Buddhism and War: Nonviolene Teaching of Lord Buddha

Buddhism and War:
A Study of the Status of Violence in Early Buddhism
By: James A. Stroble
University of Hawai'i at Manoa
December 17, 1991

There is something rather unsettling when one reads of Buddhist justifications of violence. We can not but help thinking that the central ethical precepts of Buddhism, ahimsa, karuna, and metta (non-harm, compassion and loving-kindness) have somehow been lost. But in spite of the initial shock, the justifications we encounter are quite similar to those we find in the other world religions. Why do they jar in the case of Buddhism?

We propose here to consider the possibility of Buddhist justifications of war, and to investigate not how they came about, for that is all too obvious and not specific to Buddhism, but rather why they should not have, which hopefully will explain the particular unease many of us feel in the face of them.

Buddhism's problems with the state begin with the conversion of rulers of states to the teachings of the Buddha. Unfortunately, these rulers did not often follow the Buddha's own example and renounce their kingdoms. More often it meant that Buddhism came to be under state protection. This situation entails several problems for Buddhism, the first being how to accept kingship as not being antithetical to Buddhist teaching and practice, and a second being the price of such an accommodation which then places the political on par if not superior to the religious. These problems are in no way specific to Buddhism, but attend the political success of any historical religion, the greatest example in the West being the acceptance of Christianity by the Roman Emperor Constantine.

What we are interested in here is how Buddhism does, or fails to, come to terms with the eternal prerogative of states: war. For states often are modified by the influence of religions, but rarely if ever to the point of surrendering the power to make war. Therefore we should be cautious of cases where the religion comes to sanction the use of violence by the state, especially where the religion everywhere else holds to a position of non-violence. In the case of Buddhism, we must understand the basis for the doctrine of non-violence or ahimsa in order to see whether or not it can allow sanctioned state (or other) violence.

The doctrine of ahimsa is the distinctive feature of Indian moral thought. But the basis for this precept can differ from one tradition to another. The resulting interpretation and evaluations of action, then, admit of great diversity or even contradiction, but almost no one ever explicitly denies ahimsa itself. The arguments for the non-violent nature of explicitly violent actions such as war, or the denial of human agency in the commission of such carnage, as in the Bhagavadgita for example, do not challenge the moral principle of ahimsa, but only quibble about the facts of the particular case.

We turn instead to the grounds for accepting ahimsa as the foremost moral principle. Of these several are possible: a doctrine of unity with the universe implies one ought not to hurt oneself; a doctrine of moral pollution suggests abstention for purity; a doctrine of sympathy enjoins us to refrain from those actions which we would not like to be the recipient of [The Golden Rule and Kant's Categorical Imperative].1

Buddhism has elements of all of these, but adds the further, and central, doctrine of causality which ties the others together and gives us moral efficacy.2 As for violence, violence is caused, and causes more violence, depending on conditions. This understanding of not just the morality of non-violence but also of the world in general puts the question of morality on par with that of any other phenomena. The causality of violence is not something that can be supervened or suspended, is not to be put aside as mere window dressing in the face of "political realities". The fact that violence makes for suffering is not limited to the victim, but also touches the perpetrator; thus the recognition of "sympathy" is not merely an altruistic act. The analysis of violence in Buddhism is of a piece with the rest of the dhamma.

The reality that the Buddha realized is to be found in the Four Noble Truths. The first of these is that the world is suffering. Not surprisingly, then, the analysis of violence belongs to the second Noble Truth: there is a cause of suffering. The normative import of this analysis is found in the assertion that there is a way out of suffering, the third Noble Truth. Even without going into the fourth Noble Truth, the Eight- fold Path, we can see that if violence is truly a source of suffering, and exclusively so, then it must be renounced in the Eight-fold Path. This is to deny that violence can in some cases be the instrument of the cessation of violence, that even as the means of a noble intent it produces instead more suffering. And indeed this seems to be the Buddhist position. Even the "successful" use of violence does not escape from the production of more suffering:

§ 201 The victor begets enmity. The vanquished dwells in sorrow. The tranquilled lives happily, abandoning both victory and defeat.

The case of the vanquished is straightforward, no one likes to lose. In the case of the victor, however, the connection is not as direct, but is just as inexorable.

§5 Not at any time, indeed, are enmities appeased through enmity. However, they are appeased through non-enmity. This is an ancient tradition.

The enmity that the conquer generates through his own enmity toward his enemy, or even vice versa, results in the further production of enmity with the victory. In the discussion of war in the Samyutta Nikaya,3 we find the evil king Ajatasattu attacking the good king Pasenadi, with Pasenadi being defeated. And here is stated what is quoted above from the Dhammapada (§201), with Pasenadi being the one to suffer. When these kings again met on the battlefield, Pasenadi captures Ajatasattu. But instead of executing him (partly due to a family relation, Ajatasattu is his nephew), Pasenadi only confiscates his army. The Buddha's response to the news is informative:

A man may spoil another, just so far
As it may serve his ends, but when he's spoiled
By others he, despoiled, spoils yet again.
So long as evil's fruit is not matured,
The fool doth fancy `now's the hour, the chance!'
But when the deed bears fruit, he fareth ill.
The slayer gets a slayer in his turn;
The conqueror gets one who conquers him;
Th' abuser wins abuse, th' annoyer, fret.
Thus by an evolution of the deed,
A man who spoils is spoiled in his turn.

It is to be noticed that this applies equally to both of the combatants, the point being that Pasenadi's largesse is not sufficient to put an end to the conflict, and we can expect more war in the future. The only way to answer violence that does not add to violence is with non- violence.4

At the opening of the Mahaparinibanna Sutta we find our same king Ajatasattu sending a minister to seek an audience with the Buddha in order inquire about a planned attack on the Vajji princes. Ajatasattu's motivation for seeking advice is not based solely on respect for the Enlightened One, but more because "Tathagatas never speak what is untrue." 5 The Buddha, in accordance with the moral teaching found in the Maha Sila sections of the Brahmajala and Samannaphala suttas,6 does not "make predictions about kings going to war; about kings coming back from war; ...; and probabilities of victories and losses of warring kings," but instead inquires of Ananda as to the practices of the Vajji princes, the seven factors of non-decline. Finding that the princes do indeed possess the seven factors of non-decline, the Buddha says that so long as they continue so, they will not decline.

Several points are to be made here. On the one hand, the `prediction' as to how the Vajji will fare does not concern itself with the relative strength of any other state, most significantly that of Ajatasattu. On the other hand neither does it concern the internal material disposition of the state, such as its defense readiness and economic vitality. Rather the factors of non-decline are communication and harmony with each other, and respect for tradition, elders, women, shrines, and arahants. Immediately upon this follows several more sets of "seven factors of non-decline", but these pertain not to a state but to the community of monks, an example of the way in which much of the discussion of war and violence in the Suttas is primarily metaphorical.7

It is significant that the Buddha's reply to Ajatasattu's minister does not even metaphorically involve violence. The maintenance of the state, as well as the Sangha or the individual monk, is a matter of its own cultivation.8 It is not necessary to respond in kind to threats from the outside, as foolish as that may seem from the position of the political realist. If the Vajji princes were to be concerned with the threat, already they would be suffering in anticipation and uncertainty, on the path to decline. They would have entered upon the same course of action as Ajatasattu and Pasenadi, where even if they succeed in a defensive war, only "spoiling" their enemy so far as necessary for their own security, nonetheless will most likely face the same prospect in the near future, and will not necessarily always be the victor.

That a nation should not take a serious interest in its own defense is as popular proposition today as it was in Buddha's time. A cursory glance at the Arthasaastra of Kautiliya will confirm that a very different approach to politics was available. But the Buddhist approach is based not on sentimentality or soft-headedness, but on the understanding of the dynamics of violence, of its causality. The dependance on war or the threat of war to preserve one's security is in the long run bound to fail, due to the further violence that is produced by the inevitable suffering resulting from such a policy.

A doctrine of sympathy, based on fellow-feeling for the defeated even where oneself is the victor, could not produce a justification for ahimsa that entailed the renunciation of violence; instead it would only recommend magnanimity in victory (along the lines of the Marshall Plan?) such as that of Pasenadi above, in hopes of putting an end to the circle of violence through victory. But this is precisely what the Buddha does not allow. The awareness of how violence arises entails a broader view of conflict than that which only involves one's own narrow self-interest. Thus the position of the enemy is to be taken into account. Not responding with violence, far from being an act of altruism, is in one's own interest in the cessation of violence. Thus:

§166 One should not neglect one's own welfare through excessive altruism. Having understood one's own welfare, one should be devoted to true welfare.

