buddhism

[mother engine]

this post is NOT intended to cause an uproar but there is one thing question i never got around to posing in the closed thread 'slayers of god' that i am interested in knowing about. when religion is attacked for being the cause of violence one must factor in buddhism which is technically a religion. from what i understand buddhists have been persecuted by members of the chinese government but have not caused any violence towards others in noted history. any evidence to the contrary?

[IrishEyes]

Originally Posted by mother engine

this post is NOT intended to cause an uproar but there is one thing question i never got around to posing in the closed thread 'slayers of god' that i am interested in knowing about. when religion is attacked for being the cause of violence one must factor in buddhism which is technically a religion. from what i understand buddhists have been persecuted by members of the chinese government but have not caused any violence towards others in noted history. any evidence to the contrary?

I found this when I searched, which is what I remembered studying, but didn't remember the source. It bascially says that killing is against Buddhism, and to do so would invlove the priest losing his robes...
http://www.bodydharma.org/choices/vi...sivaraksa.html
In all of Buddhist history, there has never been a holy war. Surely Buddhist kings have waged war against one another, and they may even have claimed to be doing so for the benefit of humankind or the Buddhist religion, but they could not quote any saying of the Buddha to support them. The Buddha was quite clear in his renunciation of violence: "Victory creates hatred. Defeat creates suffering. The wise ones desire neither victory nor defeat... Anger creates anger... He who kills will be killed. He who wins will be defeated... Revenge can only be overcome by abandoning revenge... The wise seek neither victory nor defeat."


[Reprinted from Seeds of Peace: A Buddhist Vision for Renewing Society (1992) by Sulak Sivaraksa with permission of Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, www.Parallax.org ]

Copyright © 1977-2005, Barry Kapke.
All rights reserved.

[mother engine]

thanks, this is helpful information.

[Tormod]

I don't know much about Buddhism. But did you see the movie "Seven years in Tibet"? Granted, not Brad Pitt's finest moment, but an enlightening story about the Chinese invasion and the way the buddhist monks reacted to it.

[geko]

I think the reason why Buddhism is seen as pacifist is this is the media attention that it gets (but hey i could be wrong). Buddhism defends itself when it feels threatened the same as everything. This is a particularly good link i think for this type of topic -> http://www.cfr.org/pdf/correspondence/xFaure.php

Is Buddhism pacifist? One would think so, to hear the Declarations of the Dalai Lama and those who claim there has never been "Buddhist war.".........

how can one kill another person, when, according to good Buddhist orthodoxy, all is emptiness? The person who kills with full knowledge of the facts kills no one, since he has realized that all is but illusion, himself as well as the other person. The idea, moreover, is not exclusive to Buddhism........

[Turtle]

This all rings true. The downside is that this is just an extension I beleive of the Bhudist principle(s) of detachment/innaction. Under Bhuddism, it is no less an infraction to save a drowning child than to take up arms. Detachment is the driving principle.

[mother engine]

thanks geko, excellent site.