[Buddha-l] Religious violence, Buddhist violence

[Dan Lusthaus]

Curt,

I'm not concerned about Jerryson or interested in questioning his motives. 
The book addresses an important topic that has been overlooked, ignored and 
pilloried for too long. Brian Victoria's work received the same kind of 
reaction when it first came out (and on this list, as I remember).

I don't know Jerryson, but do know Victoria to some extent, and it seems to 
me that both exemplify a very Nietzschian principle. Nietzsche argued that 
nihilism -- in the sense of a pessimistic disbelief in anything good or 
ideal, esp. rejection of a culture's major positive ideals -- was a 
byproduct of too much belief, too much naivite, particularly in what is 
ultimately unsupportable by reality. When the belief is shattered by 
reality, one plummets into the abyss. (Nietzsche of course put this much 
more elegantly and poignantly). The meaningful ground on which one stands, 
on which one has stood, has crumbled and disappeared, and all that remains 
is meaninglessness.

Victoria became a Soto monk in Japan because of a certain romanticized, 
idealized (pick whichever term you wish) notion of what Buddhism is. When he 
discovered his image and the reality did not mesh, he did NOT become a 
nihilistic grumbler, but remained a Ja-sagender and took on the Soto 
establishment and Japanese Buddhism -- as well as the western pro-Buddhist 
establishment that was, in what perhaps we might here coin as 
neo-Orientalism, enamored with its own erroneous, manufactured image of 
"Zen" and "Buddhism" as left-leaning, crunchy, veggie-consuming, pacifistic 
universalists who embraced spiritual progress instead of institutional 
regulatory-religion. He's weathered the storm in Japan and in the West, and 
has even elicited some positive results (including formal apologies to Dutch 
POWs from the Soto establishment, not a hollow or easy ritual in Japanese 
culture -- Japan has still not fully apologized to the rest of Asia for what 
it did to them during the war, which remains a regional sore point).

Jerryson, it would seem, experienced his own disillusion in similar fashion, 
and one hopes that his response will produce positive results in the long 
run as well.

Discussion and analysis of Buddhist violence is long overdue. As we can see, 
simply acknowledging it exists, has existed, has been institutionalized, and 
has played an important, not peripheral role in many of the West's favorite 
forms of Buddhism (contrary to the image they still retain here), is still 
difficult.

Because its existence has been denied and suppressed, or at best downplayed 
(a tradition Faure apparently is willing to continue), there will initially 
be a tendency to exaggerate and over-emphasize it, just to get it 
legitimately placed on the map. The relative degrees of violence between 
religions will get sorted out eventually (note in our culture we still have 
PC obstructions hindering open discussion of violence in Islam, and, as 
mentioned, Christians prefer to embrace historical amnesia or play 
dissociation games).