The question that naturally arises is just how such an insight is to be put in practice, especially when one is faced with an adversary who has no qualms about the use of violence. In the Angulimaala Sutta we find the Buddha purposely encountering just such a case. The robber Angulimaala is described in the most fearsome terms, he wears a necklace of fingers, parties of 40 men are not safe in traversing his domain, he has caused the depopulation of whole villages. Even King Pasenadi is unable to bring this criminal to account. The Buddha, in spite of profuse warnings, journeys through the robber's territory alone. Predictably, Angulimaala sets upon the Buddha. Through his psychic powers, the Buddha made Angulimaala unable to overtake him. [the magic trick is problematic] When Angulimaala stops and says "Stand still, recluse," the Buddha replies "I am standing still Angulimaala, you too stand still." Puzzled by this response, since he is not moving while the Buddha still is, Angulimaala asks for an explanation. Buddha responds:

"I, Angulimaala, am standing still, having for all beings everywhere laid aside the stick,
But you are unrestrained regarding creatures; therefore I am standing still, you are not standing still."9

This is enough to make Angulimaala see the errors of his ways and immediately become a monk. The motive of this conversion is not made explicit, but the important point is that it is not effected by meeting his atrocious violence with greater violence of punishment (danda), the Buddha having "laid aside the stick" (danda?) even for Angulimaala.

Of course, not all of us have the psychic power to get an attacker to stand still long enough to discourse with him about "standing still". But nonetheless, insofar as we do not and instead meet violence with violence, we will be perpetuating suffering rather than contributing to its cessation. Thus even where one cannot eliminate violence by kindness, resort to violence is still to be avoided. In the "Parable of the Saw" the Buddha says to the monks:

Monks, as low-down thieves might carve one limb from limb with a double-handed saw, yet then whoever sets his mind at enmity, he, for this reason, is not a doer of my teaching.

(Majjhima Nikaya, I.129)

Taking the matter to such extreme, while very much a part of our interest here, is to a degree only illustrative in this Sutta. The first step in the cessation of violence is usually not nearly so difficult as getting an elephant-overtaking Angulimaala to stand still. It is as difficult to stand still ourselves, not so much when we are being carved by thieves but when we are being slandered by another. Once we allow enmity to arise in our own mind, the escalation to physical violence is only a matter of degree, not of kind. Thus the parable is followed by the question,

If you, monks, were to attend repeatedly to this exhortation on the Parable of the Saw, would you, monks, see any way of speech, subtle or gross, that you could not endure?

The concern with one's own equanimity in the face of violent speech or action does not seem to directly address our question about the practicalities of the insight. But given an understanding of the causality of violence, we can see that the first move in its eradication must be our own. Not entering into the circle of violence is the only way to stay [get?] outside of it. This means that we must concern ourselves with our own thought, speech and action rather than with those of others,10 not only because this is what is most directly within our control, but also because it is these that cause us to suffer.

§165 Evil done by oneself does oneself defile. Evil left undone by one does one oneself purify. Purity and impurity belong individually to oneself; no one shall another purify.

This then belongs to the third Noble Truth, the cessation of violence, and gives us an explanation of why the Vajji princes will not decline.

The second aspect of this understanding of the causality of violence involves how one affects others. Again the basis for this is not sympathy per se, but the causality of one's actions which then not only affects another but reacts upon oneself. We have already seen this expressed with regard to the battles of Ajatasattu and Pasenadi, but it also applies as well on the everyday interpersonal [interpsycho-physical?] level.

§133 Do not speak harsh to anyone. Those spoken to would perhaps answer you back. Painful is quarrelsome talk, lest retaliation affect you.

Having controlled one's own reaction to violence, it is wise to be aware of how one's actions affect others11 not just to minimize their suffering but as well to reduce the occasions on which we are tested in our control.

Needless to say, all this runs against the prevailing opinion, in Buddha's time as now, on how to control violence. The only effective counter to violence it taken to be more violence, with the distinction being made between "good" violence (just, licit, or sanctioned force, punishment) and "bad" violence (unjust, illicit violence or crime, and more recently, terrorism). The question here, then, is the proper, effective use of violence in overcoming violence. The popular renditions of this come readily to mind: "the stick is all they understand", "we must fight fire with fire", "the war to end all wars",etc. The implication of this kind of thinking is that violence itself is morally neutral, and that what matters is the ends to which it is applied. Violence itself, in this interpretation, is not a source of problems, only its application by those with the wrong views.

How far this is from the early Buddhist position should be apparent. Instead of understanding the causality of violence, common opinion relies on the instrumentality of it to vanquish unjust violence. The one takes as its first precept the prohibition of the killing of any creature; the second requires the killing of certain beings, as necessary for the protection of others. One advocates the control of one's own mind, where the other legislates the control of the other's body. This seems to suggest at first that the two are incompatible; but unfortunately, the usual interpretation is that they belong to different spheres of life: the strict observance of ahimsa for the monks and nuns, the moderate use of force by the householders and the state.

V.P. Kothari, in his work The Law of Non- Violence seems to grasp the underlying argument for ahimsa based on the causality of violence, but backs away at the strict application of non-violence at the political and householder level.

An analysis of religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism leads us to recognize that they may make a distinction between the conduct of a layman, that is a person involved in a worldly pursuit of any kind, and that of persons who have entirely renounced all worldly pursuits and have become monks, ascetics or adopted the discipline of a saint.

12

The reasons that a householder cannot strictly pursue ahimsa is that "A layman should be a good and successful citizen or ruler." The duties of position and profession may require one to do some harm, and in any case the necessity of violence in the defence of self and property bears upon the householder. As long, Kothari allows, as the execution of duty is not motivated by passion, it "cannot, it may be argued, be deemed as Himsa or Violence. As the world consists of wicked people and mischief- mongers as well as kind and peace-loving people, there are occasions when non-violence may have to be tempered with the defensive use of violence." (p. 34) The same responsibility for defence falls to the state, and is also justified "within the limits of Ahimsa, as long as the motive is national defence." Pure non-violence is restricted to the Saint (monk, ascetic), but given the theory behind non-violence, the causality of violence, how can it be held in abeyance for the householder, or the nation-state? Why is it that we should perpetuate the realm of bondage by allowing the use of violence to be justified at some level? This is puzzling, but all too common.

We turn to a Jain writer here because his statement of this position is quite clear, accords well with the teaching of the Bhagavadgita, and is completely foreign to Buddhism. In order to make such a distinction, the whole theory of dependent co-arising (paticcasamuppada) would have to be rejected or not taken seriously. The householder's right and duty to use violence cannot be separated from the conditions which give rise to suffering.13 Thus we find U Nu, the former prime minister of Burma, claiming "Unlike the theistic creeds [Buddhism] cannot sanction (even) such acts of violence that are necessary for the preservation of public order and society."14 But U Nu goes too far, for he assumes that violence is necessary for public order, which also denies the analysis of the causality of violence given above.

On the one hand we have the requirement of the absence of passion in such instrumental application of violence, ignoring the effect on its object. Related to this is the requirement of last resort, which replaces passion with necessity.15 But in spite of the assertions that such violence is not actually violence, this does not evade the inexorable train of causality which attends violence, but at most limits its range. This acknowledgement of the role of violence in the life of the householder, which means strictly life outside the Sangha including such larger social entities as the state, admits not that such violence is blameless, but rather that it is a fact in the world such as it is, and that its eradication is not immediately possible. But to say this is not to say that violence is necessary or desirable, only that a reduction is to be accepted where total abstinence is not feasible.16

What is in question, then, is how Buddhism could go from recognizing the actuality of violence without approving of it to a position where violence could be advocated by Buddhists. To understand this we will need to be very clear about the difference between a recognition of actual violence and the proposal of the use of violence for some end.

