When I teach a class on “Buddhism and violence,” I usually start by asking students to rank religious groups according to how many of their followers are in the British Army.
Usually Christians They are at the top of the list and Buddhists last.
This reflects an unconscious bias that many of these students have about Buddhism : they assume that all Buddhists are peaceful and that a Buddhist is not likely to adopt a career that may at some point involve acts of violence.
So they are always surprised to discover that there are more Buddhists in the British Army than Muslims and Sikhs together, even though there is a relatively low number of Buddhists in the UK.
But why do so many people in the West associate Buddhism with peace?
A matter of strategy
According to history professor Jonathan Walters, the origin of this association arose e with colonialism and Christian missionaries.
Finding different beliefs among the colonized populations, the missionaries adopted a strategy to frame the other religions of so that Christianity could present itself as superior and attractive.
From his point of view, Islam was too aggressive and focused on strict compliance with the rules.
The Buddhism was something too otherworldly, pacifistic and passive to the point of stagnation. Christianity was located between the two.
This framing still carries weight and leads to a certain cognitive dissonance when, for example, Buddhists make headlines through the wrong reasons.
Avoid “violent attack on living beings” and instead cultivating loving-kindness towards them is at the heart of Buddhist ethics; It is the first of the five moral precepts, and the one you have to follow if you choose to comply with any of them.
Buddha discouraged violence and advised the kings to seek alternative ways to solve problems.
Selling weapons is considered an inappropriate way of life for a Buddhist.
Buddhist violence
Even so, Buddhists have been involved in violent conflicts practically since religion emerged.
Justifications for this type of action have been usually based on the defense of the dharma (Buddhist teachings), occasionally demonizing or dehumanizing the enemy so that killing him is less bad from the point of view of karma.
A particularly uncomfortable example of this is found in the quasi-mythological chronicle of Mahavamsa from the 5th century in Sri Lanka, where monks reassure the king that of the millions he has just assassinated, only two were Buddhists. and the rest were more animals than humans.
When it comes to “ Buddhist violence, ”as with any perceived religious conflict, religion is just one factor in a complex situation.
Usually , ethnic identity is the real problem, only one of the ethnic groups in question has historical affiliations with Buddhism while the others do not.
At one point, the conflict in Sri Lanka of 1983 – 2009 saw three different civil wars at the same time: Sinhalese political and ethnic factions against Tamils, Sinhalese extremists against the Sinhalese government, and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam against other militant groups. Tamils.
While this is not as simple as Tamil Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus fighting each other, the conflict, however or, it gave rise to an increase in Jathika Chintanaya or “nationalist thought”, which promotes a Buddhist vision exclusive to Sri Lanka and which today influences organizations such as Bodu Bala Sena (“Buddhist Power Force”).
Tensions between Buddhist and Muslim ethnic groups in Rakhine State in Myanmar they generated riots in 2012 and eventually led to displacement of more than 700. 000 Muslim Rohingya to neighboring Bangladesh.
While explicitly describing itself as non-violent and not responsible for these events, the Buddhist Nationalist Movement 969 has nonetheless stoked anti-Muslim sentiments in Myanmar and framed Muslims as a threat to national identity.
It is important to note, however, that these nationalist movements do not represent all Buddhists – secular or monastic – neither in Sri Lanka nor in Myanmar.
Buddhist monks also wore weapons and fought in the Korean defense against the Japanese invasions of the late 16th century.
Die in calm
While the service Military is not prohibited in Buddhist texts, the life of a soldier is considered problematic due to the possibility of dying in battle, mental preparation to kill and fixation with violence.
Ideally, a Buddhist wants die with a calm mind, as this will allow more probability a positive reincarnation.
A violent mind could lead to the realms of Buddhist hell.
It is not just war and external threats that offer examples of violence buddhist. corporal punishment was an element of the premodern Tibetan legal system.
In 1997, three Tibetan monks were killed in Dharamsala. Police linked the suspects in the case to a controversy within Tibetan Buddhism.
Thailand maintains the death penalty . The last time you applied it was at 2018.
Peaceful in its essence
At the end of the class, I always fear that the students will stay in his mind with the most violent and sensational material we touch: let one extreme vision replace the other.
However, the pacifist stereotype of Buddhism has its foundations.
Look at the continued opposition of the Dalai Lama to violence in regards to the question of Tibetan independence, the peace activism of the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh or the efforts of the Buddhist Navyana (“Ambedkarite”) in relation to social justice in India, liberating millions of Dalits from the structural violence of the caste system.
So, the Buddhism is al less as internally diverse as Christianity or Islam and as such we must be careful to make generalizations.
After all, few Christians would want their religion to be viewed solely on the basis of images of the pacifist Quakers in the United States.
This art The article was published on The Conversation and reproduced here under the Creative Commons license. You can read the or i final in English by clicking here.
Nick Swann is Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of South Wales, UK.
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