted Zen along with the rest of Japanese culture. … Japanese people today are just as susceptible to being deceived by deviant Zen as are Westerners, with the result that the various conflicting elements in modern Zen are generally not analyzed for what they really are.37
Having asserted this, the question can now be asked, is there any major faith whose adherents have never employed illegitimate doctrinal interpretations to justify the slaughter of their fellow human beings? For example, are words like “crusade” and jihad unconnected to religiously inspired violence if not fanaticism? Nevertheless, I maintain that, even though all major religions (or their leaders) have acted similarly, this does not excuse samurai- and soldier-Zen’s gross betrayal of the Buddhadharma.
Samdhi Power
The application of samdhi power to the battlefield was closely connected with the militaristic use of Zen selflessness. This application, dedicated as it was to the destruction of others, should be unequivocally repudiated; for the only legitimate Buddhist use of samdhi power is the facilitation of true spiritual growth and understanding.
In this context, Zen adherents should be open to an insight from the Theravda school of Buddhism. The Pli Buddhist suttas (Skt. stras) clearly warn against the misuse of samdhi, i.e., miccha-samdhi. In the Gopaka Moggallana Sutta, for example, Ananda, one of Buddha kyamuni’s chief disciples, points out to Vassakara (the chief minister of the country of Magadha), that kyamuni did not praise every form of meditation:
What kind of meditation, Brahman, did the Lord [kyamuni] not praise? … He [who] dwells with his thought obsessed by ill-will, and does not comprehend as it really is the escape from the ill-will that has arisen; he, having made ill-will the main thing, meditates on it, meditates absorbed, meditates more absorbed, meditates quite absorbed. … The Lord does not praise this kind of meditation, Brahman.38
FIGURE 5.4 A 1937 cartoon depicting Imperial Japanese Army officers practicing Zen meditation. Photo provided by Brian D. Victoria.
Meditating “obsessed by ill-will” is not, of course, the only misuse to which samdhi can be put. Meditative obsession with “the pleasures of the senses,” “sloth and torpor,” “restlessness and doubt,” etc., are also condemned. But as anyone who has actually been in battle will tell you, the slaughter of one’s fellow human beings inevitably, and inescapably, requires a great deal of ill will.
Experienced meditators know that the one-pointedness of mind arising out of meditation is a very powerful force indeed, whether used for good or ill. Yet it appears that Zen, perhaps even the entire Mahyna school, has failed to recognize the danger of misusing meditation powe
r, a singular misunderstanding of the Buddhadharma. Fortunately, this danger is recognized in the Theravda tradition and is furthermore entirely consistent with Buddha kyamuni’s fundamental teachings of compassion and nonviolence.
Viewed in terms of its historical development, it can be argued that Zen (and, as this book reveals, Buddhism as a whole) was the victim of something akin to a hijacking. This particular hijacking occurred over such a long period of time, however, that the victims were seldom conscious of being taken for a ride, let alone taken against their will. To give but one example, a full millennium prior to the advent of soldier-Zen, a famous Chinese writer by the name of Liang Su (753–793) criticized Chan’s lack of ethical standards:
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 mine).39
In reading this, one is tempted to believe that Liang was also a prophet, able to foresee that, over a thousand years later, millions of young Japanese men would be drawn to their own burning deaths by the Zen-influenced “light” of Bushid. And we must never forget the many more millions of innocent men, women, and children who burned with (or because of) them.
Even more to the point, the French scholar Paul Demiéville notes that, according to the seventh-century Chan text “Treatise on Absolute Contemplation,” killing is evil only in the event the killer fails to recognize his victim as empty and dream-like. On the contrary, if one no longer sees his opponent as a living being separate from emptiness, then he is free to kill him at will.40 This early antinomian license to kill with moral impunity reveals that soldier-Zen was not some medieval invention of the Zen school in Japan. Nor was it a more recent aberration resulting from the advent of Japanese militarism in the 1930s. Instead, its roots can be traced back to the very emergence of Chan in China.
In addition to being stripped early of its ethical moorings, Chan was also hijacked by a syncretism that identified Buddhism with both Confucianism and Taoism. As Dgen, who was a direct observer, discovered when he visited China from 1223 to 1227:
Among present-day Chinese monks there is not even one who is aware that the teachings of Confucius and Lao-tzu [legendary founder of Taoism] are inferior to those of the Buddha. Although it is true that, throughout China, those who call themselves descendants of the Buddhas and [Zen] Patriarchs are now as numerous as rice plants, hemp, bamboo, and reeds, not one of them, not even half of one of them, has understood that the Buddha’s teachings are superior to [those of ] the other two. It was only Ju-ching, my late master, who understood this fact and proclaimed it ceaselessly day and night.41
If Dgen sounds somewhat polemical here, it should be remembered that, like Hakamaya and Matsumoto of the present day, he, too, was attempting to establish in Japan what is “not Buddhism.” Significantly, Dgen based one part of his critique of Taoism on a Taoist work, the Lieh-ch’uan, which stated that Lao-tzu had required a would-be disciple by the name of Kuan-ling Yin-hsi to kill seven people, including the latter’s own mother and father. About this incident, Dgen wrote: “The Tathgata, for his part, based his teachings on [the need for] great compassion. Where, then, did Lao-tzu find the basis for his treacherous teachings?”42
Within the context of this chapter, Dgen’s further critique of both Lao-tzu and Confucius is even more telling:
[Lao-tzu and Confucius] were also quite ignorant of causality in the three stages of time [i.e., past, present, and future]. They merely taught loyal service to the emperor and filial piety, the latter seen as a method of regulating one’s household. Their teachings concerned the present world only, ignoring the future, and therefore were one form of the denial of causality.43
In Dgen’s comments, we once again encounter a prophetic voice. When wartime Zen practitioners like Sugimoto and his master fervently advocated loyalty to the emperor, they were clearly concerned with the immediacy of the world around them. But in terms of the subsequent untold millions of deaths that this loyalty produced, they, too, were equally guilty of “ignoring the future.”