Surveying the Buddha's attitude toward violence in the Pali Nikayas, we find many cases where violence and punishment are described as part of the life of the householder or civil society. The fact that these are for the most part descriptions rather than normative statements is to be stressed, however. When there is occasion for the Buddha himself to deal with one who is deserving of punishment, the method he uses is manifestly one of non-violence. The difference between the descriptive portrayal of violence and the normative example of the Buddha then establishes a distance between the world of the civil authorities and that of the Sangha. Where the enlightened one is said to "have stopped moving," "having done what is to be done", the king and ministers and householders are described as having many things to do, being very busy.17 This then forms the basis of the distinction between the political and religious spheres. The political authorities are very busy, just as Angulimaala was very busy plundering the countryside; both stand in contrast to the Buddha, whose goal is to put an end to violence.

The Buddhist ideal that receives the most attention in regard to a Buddhist politics is that of the Universal Monarch, the "Wheel-turner" or cakkavattin. We will deal with it only so far as this ideal reinforces the case for Buddhism not justifying the use of violence in securing social order. The Cakkavatti Sutta18 begins with an exhortation of the monks to be their own support, which as in Plato's Republic begets a initial ambiguity over whether the work is to be taken as a serious political proposal or an analogy for self- understanding and discipline. In any case, the distinguishing characteristic of the cakkavattin is that he rules "the Earth to the extent of its ocean boundaries, having conquered territories not by force of arms but by righteousness." The noble duties of the cakkavattin are to provide protection, shelter, and security for all, including the birds and beasts, taking the Dhamma as his sole guide and support, enquiring of the proper teachers as to the proper course of action. No specific policies are here mentioned, but from the fact that the conquest by righteousness is contrasted with one by force, we can surmise the same held for domestic policy.

This is further confirmed by the tale of decline that attends the first appointed king who does not consult his predecessor about the duties of the cakkavattin.19 When, as a result of his ruling "in accordance with his own ideas," inequities appear in the country, the advisors seek to inform him of these duties (but notably not the Dhamma). The appointed king then takes such measures, but neglects the welfare of the poor. This leads to incidence of theft, which the king deals with only in the individual case, providing the offender with money. This encourages theft rather than dissuading it, a fact the king soon catches onto, and the third offender loses the lottery, as well as his head. The imposition of the death penalty does not dissuade theft either, pointing to the initial failure of policy, but makes the thieves more desperate and hence more violent. The process of disintegration continues on from this point.

What the Cakkavatti Sutta seems to tell us, then, is not that the application of violence is a necessary component of maintaining social order, but rather is the first sign of its disintegration, and leads only to more violence and further disorder. This is in accordance with the understanding of the causality of violence presented above. We must exempt Buddhism from the company of Hinduism and Jainism in allowing a separate standard of conduct for the householder and the king, and correct U Nu's assumption that some violence is necessary for social order with the assertion that quite the opposite is the case.

The early Buddhist attitude toward political authority, then, cannot be one of approval in the form in which it exists. No doubt this does not mean that Buddhists should engage in invective and harsh words toward political authority, which would result in a further increase in violence--directed at them. But this does call into question the close relation Buddhism has had in later times with political authority. John Strong, in his study of the Asokavadana, questions why terrible acts of the first Buddhist king, Asoka, are preserved in the Buddhist texts.

The answer is rather complex, but, at least initially, I would suggest that the inclusion of these acts reflects an underlying Buddhist apprehension toward the institution of kingship as inherently, perhaps inevitably, prone to such actions.20

He also notes that Gokhale has pointed out in many Buddhist texts "a distinct attitude toward kingship of `disquiet bordering on fear'."21 And Uma Chakravarti pushes the question further.

Did Buddhism envisage a close relation between the two, even if it is granted that the spheres of the king and the sangha were separate? Tambiah and Ling have argued that there was an intimate relationship between the king and the sa gha, and that Buddhist civilization is a triangular relationship between the king, the sangha, and the people. However, we suggest that, while this close relationship may have developed over time, it is not reflected in early Buddhist literature. The Buddha respected the power of the king, and therefore maintained good relations with all the prominent kings that came into his orbit, but there is no indication that the king had any crucial role to play in the propagation of the nibb nic goals of Buddhism. The king was nothing more than the highest member of the laity, whose patronage as the head of the social world was significant.22

Early Buddhism, then, did not approve of the use of violence by kings, anymore than by anyone else, but merely accepted it as the fact, and did what was proper to the circumstances. As Chakravarti concludes, even though the Buddha did not propound the theory of the cakkavattin to any actual kings, "the Buddhists ... developed the idea of the cakkavatti dhammiko dhammaraagaa who, by a just exercise of power would play a pivotal role in transforming society," as a counter to the excesses of actual kings.23

It must be noted that the intent of the Buddhist egalitarianism was not to replace one caste with another, a constant struggle within the caste system itself, but to allow everyone to attain to liberation. One implication of this is the dissolution of the subordination of the ksatriya class to the class of liberation-seekers, for to require the military class to engage in activities which do not conduce to their own liberation is to sacrifice their well-being, which contradicts the notion of equality of sentient beings. Thus Buddhism would have to deny the instrumental use of violence to defend even itself, and would have to pursue another method for the overcoming of violence. This, as we find in the Dhammapada, is the understanding of the causes of violence and the non- violent solution to it. At some level the intricate mechanism of the state for maintaining social order becomes unnecessary or even counter-productive. But faced with the actual existence of kings and armies, the Buddhists put forward a model of kingship that rules without punishment, legislates without enforcement. The problem is that with the preeminence of the king preserved, it is all too easy for the old methods to be put in service of the new goal without the separation of powers between the political and religious communities. Thus the king not only defends the Dharma from external threats, but also from internal dissension within the Sangha itself, so we have an absolute monarch whose use of force is justified only by himself. Thus we find the reversal of priorities which gives us the idea of violence, and indeed war, that is sanctioned by Buddhism, but in fact ignores the teaching of Buddhism concerning violence and suffering.

Could it not be, however, that a fully enlightened one could commit an act of violence without entering into the causality of violence (sans karma)? What this would mean is that the actor (not victor in any sense) would have no thought of enmity, no concern over victory or loss, no attachment to the outcome. but further it would mean that the victim would suffer no pain, no resulting hatred or enmity, would also have no attachment to the outcome. And further that no other being would be affected by the sight, report, recounting or knowledge, or any other effects of the violent act.

Can there be such a non- causal act of violence? Such a question belongs to the same class of unhelpful speculation which the Buddha himself refused to answer.

Notes
1. The Dhammapada, § 130 "All tremble at punishment; to everyone life is dear. Taking oneself as an example, one should neither strike nor kill." (All references or quotes introduced with "§" are from the Dhammapada, translated by David Kalupahana.)
2. See Dharmasiri, Gunapala. Fundamentals of Buddhist ethics, "Objective Justification of Moral Actions", p. 32-3.
3. Pali Text Society, vol. 7, part 1, p. 109.
4. § 223 One should conquer anger with kindness, the wicked with goodness, the niggardly man with liberality and the liar with truth.
5. Digha Nikaya, 132; (Burma Pitaka Association, p. 187)
6. Brahmajala sutta, 23, (Burma p. 13) ; and Samannaphala sutta, 207. (Burma p. 100).
7. Where the Buddhist texts seem to advocate conquest or killing, more likely the intent is along the lines of the following: Dhammapada:

§103 Whosoever were to conquer in battle a thousand times thousand men, and another were to conquer one, that is, oneself, he indeed is the greatest victor in battle.
§104 The conquest of oneself is indeed better than the conquest of these other people. Of a person who has tamed himself and who is always restrained in conduct,
§105 the victory of such a being, not even a deity, nor a gandhabba, nor Mara along with Brahmä can turn into defeat.

Also Samyutta Nikaya, I,8, §8:

Wrath must ye slay, if ye would happy live,
Wrath must ye slay, if ye would weep no more.
Of anger, deva, with its poisoned source
And fevered climax, murderously sweet,
That is the slaughter by the Ariyans praised;
That must ye slay in sooth, to weep no more.
(PTS, v.7, p.58)

But being metaphorical is not protection against misplaced literalism, as in the case reported by Ling, where the Buddhist Patriarch at the coronation of King Rama VI of Thailand quoted the words of Buddha 'As a town situated on the frontier must be prepared internally and externally, so too should you be prepared' in support of his assertion that 'Wars must be prepared for even in time of peace'. (Ling, Buddhism, imperialism and war, p. 137)
8. The notion of "being one's own support" (Cakkavatti Sutta, 80) can be seen to apply to more than the life of the monk. The necessities of interstate politics, the maintenance of social order, the categorical right to self-defense, all depend on subordinating relations in which the cause of the action (war, punishment, violence) lies outside of the actor.
9. Majjhima-Nikaya, PTS no. 30, p. 285-6.
10. Cf. Dhammapada:

§161 Evil done by oneself, born of oneself, arising from oneself crushes an imprudent man, as a diamond destroys a gem of (inferior) stone.

