[Buddha-l] Re: Buddhist pacifism

[James A. Stroble]

On Sun, 2005-10-16 at 16:32 -0400, curt wrote:
>  There is an overwhelming tendency among 
> western Buddhist pacifists to start with the assumption that Buddhism 
> must be inherently pacifist, and anytime anything seems to contradict 
> that view they want to find out "what went wrong". James Stroble 
> articulates this approach quite unabashedly in the opening sentences of 
> his talk on Buddhism and War: "There is something rather unsettling when 
> one reads of Buddhist justifications of violence. ...."
> 
> You don't need a Buddhist to tell you what you will find when you 
> already know exactly what you are looking for.

Ah, Curt, it is far worse than that.  I am (supposedly) a philosopher,
not an anthropologist nor a political scientist, nor even a western
buddhist.  I hold that Buddhism is pacifist based on  the logic of
Buddhist teachings.  Practice does not always correspond, but I think
that it does so more in Buddhism than in other religions.   I even go so
far as to think that Christianity is pacifist, but then if we look at
history, something has seriously gone wrong!

Pax vobiscum, 
-- 
James A. Stroble <stroble at hawaii.edu>