Be that as it may, Dgen’s critique of these two Chinese philosophies, especially Confucianism, was no more successful or long lasting in Japan than it had been in China. Less than a hundred years after Dgen’s death, Gid Shshin (1325–1388), Rinzai abbot first of Enkakuji in Kamakura and later of Nanzenji in Kyoto, confidently taught Shgun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358–1408) that, while it was impossible for Confucian teachings to contain Buddhism, it was quite possible for Buddhism to contain Confucianism. To his credit, Gid did employ his Buddhist faith to speak out against the almost continuous civil warfare that characterized his age. Nevertheless, he failed to recognize that the price of “containing Confucianism” would, over the long term, be the wholesale incorporation into Zen of the hierarchically based Confucian ethical system. This system is centered on the creation of “social harmony” through inculcating subordinates with feelings of absolute and unquestioning loyalty toward their superiors, be they feudal lord, military superior, emperor, or, today, the corporate leaders who collectively constitute “Japan, Inc.”
Violence and the Bodhisattva
Bearing this in mind, let me address the issue that is, for me as a Mahyna Buddhist in the st Zen tradition, the most difficult one of all. I refer to the question of whether a bodhisattva can, under any circumstances, legitimately employ violence to the point of actually taking the life of another human being? I also ask my readers, what do you think about this crucial question?
My own position is to make a flat denial, identifying stras to the contrary as later Mahyna accretions to the Buddhadharma having as one of their aims the transformation of the absolute prohibition of killing (in early Buddhism) into something more acceptable to Buddhism’s later patrons—the empire-building monarchs and the war-prone states they headed. In support of my denial, I would point out that I find no evidence in what are generally considered to be the fundamental tenets of Buddhism (i.e., the Four Noble Truths and Holy Eightfold Path) that would condone an adherent’s participation in violence against other human beings for any reason whatsoever.
Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that even lay Buddhists, let along male and female clerics, are expected to follow the Five Precepts (Pli. pañcasla; Skt. pañca-la). These precepts constitute the very core of Buddhist ethics and followers of Buddha kyamuni in both the Theravda and Mahyna traditions pledge to adhere to them unconditionally. The importance placed on abstention from killing can be seen in the fact that it is the very first of the Five Precepts followed only then by abstention from stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and intoxication. Thus Buddhism, from its earliest formulation up through today, should be considered to take the position of nonviolence as its normative standard of conduct.
That said, there does exist in Mahyna Buddhism a doctrine known as “skillful/expedient means” (Skt. upya aka upya-kaualya). Skillful means is a concept that encourages Buddhist teachers to adapt their message to the needs and capacities of their audience, i.e. to use language, methods or techniques leading to the cessation of suffering and spiritual liberation based on individual needs and abilities.
In the Lotus stra the use of skillful means is illustrated by the story of a father who comes home to find his house on fire and his children still inside unaware of the danger. The man calls out to his children to leave the house, but not believing it to be on fire they continue playing with their toys. Thinking about how he may use skillful means, the father tells his children that he has brought home gilded carts and toy oxen for them to play with, but they must first come outside to get them. Hearing this, the children
run from the burning house and are saved. In employing skillful means the father broke the Buddhist precept against lying but in the service of saving his children from death.
In Mahyna Buddhism the use of skillful means has particular reference to the actions of a bodhisattva. The idea is that a bodhisattva may use any expedient methods in order to help ease the suffering of people, introduce them to the Dharma, or aid them in their quest for Nirvana. While this doctrine seems benign enough on the surface, it has nevertheless been used over the centuries to justify the unorthodox or even precept-breaking behavior engaged in by Buddhist teachers in certain extreme cases, including the use of non-life threatening violence.
There is, for example, the famous Zen story about a ninth-century Chinese priest known in Japanese as Gutei Isshi. Gutei is said to have raised his finger whenever he was asked a question about Zen. Observing Gutei’s behavior, a boy attendant began imitating his master by raising his own finger when anyone asked him what his master taught. When Gutei heard about this conduct, he seized the boy and cut off the offending finger. The boy cried and started to run away, but Gutei called and stopped him. Turning his head toward Gutei, Gutei raised up his own finger and in that instant the boy was said to have realized enlightenment.
Invented or not, this story illustrates that under certain extreme cases, the use of non-life threatening violence may have a certain didactic viability. Nevertheless, the most important concept in skillful means is that its use be guided by the duel qualities of wisdom and compassion. Would anyone suggest that the mass slaughter associated with modern warfare could ever be an expression of these qualities?