§125 Whosoever bears ill-will towards a man who hates not, a person who is pure and without blemish, evil follows such an ignorant one himself, like fine dust thrown against the wind.

11. We would have to say, unintentionally, since ex hypothesi one's action do not spring from enmity or hatred.
12. Kothari, Valchand P., The law of non-violence (ahimsa) and its relevance for all times. 1st ed. Sholapur: Jaina Samskrti Samrakshaka Sangha, 1975, p. 32.
13. Cf. Mahanidana Sutta:

§104. Ananda, I have said that because of watchful guarding (of possessions) there arise many wicked demeritorious acts, such as hitting with sticks, wounding with weapons, fighting, quarrelling, contentiously disputing, using unbearable expressions, backbiting and telling lies. ... Suppose, Ananda, there is no watchful guarding at all... Digha Nikaya, Burma Pitaka Assoc, p. 165.
14. As quoted in Ling, Trevor Oswald. Buddhism, imperialism and war, p. 135.
15. Of course, this necessity is only relative.

§6 Some do not know that we must die here. Should there be others who know it to be so, then conflicts come to be appeased.

16. The recognition of the "false labeling" is stated clearly in the Dhammapada:

§318 Beings, as a result of adopting wrong views, think of what is not blameworthy as blameworthy, and of what is blameworthy as blameless, and go to an evil bourn.
§319 Beings, as a result of adopting right views, knowing what is blameworthy as blameworthy, and what is blameless as blameless, go to a good bourn.

17. After meeting in person Angulimala the monk, king Pasenadi says to the Buddha: "Him, revered sir, that I was unable to tame with stick and sword, the Lord has tamed without stick and sword. Well, I am going now, revered sir, I am very busy, there is much to be done." Majjhima Nikaya II.102, PTS no. 30, p. 288.
Vassakaara, Chief Minister of Magadha, says, "Now we shall depart. We have many affairs (to attend to), much to do." Digha Nikaya, Mahaparinibb na Sutta, 135; Burma Pitaka Assoc., p. 191.
18. Digha Nikaya, Burma Pitaka Assoc., pp. 347-70.
19. The emphasis on consulting the tradition and the elders, or governing consensually, seems to be the main political message of Buddhism, as it is here with the Vajji princes.
20. Strong, John, The legend of King Asoka: a study and translation of the Asokavadana, p. 42.
21. Gokhale, "Early Buddhist Kingship," Journal of Asian Studies, 26(1966):15.
22. Chakravarti, Uma. The Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism, p. 171-2.
23. Chakravarti, Uma. The Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism, p. 176.

A Selected Bibliography for Buddhism and War

Burma Pitaka Association, Ten Suttas from the Digha Nikaya: Long discourses of the Buddha. Rangoon, Burma, 1984. Reprinted in the Bibliotheca Indo-Tibetica Series, No. XII, Sarnath, Varanasi, 1987.

Chakravarti, Uma. The social dimensions of early Buddhism Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Chandel, Bhuvan, ed. Nature of Violence. Publication Bureau, Panjab University, Chandigarh; 1980

Demieville, Paul "Le Bouddhisme et la guerre" Melanges, 1:347-385. Paris, Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, 1957.

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Source of this article: http://www2.hawaii.edu/%7Estroble/Buddhism_and_War.html

Human Potentialities for Building a Nonkilling Society

Nonkilling Human Nature
Although we might begin with a spiritual basis, first consider a completely secular fact. Most humans do not kill. Of all humans now alive – and of all who have ever lived – only a minority are killers. Consider the homicide statistics of any society. Consider also killing in war. The world’s military and ethnographic museums offer scant evidence that even women, half of humankind, have been major combat killers, that some have fought in wars and revolutions, that in some societies women and even children have engaged in ritual torture and murder of defeated enemies, and that women are being recruited for killing in several modern armies. But most women have not been warriors or military killers. Add to this the minority combat role of men. Only a minority of men actually fights in wars. Of these men only a minority directly kills. Among killers, most experience reluctance and subsequent remorse. Perhaps as few as two percent can kill repeatedly without compunction. As Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman explains in a major review of male reluctance to kill in war, “War is an environment that will psychologically debilitate 98 per cent of all who participate in it for any length of time. And the two per cent who are not driven insane by war appear to have already been insane – aggressive psychopaths – before coming to the battlefield” (Grossman 1995: 50). Thus, contrary to the customary political science assumption that humans are natural born killers, the principal task of military training “is to overcome the average individual’s deep-seated resistance to killing” (295).

The human family itself evidences its non-killing capability. If human beings were by nature killers, if even half of humanity were inescapably homicidal, then the family in its various forms could not exist. Fathers would kill mothers; mothers, fathers; parents, children; and children, parents. All of these occur, but they do not constitute a natural law of lethality that controls the fate of humankind. If it were so, world population long ago would have spiralled into extinction. On the contrary, despite appalling conditions of material deprivation and abuse, the human family has continued to create and sustain life on an unprecedented scale.

A non-killing global puzzle to challenge ingenuity and evidence for successive attempts at solution is to calculate how many humans have ever lived and how many have and have not been killers. One estimate of a totality of humans who lived from 1 million BCE. to 2000 CE. is some 91,100,000,000 people (combining Keyfitz 1966 with Weeks 1996; 37, as recalculated by Ramsey 1999). If we inflate Rummel’s war and democide deaths to half a billion, assume erroneously that each was killed by a single killer, and arbitrarily multiply this by six to account for homicides, we might imagine as many as 3,000,000,000 killers since 1,000 BCE. (Figures of 1 million BCE are not available). But even this crude and inflated estimate of killings would suggest that at least ninety-five percent of humans have not killed. If the United States’ homicide rates were 10 per 100,000, only 0.01 percent of the population would kill each year. If aggravated assaults were 500 per 100,000 then 0.5 percent could be added to total 0.51 percent of the population as actual or attempted killers. Perhaps less than two or even one percent of all Homo sapiens have been killers of fellow humans. The percentage of killers in specific societies, of course, may vary greatly according to culture (Keeley 1996). Nevertheless the survival and multiplication of humankind testifies to the dominance of vitality over lethality in human nature.

Spiritual Roots
Grounds for confidence in the realizability of a society without killing are present in the spiritual traditions of humankind. Granted that religious feelings have been invoked to justify horrific slaughter, from human sacrifice and genocide to atomic annihilation (Thompson 1988), the principal message of God, the Creator, the Great Spirit, however conceived, has not been “O humankind, hear my Word! Go find another human and kill him or her!” To the contrary it has always been “Respect life! Do not kill!”

Non-killing precepts can be found in all the world’s spiritual faiths. This is why Max Weber deems spiritual commitment to be incompatible with the political imperative to kill. Jainism and Hinduism share the precept of ahimsa paramo dharma (nonviolence is the supreme law of life). The first vow of Buddhism is to “abstain from taking life.” Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share the divine commandment “Thou shalt not kill” (Exod. 20:13). One of the most ancient Jewish teachings is “Whosoever preserves the life of one person, it is as though he saves a multitude of men. But he who destroys the life of one person, it is as though he destroys the world” (Eisendrath: 144). The core of this teaching, although with qualification, is continued in Islam: Whosoever kills a human being, except as punishment for murder or for spreading corruption in the land, it shall be like killing all humanity; and whosoever saves a life, saves the entire human race” (Al-Qur’an 5:32). The Baha’i faith – incorporating the teachings of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – enjoins “Fear God, O people, and refrain from shedding the blood of anyone” (Baha’u’llah 1983: 277).

Humanist traditions also hold forth the desirability and possibility of a non-killing society. In Confucianism, when morality among rulers prevails, no death penalty will be needed (Fung 1952: 60). In Taoism, when humans live simply, spontaneously, and in harmony with nature, “Although there might exist weapons of war, no one will drill with them” (Fung 1952: 190). In a modern socialist society though, when workers refuse to support killing each other, wars will cease. An anti-WW-1 manifesto proclaims:

All class conscious members of the Industrial Workers of the World are conscientiously opposed to shedding the life blood of human beings, not for religious reasons, as are the Quakers and Friendly Societies, but because we believe that the interests and welfare of the working class in all are identical. While we are bitterly opposed to the Imperialist Capitalist Government of Germany we are against slaughtering and maiming the workers of any country (True 1995: 49; for a courageous example, see Baxter 2000).

In all societies murder is disapproved. Humanist respect parallels religious reverence for life.
What significance has the presence of a non-killing ethic in the world’s spiritual and humanist traditions for the realizability of non-killing societies? On the one hand it reveals divine intent to plant profound respect for life in the consciousness of humankind. On the other, it demonstrates the human capacity to receive, respond to, or to create such a principle. If humans were incurably killers by nature, neither reception, nor transmission, nor creation of such a principle would be plausible. Even if a non-killing spiritual ethic were invented by elites to discourage revolution by the oppressed to weaken oppressors, or by killers to escape retribution, this would imply that the people to whom this is addressed are capable of responding positively.

The spirit of nonkilling has emerged before, during, and after history’s most horrible outbreaks of bloodshed. Its expression is not just a luxury benevolently bestowed by killers. Irrepressibly surviving into the contemporary era, it continues to inspire liberation from lethality in post-crusades Christianity, post-conquest Islam, post-holocaust Judaism, post-militarist Buddhism, and post-colonial traditions of indigenous peoples. In the murderous twentieth century it can be seen in courageous contributions to nonviolent global change by the Christians Tolstoy and Martin Luther King, Jr., the Hindu Mahatma Gandhi, the Muslim Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the Jew Joseph Abileah, the Buddhist Dalai Lama, the Green Petra Kelly, and countless others, celebrated and unsung.

The presence of the nonkilling spirit in each faith and examples of principled commitments, open the way for the awakening and affirmation of this spirit by hundreds of millions of fellow believers. Dissonant tension between the non-killing imperative and recognition of responsibility for killing and its noxious consequences create the motivation for a non-killing personal and social change. While roots of nonkilling can be found within each tradition, the spiritual heritage of humankind as a whole is like the multiple root system that sustains the life of a banyan tree. Inspiration and sustenance can be drawn from the entire root system as well as from any part of it. For all tap the power of life. The reality of respect for life in religious and humanist faiths provides a strong spiritual basis for confidence that a non-killing global society is possible.

Scientific Roots
“We will never get to nonviolence by religion alone.” Such is the advice of one of India’s foremost religious leaders, Acharya Mahapragya, creative inheritor of the ancient Jain tradition of ahimsa (nonviolence). In Jain thought, “Ahimsa is the heart of all stages of life, the core of all sacred texts, and the sum … and substance … of all vows and virtues” (Jain and Varni 1993: 139). For Acharya Mahapragya, the way to realize a nonviolent society is to empower individuals to discover nonviolence within themselves and to express it socially by combining modern neuroscience with spiritual truths. In his analysis, violence is caused by emotions produced by the endocrine glands affecting the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, and is related to what we eat. Furthermore, based upon scientific knowledge of our neurological system, we can purposively use the energy of our brains in simple meditational practices to nurture nonviolence within and to commit ourselves to nonviolent social life (Mahaprajna (sic) 1987 and 1994; Zaveri and Muni Mahendra Kumar 1992).

What are some scientific grounds for confidence in nonkilling human capabilities? By science is meant broadly all forms of knowledge gained by questioning and experimentation – facts, theories, and methods for determining validity and realizability. A harbinger of scientific revolution is when some philosophers begin to question accepted thinking.

This has been done for nonviolence by A. Richard Konrad (1974) who questions the conventional assumption that readiness to kill is the only effective way to cope with violence from rape to holocaust. Konrad argues that the thesis of the single violent problem-solving alternative rests upon three assumptions: that all nonviolent alternatives have been identified; that all have been tried; and that all have failed. But these assumptions are untenable: nonviolent problem-solving alternatives are hypothetically infinite; practical constraints of time, resources, and other factors prevent testing even those that are identified; therefore we cannot be certain that the single violent alternative is the only one that can succeed. Thus Konrad argues the need to shift from a philosophical predisposition to accept violence to one that seeks to create and test nonviolent alternatives. Such an approach is likely to lead to scientific discoveries that question the inescapability of human lethality (see also Yoder 1983).

The assumption that humans must inevitably be killers because of their animal nature is being questioned. Tulane University psychologist Loh Tseng Tsai (1963) has demonstrated that a rat-killing cat and a sewer rat can be taught to eat peacefully together from the same dish. The method was a combination of operant conditioning and social learning. At first separated by a glass partition, the two animals learned that they must simultaneously press parallel levers to release food pellets into a common feeding dish. After seven hundred training sessions the partition could be removed without bloodshed.

Tsai concludes:
We have demonstrated for the first time in the history of science with crucial experiments that cats and rats – the so-called natural enemies – can and do cooperate. Such a discovery throws overboard the traditional dogma in psychology that in animal nature there is an ineradicable instinct of pugnacity which makes fighting or wars inevitable. (1963:4).

Observing that “many think that our research has laid the cornerstone of the basic biological foundation for the theoretical possibility of world peace,” Tsai calls for a science-based philosophy of “survival through cooperation” rather than continuation of the presumed inescapability of competitive lethality. In a radically different field, the physicist and historian of science Antonino Drago, contrasting the implications of Carnotian versus Newtonian mechanics for conflict resolution, arrives at a similar science-based recommendation in favour of transcendent cooperation (Drago 1994). So does the psychotherapist Jerome D. Frank in recommending cooperation toward mutually beneficial common goals to overcome deadly antagonisms (Frank 1960: 261-2; 1993: 204-5).

Challenge to the assumption that human lethality is inescapably rooted in our evolutionary emergence as a species of “killer ape” comes from new studies of a genetically almost identical primate species – the non-killing bonobo of Central Africa (Kano 1990). The Mangandu people of the Congo, who share the tropical forest with the bonobo, strictly prohibit killing them based on a legend that once their ancestors and the bonobo lived together as kin (Kano 1990: 62). In contrast to gorillas, chimpanzees, and other apes, bonobo have not been observed to kill each other (Wrangham and Peterson, 1990; Waal 1997). Furthermore, recent studies of “peacemaking” and “reciprocal altruism” among primate species who do kill also call into question the tendency to claim only lethality but not non-killing potentiality in evolutionary human nature (Waal 1989; 1996), Sorokin (1954), and Alfie Kohn (1990) have demonstrated, a cooperative, altruistic, and “brighter side” of human nature as well.

In a comparative study of aggression in animals and humans, the ethologist-anthropologist Irenaeus Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1979; 240-1) finds that there is a biological basis for the spiritual imperative not to kill. Observing that “in many animal species intraspecific aggression is so ritualized that it does not result in physical harm,” he finds similar and more elaborate human techniques for avoiding bloodshed. “To some extent,” he concludes, “a biological norm filter lays down the commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” But “in the course of cultural pseudo-speciation (defining others as not fully human and thus subject to predation), man has superimposed a cultural norm filter that commands him to kill upon his biological norm filter, which forbids him to kill.” In war, “this leads to a conflict of norms of which man is aware through the conscience that pricks him as soon as he apprehends the enemy and confronts him as a human being.” This is evidenced by the need for warriors after having killed for purification and social acceptance.

Confirming Eibl-Eibesfeldt’s thesis is Grossman’s finding that “throughout history the majority of men on the battlefield would not attempt to kill the enemy, even to save their own lives or the lives of their friends” (Grossman 1995: 4). Grossman notes that psychiatric casualties among soldiers who have killed directly are higher than non-killers. The soldier-psychologist and the ethologist-anthropologist differ only on the policy implications of their findings. For the former the task is to provide professional training to overcome resistance to killing. For the latter the problem is to bring cultural norm into conformity with non-killing human biology. Eibl-Eibesfeldt concluded:

The root of the universal desire for peace lies in this conflict between cultural and biological norms, which makes men want to bring their biological and cultural norm filters into accord. Our conscience remains our hope, and based on this, a rationally guided evolution could lead to peace. This presupposes recognition of the fact that war performs functions that will have to be performed some other way, without bloodshed. (1979: 241).

Brain science provides further support for confidence in the non-killing human potential. Terming his approach “Neurorealism,” the pioneering neuroscientist Bruce E. Morton (2000) presents a “Dual Quadbrain Model of Behavioural Laterality” that describes the neurobiological bases of both nonkilling and killing. The four parts of the model “function in two modes of a single tetradic system.” They are the brain core system (instincts), the limbic system (emotions), the right and left hemisphere systems (imagination and intellect), and the neocerebellar system (intuition). Morton locates the source of higher spiritual and social consciousness in the system of neocerebellar intuition. This “Higher Source” is “truthful, creative, self-disciplined, altruistic, cooperative, empathic, and nonviolent.” It facilitates the long-term survival of the group and is “strictly a brain dependent phenomenon accessible to all. The emergence of the “source” into consciousness can be evoked in three ways: by near-death experience, by certain hallucinogenic drugs, and most importantly by meditation. In everyday social life, the “Source” intuitively facilitates the emergent benefits of synergy “toward a nonviolent community.” It benefits from and contributes to the absence of lethal threats to survival.

Thus neurorealist brain science provides a basis for self-activated nonviolent commitment and social transformation that is entirely consistent with non-killing spirituality and biological reluctance to kill. This is also compatible with for example Vivekananda’s insight that the task of the great religious teachers is not to bring God from outside, but to assist each person to bring out preexisting godliness within. It resonates with Tolstoy’s affirmation that “the kingdom of God is within you” (Tolstoy 1974).

Or, in the words of the fifteenth century Indian mystic Kabir:
Between the two eyes is the Master,
The messenger of the Lord.
Within your own body resides your Lord,
Why open the outer eyes to look for Him?
(Sethi 1984: 56-7)

Prof. Glenn D. Paige is the most celebrated nonviolent political thinker of the world. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at University of Hawaii and is the founder president of the Centre for Global Nonviolence, Honolulu (US).

Source: http://www.anuvibha.in/anuvibha-reporter7.htm

The Buddha, the Dharma and the Media

By Douglas McGill
The McGill Report

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin – There is an old interviewing trick journalists use to get people to say things far more intimate than they planned to reveal.

The trick works when the journalist, instead of asking a follow-up question during the silence that follows an answer, instead stays silent. The compulsion to fill conversational vacuums is so powerful that people often blab intimacies they didn't mean to share.

That interviewing ploy is one of many ethical shortcuts I used as a reporter and editor in the mainstream press for more than twenty years, first as a reporter for The New York Times, and then later as a bureau chief for Bloomberg News in London and Hong Kong.

As the years passed, I cut more and more ethical corners as a journalist to get exclusive stories, to elicit juicy anecdotes and quotes, and to get my stories the best possible play on the newswire or in the newspaper – preferably on page one.

Verbal Steroids

I became a serial exaggerator of social trends. Increasingly, I started defining every trend as “new and important,” “widespread,” or “emblematic.”

My writing vocabulary was getting showy and meretricious (and a Happy New Year!), and I began avoiding humble but specific, useful words.

I got hooked on such verbal journalistic steroids as “unprecedented,” “in a dramatic new development,” “revolutionary,” and “raises new and troubling questions.” I felt sheepish, hangdog and worse. But I kept using.

Sometime I'd get to the part of the story where I needed to type in these phrases, and I'd literally feel sick.

Was I really going to do this again, I'd ask myself?

Usually, I would. Because when I injected these particular words my stories and -- most important -- my byline shot straight onto the front page.

And that felt oh, so good. But where was the end to these addictions?

Extreme Reality

Of course, deeper ethical issues face the modern global journalist, language-wise.

The world is filled with violent words and actions that journalists must sometimes, of necessity, report. Sugar-coating reality would be an ethical lapse equal or even greater than occasionally exaggerating social trends.

The world is filled with realities so extreme they are literally beyond the reach of language, used at its most extreme, to accurately describe. But even straight and well-intentioned reporting of such violence, incendiary language, and extreme reality can kick the cycle of violence to even more violent rounds.

What morals should guide a journalist's professional purpose, reporting methods, and use of language in such a world?

In recent years, Buddhism’s doctrines on life’s purpose, human suffering, and ethical speech have seemed to me to suggest – as no other moral system I have yet found -- practical answers to such questions facing a global media.

Practical Morals

There is a spiritual side to Buddhism, it’s true. But its most appealing trait to me from the beginning has been its straightforward and empirically-based morals. It asks not a speck of faith from anyone. Yet it offers a comprehensive and practical human morals of which speech is an integral part.

In this way, Buddhism seems tailor-made for journalism’s ethical, and increasingly global and multicultural, needs.

Indeed, in its relentless quest to observe without filter or distortion the nature of daily human existence -- the fact and flavor of the simple ordinary present, the living now -- Buddhism seems, in a certain way, quintessentially journalistic.

In my early years as a journalist, I was happy to discover the world through journalism. My youthful curiosity and optimism carried me through those years.

My drive to explore the world more widely (if not more deeply) trumped the ethical questions that always tagged behind.

Ethics Codes

It’s only natural, I suppose, that with age the question of one’s purpose looms larger. You’ve only got so many days in life, and so many chances to direct one’s attention with positive intention and purpose.

For a few years, I searched for an ethical system within the profession, or even from another profession, that addressed these concerns. Basically, I got nowhere. I found out that journalists don’t like to talk about the moral basis of what they do, which is to use language. They are practically allergic to such a thing. That's got to change if journalism is going to evolve ethically and globally.

Journalism's moral obtuseness is enshrined in its ethics codes.

The specific injunctions of these guides to newsroom practice – not to plagiarize, not to lie get a story, not to cause anyone harm, etc. – are nowhere connected to any fundamental vision of human existence or morals.

That may sound like too grand a hope for journalism, but medical and legal ethics are grounded in this way. Why not journalism and the media?

Kant and Mill

By now, surely, the enormous impact of the media on global affairs is obvious enough to warrant thinking more seriously about media morals, beginning with the morals of journalism, which is the public service branch of the media.

Journalists wishing to go deeper ethically than their profession allows, as I did on my quest, traditionally look to Enlightenment philosophers for enlightenment.

In particular, ethics courses at communication schools teach the “utilitarian” ethics of John Stuart Mill, and the “duty-based” ethics of Immanuel Kant.

Mill's utilitarian ethic calls for examining each case to determine if the greatest good is achieved for the greatest number. The Kantian ethic, by contrast, asks people to question if a given action would help or harm society if it was repeated by everyone. Could it be “universalized” to society’s benefit?

These approaches have great appeal because they define communication ethics as a matter of general human morals, and not of daily expedience.

Buddhist Media

And yet, how impractical Mill and Kant are!

Enlightenment philosophers, I discovered, ascribe superhuman powers to ordinary people. Can any single person reasonably guess, with any degree of accuracy, whether a given act of speech will result in “the greatest good for the greatest number”? Or whether it could be “universalized without harm?”

Since when could any being but a God do such a thing? Neither the morals of Mill nor of Kant are easily translated, in practical terms, to individuals facing daily life situations, much less to hyperactive, competitive newsrooms.

It was in Buddhism that I finally found an explicit and practical morals of human communication. Since I discovered its doctrines a few years ago, my ethics thinking has centered around the question whether it might be possible to develop a new journalism based on such universal yet practical principles.

A journalism grounded in Buddhist morals would display two salient traits derived from its moral purpose and methods. Such a journalism would be:

1. A journalism of healing. Buddhism is often not classified as a religion because it teaches no theology, declares no divinity, and requires no faith. Instead, its doctrines revolve entirely around the achievement of a practical goal: “the end of suffering.” Nor is the definition of suffering complex or esoteric. It is ordinary everyday suffering, aches and pains, mental moods and afflictions, sickness and death. On a social level, suffering in Buddhism is defined as any harshness, violence, and division of the community. A Buddhist journalism would therefore be aimed at helping individuals overcome their personal sufferings, and helping society heal the wounds caused by injustice, hatred, ostracism, and physical violence. Such a defined professional purpose would give the Buddhist journalist a measuring stick for each word and story produced: does it help overcome individual and social suffering?
   

2. A journalism of timely, truthful, helpful speech. A Buddhist journalism would need tools and materials adequate to its healing purpose. The Buddhist “Right Speech” doctrine provides many of them. Right Speech sits midway along the “Noble Eightfold Path,” the Buddha’s prescribed method to reach the end of suffering. The midway place of Right Speech along the Noble Eightfold Path is interesting, because speech is the first action to follow the gaining of wisdom and positive intention, as developed in mediation. By this view, speech is a person's very first chance to act morally in the world. It is followed then in the Noble Eightfold Path by “Right Action” and “Right Livelihood.” Also, very helpfully for journalists, the identifying traits of Right Speech are specifically defined as “timely, truthful, helpful, and spoken with a mind of good will.” Likewise, the five main types of speech to avoid are lies, divisive speech, harsh and abusive speech, and idle and distracting speech.

Can a new global journalism of healing be practiced that embraces timely, truthful and helpful speech, and avoids the five destructive modes?

It would be important and interesting to find out.

Copyright @ 2008 The McGill Report

For Part 1 of the Burleigh Lecture, click here.
For Part 2, click here.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive

Jared Diamond

Allan Lane, £20

During the sixteenth century, the Spanish conquerors rounded up a group of Aztec priests and gave them two choices: to convert or to die. The priests responded that if their gods were dead, as alleged by the Jesuit priests, then they too would rather die. The Spaniards obliged, burning them alive while unleashing war dogs on their followers. The Aztecs had many faults; some of which no doubt contributed to their downfall. But there is little doubt colonialism played a major role in the eradication of their culture and civilisation.

Jared Diamond is not too bothered with the role played by European conquests or colonialism in the disappearance of societies like the Aztec and Maya, the Australian Aborigines or Native Americans. His sole focus is the environment. And he has amassed a formidable amount of evidence to suggest degradation of the environment has played a major role in precipitating societal collapse throughout history.

The inhabitants of Easter Island used all their forests in erecting enormous, enigmatic stone statues. Without wood to build boats, they were unable to fish in deep water. Fish dropped off their diet, and they found themselves marooned on their island. Finally, cannibalism sealed their fate. Even the recent genocide in Rwanda has an environmental basis. Polluted rivers, over-farmed land, deforestation and high population density – all lead to falling per capita food production and famine. So, it is hardly surprising that the Hutus killed not only the Tutsi but other Hutus as well!

We are offered similar analysis of a number of other societies, including the Inca, the Anasazi culture of the south-western United States and the Greenland of the Viking era. The analysis leads Diamond to identify five factors that produce environmental collapse: the inability to understand or prevent environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbours, loss of trade and political inflexibility. Each of these factors, argues Diamond, can lead to disintegration. But normally two or three will combine to trigger a chain reaction that finally leads to collapse.

The people who chose to die with some style, invoking all five factors, were the Norse of Greenland. And Diamond dissects their case in minute detail. Initially, the Norse colonisation of Greenland was quite successful. They brought sophisticated European technology with them, including iron-smelting, metal working and dairy farming, and successfully tamed the land. But Greenland was not the lush, farmland of southern Norway. Cattle could not survive the harsh winter of Greenland; and the cows consumed an enormous amount of agricultural resources. Using wood for heat and fuel also had its disadvantages. Soon, Greenland was stripped of its trees, and the soil depleted of nutrients.

The Norse refused to learn from the Inuit, the traditional people of Greenland. Their contempt for the Inuit was evident from the label they used to describe them: skraelings or ‘wretches’. Not surprisingly, they looked down on the Inuit practice of burning seal blubber for heat and light and could not be bothered to learn the difficult art of hunting ringed seals. Worse: to totally distinguish themselves from the Inuit, they refused to eat fish. They traded not with the Inuit but with Norway, exchanging tusks and hides not for the much needed wood and iron but religious artefacts. Insisting on maintaining their identity and lifestyle as European Christians, the Norse starved to death in the midst of plenty.

Diamond goes out of his way to emphasise the objectivity of his analysis. But that does not stop it from being both, one-dimensional and deterministic. He is firmly based on the venerable tradition of environmental determinism that has been a major trend in American cultural anthropology. The cases he examines are all too familiar and he follows the old familiar tradition of acknowledging social factors only to neglect them in concern for the environmental picture. Maya civilisation, for example, disintegrated not due to environmental causes, but because of uncontrolled, protracted warfare. By 250AD, which is commonly regarded as the Classic period of Maya civilization, skirmishes between competing city-states had escalated into full-fledged, vicious wars that turned once proud cities into ghost towns. Environmental degradation emerged only as one consequence of these perpetual wars.

Moreover, Diamond’s thesis insists on writing the Maya out of history. The Mayan cities of Palenque and Chichen Itza certainly emptied, returning to the jungle to be found only centuries later by archaeologists. But the Maya are alive and well. Indeed, in recent years the Mayan people of Chiapas in Mexico have been making the news. Their campaign of resistance, publicised and supported worldwide through their website, aims to preserve their traditional lifestyle, complete with the very ecology that Diamond blames for the collapse of their civilization. To drive from the tourist haven of Cancun to the ancient site of Chichen Itza is to pass village after village making a living from the land as their ancestors did. So what was it that collapsed? And what scale of values determined the disappearance of monumental stone built cities should disqualify a people form having a continuous and modern existence? How could Maya civilization have collapsed and ended when the Maya still exist and Mayan is the spoken language of the entire Yucatan region of Mexico? It is an affront deeply resented by the Maya of today who have little doubt some deterministic force beyond their environment is at work. Indeed, recent evidence suggests Mayan environmental ethics is far superior to the modern counterpart that is playing havoc with the ecology of South America.

The point is not that the environment determines but that people choose. Easter Islanders chose ceremonial meaning that sustained the complex clan of their social order. They invested all their effort in their social system which they selected over environmental prudence. The Maya reverted to a sustainable ecological system, one that sustains them still, having chosen to forgo an unsustainable political system. But no civilization chose to be subjugated, dispossessed, enslaved, oppressed, marginalized and made into inferiors or even nonentities scratching a living around the margins of a colonial order not of their making. That is an environmental hazard that is not worked into Diamond’s deterministic schema.

Diamond is also very selective with his case studies. He chooses to ignore the collapse of those societies and civilisations which do not fit his neat thesis. What, for example, caused the collapse of Egyptian, Persian, Roman and the Byzantine societies? What does the study of the ruins of these great civilisations tell us? Can we attribute their fall simply to environmental causes? Diamond is silent here because it would be laughable to suggest that deforestation or soil erosion led to their collapse. They demand much more complex analysis - involving social, cultural and political dimensions – and therefore fail as simplistic cautionary tales that can be offered as one dimensional timely warning of impending doom.

The genocide in Rwanda, for example, has much more to do with the imposition of an artificially created nation state on tribal peoples than environmental damage. The notion of the state with its impersonal institutions and emphasis on geographical boundaries, that turns one tribe into a permanent out-of-power minority, that destroys the indigenous social fabric of traditional kinship, villages and communities, that replaces organic structures with alienating state institutions such as bureaucracy and the military, has played havoc with African societies. The fragile state structure, the crisis of legitimacy and ruthless economic underdevelopment reduced Rwanda to ruins. It was this process that transformed Rwanda from an environmentally sound society into a basket case, led to mutual hatred amongst tribes and the eventual genocide. Rwanda is certainly a lesson for the future, as Diamond suggests, but the lesson is much more than environmental husbandry. The modern nation state and the economics of misdevelopment could not accommodate the sophisticated modus viviendi the cattle keeping Tutsi and agriculturalist Hutu had sustained over centuries. Yet in seeking a just reconciliation in the aftermath of genocide it is the traditional system to which Rwanda is resorting. Gacaca (pronounced gachacha) courts, village level moot courts, where the community as a whole participates in evaluating the crime and determining the punishment are being used to ensure the enormous cases are resolved.

Diamond’s main case study, the Norse settlement in Greenland, also has somewhat different lessons. The conflict between the Norse and the Inuit was a clash between modernity and tradition. The Norse despised the traditional culture of Inuit, which had deep roots in their environment. They perished because of their modern lifestyle and hubris, which lead to their refusal to learn from a non-western culture. The contemporary lesson is that suppression of life-enhancing non-western tradition, and oppressive westernised modernity, would lead us to the same fate.

In fact, Diamond refuses to go where his own analysis is taking him. Instead, he draws parallels with Easter Island and gives us a metaphor for the future: earth is today’s Easter Island and faces the same fate. This is a classic con trick. By arguing that we are all in the same boat, it suggests that we are all equally responsible for the mess and that ultimately it is the responsibility of the victims of modernity and western consumerism to do something about it. Indeed, Diamond places the responsibility squarely on non-western folks. It is the ‘over populated’ and ‘politically stressed’ counties of Africa and Asia, including China, where desperation and under-nourishment is located. It is the people of these countries who are fighting over land, killing each other, and becoming terrorists. So it is these countries that need to pull themselves together for all our sakes.

Not a word about the fact that the West in general, and America, in particular also needs to change radically. Instead, we have a long list of ‘irrational’ reasons why ‘we’ – some sort of amorphous entity – are not changing. We prefer short-term gratification to long term interests. We are lacking the concept of ‘intergenerational justice’. We are in a state of denial. Well, we may be. But the core values that have brought us to this state of affairs are not shared by us all. They are the preserve of a specific materialistic mind set, one that has outlawed the very idea of the sacred, and is deeply embedded in a consumerist, self-destructive, irrational life-style. But this lifestyle, as three recent American presidents – Bush senior, Clinton, and Bush junior – have made clear, is ‘non negotiable’. Yet, it is this very mindset and lifestyle that must return to sanity.

Despite its scholarly pretensions, Collapse is an ideological tract. The main purpose of its hackneyed arguments and skewed analysis is to preserve the domination of American lifestyle. The real mystery is that Diamond has the gall to trumpet such academic twaddle.

Ziauddin Sardar’s Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim is published by Granta, £16.99

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The last stand

Sunday, Feb 17, 2008

MUKUND PADMANABHAN
The Hindu (India)

Angkor has survived years of neglect, the colonisation of the jungle and the vandalism of the Khmer Rouge. But can it survive the tourists?

In Beng Melea, I have my first real Angkor experience, sitting amidst the rubble under the canopy of trees in the dim green light of a temple complex totally consumed by the jungle.

Arresting in its sheer scale: The Angkor Wat complex. (Photos: Mukund Padmanabhan)

Siem Reap, the gateway to the Angkor temples, is hardly the ideal place to concentrate the mind. Invited to attend a seminar, I find my attention wandering between the presentations and the temples, searching for ways to get out and spend time amidst the magnificent ruins in the thin interstices of symposium time.

Having checked into my hotel, there is a little over an hour before dusk. Why waste precious daylight? A tuk-tuk driver offers to take me to Phnom Bakheng to see the sunset. “Only two dollahs,” he says. “View vely vely nice.” I take his word for it and jump in the back of his spacious but wobbly machine. It is a short ride, one that sweeps past the spectacular moat-fringed walls of Angkor Wat and stops a little further at the base of a hill.

Remote and crowded

Here, I learn my first lesson about “remote” and “mystical” Angkor. For a place rediscovered only in the 1860s, protected by a thick belt of jungle, virtually cut off until 1998 due to a genocidal civil war, Angkor today lies on a road that is very well travelled. (“The world’s most crowded offbeat destination,” someone joked a couple of days later.) I guess I should have realised this when I passed the string of hotels that led to my own on the way from the airport. Or even before, when I spotted the Icelandair jet parked on the tarmac.

So then, I am not the only one with the sunset idea. Hundreds of others have planned to catch the last rays from the temple on the hill and I join the cheery chattering swarm on the way up. I make a list of nationalities from appearances, accents, dress and behaviour: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Arab, American, Thai and the ubiquitous groups of Japanese.

By the time I reach the summit, the swarm has settled on the top of the temple, perched on the edges, their cameras catching the surrounding plains in the dying light. Built at the end of the ninth century, Phnom Bakheng houses the ruin of a Shiva temple built on what was known as Sri Yasodharagiri. Built on a series of tiers, the uppermost platform, which is reached by steep stone steps flanked by lions, has a central tower that, like the numerous lesser ones, lies in a magnificent ruin.

There are four shivlings in each corner of the top tier and I spot a North American woman in biker shorts using one of them to support her Nike-clad foot as she fires a battery of photographs from her digicam. Perhaps, it is the sheer absurdity of it all. Or perhaps it is the sudden emergence of some deep and dormant element of my Hindu upbringing? But something gives. I ask her if she wouldn’t mind taking her foot off and then attempt to explain the significance of the shivling as she watches in open-mouthed astonishment. “I really wouldn’t have known,” she keeps apologising. When I turn away, I overhear her tell her friends. “Now, isn’t that awesome? You wouldn’t see this in Vancouver, would you?”

I add Canadian to my nationality list.

It isn’t until two days later that the next round of temple tourism becomes possible. The agenda is modest. A late afternoon visit to the mother temple, Angkor Wat, preceded by a quick walk through Ta Phrom. Known once as Rajavihara, Ta Phrom was built under Jayavarman VII in the 12th century. The Buddhist monastery — whose crumbling walls and towers are snugly wrapped by the sinuous roots of towering strangler figs and silk cotton trees — is the stuff of picture postcards. Literally. At one store outside Angkor Wat, 50 per cent of the postcards are of this carefully arranged ruin. Carefully arranged, because contrary to popular belief, Ta Phrom was not left entirely as it was after it was re-discovered by French explorers in 1860. Plenty of restoration work has been done to stabilise the ruin and maintain the atmosphere of deliberate neglect, in which architecture and nature are locked in inseparable and mysterious embrace. I think it reminds me of something out of an Indiana Jones film, until someone tells me I should be thinking about its more contemporary gender-reversed version, Tomb Raider, or the place where Angelina Jolie plucked a jasmine flower to find herself sucked into the earth.

Large dimensions

Angkorian temple builders thought large. Ta Prohm is by no means small; it was once home to 12,500 people, including 615 dancers. Angkorian temple builders dealt in large dimensions but nothing has prepared me for the size of mother temple, the next stop. Set in a complex that spreads over 81 hectares, the world’s largest religious monument, glowing with faded grandeur in the late afternoon sun, is arresting for its sheer size. It is impossible to be Indian and not wonder, while walking through this gigantic complex, why isn’t there anything in India even remotely as big as this early 12th century temple built by King Suryavarman II and dedicated to Vishnu. It is true that Angkorian temples (with the possible exception of Banteay Srei) lack the sculptural detail of their Indian counterparts; with respect to scale, however, they are unmatched.

Swept along with the swarm of people through the radial corridors and the concentric courtyards of this immaculately symmetrical structure, it is clear that Angkor has already become a tourist trap. Having survived years of neglect, the colonisation by the jungle, and the vandalism of the Khmer Rouge — which seemed intent of destroying all traces of Cambodia’s past — the question is: will Angkor survive the invasion of tourists? Less than 10,000 tourists visited Angkor Wat when it was put on the UNESCO heritage list in 1993; in 2005, the figure touched 1.4 million and is estimated to be in the region of three million by 2010. From a one-hotel town two and a half decades ago, Siem Reap now has them in scores.

As officials warn about the possible environmental damage from the tourism boom, the numbers of people going keep growing. Last year, the private company responsible for issuing tickets to the temples netted a cool $25 million. People come to Siem Reap from just about everywhere. Outside Angkor Wat, I am intrigued by a sprightly little girl with mud-streaked hair and a toothy grin — she is wearing a bindi. She senses my curiosity and tries selling me reed bangles. “Come on,” she urges in an American accent. “It’s cheap — only one dollar”. “But I am carrying only euros,” I lie. “No problem,” she retorts and cites the price in a range of currencies — including rupees. After being charmed into making the purchase, I point to the bindi and ask where she got it. “Oh, this,” she replies hurriedly before scampering off to a potential customer she has spotted. “An Indian tourist gave it to me.”

The real thing

On my last day, there is time to escape the tourists. I visit Bayon — with its strange stone faces and its otherworldly air — and then take an expensive taxi out to Beng Melea, an hour and a half away. The literature on the temple sounds promising — one booklet says it is one of the few temples where you can escape the tourist crush and my Lonely Planet describes it as a “spectacular sight” and “one of the most mysterious temples of Angkor”. Unlike Ta Phrom, Beng Melea has been totally left to nature. Finding your way around means hauling yourself over piles or rubble and climbing on walls and other vantage points for a view of the complex, which is structured pretty much like Angkor Wat.

There is virtually nobody around and I think I have my first real Angkor experience, sitting amidst the rubble under the canopy of trees in the dim green light of a temple complex totally consumed by the jungle. This is what Angkor was not so long ago. And this,

I couldn’t help thinking, is what it should be.