Only For Ancient Buddhism: Murder as War for the Political Way

From a Buddhist ethical standpoint, under what circumstances can murder be justified?

No religion claims thought and philosophy more than Buddhism, so why is it sometimes known for violence and murder? Buddhists do justify murder under certain circumstances when the intention behind is good and does not affect ones karma, which I she discuss. Then, I will outline and explain four justifications of murder: liberation killing, assassination, just wars and self-immolation or sacrificial suicide. I shall argue that the Budda’s originally offered the Sangha as a model to kings which means that the Sutras are shaded politically, and that Jataka stories are yesterday’s folklore. Mahayana Buddhism which aims to liberate other people through compassion through the universal buddhanature, as opposed to Theravada Buddhism which is concerned with ones own release from rebirth, seems to far more justify murder. So we shall focus on Mahayana Buddhism.

Karma simply means action (also labour), but only intentional action, and Harvey states that “The law of karma is seen as the natural law inherent in the nature of things, like a law of physics”. One becomes what one has done by intention, both in the present and in future rebirths of samsara represented on the Bhavachakra. Karma is absolute, such that you cannot suddenly save yourself from it, but action should be for others (especially in Mahayana Buddhism) in compassion. Mahayana Buddhism in building upon Theravada Buddhism sees individuals as aiding other sentient beings quest for release from rebirth or suffering or nirvana, made possible by the buddhanature being innate to all, not just their own. Everything in existence is emptiness (Shunyata), but sentient beings disseminate and create meaning through fundamental interwoven reality, not a divine god, a relativity and connectivity for the non-self (anatta); Ferdinand Saussure sees signifying linguistic objects of referents (including sentient beings) as created by the “viewpoint”, or speaker through “psycophysical” phonation. I understand the Buddha to have prefixed evolution theory:

Owing to this struggle for life…if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual…

Charles Darwin, Origin of Species First Edition 1859, Chapter 3 Struggle For Existence

Only if you murder intentionally do you suffer bad karma, and this can extend to killing with the intention of diverting the potential victim’s karma. The first justification for murder is liberation killing. A Jataka story explains that a bandit should not killed before they kill if the person who intends to kill them does not intend to liberate them. The story is of a ship’s captain who has a dream that a bandit is going to murder the 500 crew, so he therefore judges it acceptable to kill the bandit. The tale ends with the captain as sent to hell simply for dismissing if this one murder would benefit the bandit , notwithstanding the many lives saved: the bandit’s samsara matters.

However, Buddhism, particularly Mahayana, being situational, uses folklore which “encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group” by way of Jataka tales, deemed by T.W. Rhys Davids the “oldest collection of folklore extant”. Religions have successfully answered cultural questions in my view, not necessarily the abstract paradigm of the meaning of life. Captains spectated Indian ports, India fledging a mighty ancient marine trading network postdating 3000BCE, where bandits presumably lurked at the quay side to jump on board cargo-full ships, and so we must be careful to mistake this Jataka today as validating the death of potential serial killers or murderers in a death row who can engage in rehabilitation. I would argue that the Sutras like the Jataka tales need today interpreted and that the Dalai Lama’s speech to the Digital International Conference on Buddhism which focussed on enabling dialogue to secure one peaceful world may be explicitly a contemporary moral code, no interpretation needed.

Indeed, Buddhism originally offered political meaning to kings and rulers by way of the Sangha as an alternative kingship model: the Buddha was above. Kingship was a social contract - to create dharma, and kings were dharmarajas (raja=king). Emperor Asoka converted to Buddhism and legislated Buddhist precepts throughout the expanding kingdom. Buddhism is situational and relational definitively, the Buddha repainting the Vedic canvas of violent warring between kingdoms with compassion (David Frawley discusses Vedic and Puranic warring objectified in ancient Indian lore), which permit Buddhist ethics to contract given anthropocentric reasons. Also, animal killing is permitted for the arbitrary human being or for e.g. a relative, but not for oneself personally, thus creating two sides of the murder story.

So the second justification of murder is the assassination of a king or ruler who persecutes Buddhists. In 863CE monk Palgyi Dorie in a dream, perhaps after tantric meditation, killed his king, Langdarma, who murdered his Buddhist brother the previous king, in order to protect Buddhism and to be compassionate towards the people. Langdarma’s karma was considered liberated by Palgyi Dorie, who killed him dressed in party disguise at a King’s dance, and although this monk was de-robed, he later attained full enlightenment. But Langdarma’s death followed by the “Age of Fragmentation”, the collapse of the Tibetan Empire and the dark age of Tibetan history … This assassination triggered a period of violent civil war, but this monk was thought to attain a form of enlightenment. Therefore, although murder is wrong, tyrannicide is justified when Buddhism is protected in the long term to save the tyrant from his own actions;

Langdarma’s assassination occurred in the midst of Tibet’s dark age of violence 842-936CE, in Mahayana times. Jacob P. Dalton derives the justification for human killing from Mahayana tantras and describes certain human killings executed for ritual sacrifice:

“Buddhist ethical theories that made allowances for…compassionate killing circulated throughout South Asia, particularly within the Mahayana…may have culminated in the tantras…Such teachings…introduced the so-called liberation rite and a whole new ethos of extreme behaviour and transgressive violence.”

Jacob P. Dalton, 2011, The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism [Google Books], p10.

Cathy Cantwell refutes Dalton’s claim that sacrificial killing historically occurred by pointing out that: the tantric imagery connected to these rites aim to divert your mind away from violent impulses; Dalton misinterprets his primary source, A Manual of Human Sacrifce, which excludes how victim was coerced; and one victim’s head was thrown “onto the mandala” which would not honour Buddhism. But the Jataka tales also contain violence, many mentioning the killing of humans:

“If you eat me you will not be able to digest this weapon. It will chop your bowels into peaces and that will be the end of your life.”

Trans. Sarah Shaw, The Jatakas: Birth Stories of the Bodhisatta, The story of five weapons: Pancavudha Jataka (55) Vol. 1, 272-5

Although here Prince Five Weapons dismisses this disembowelment in favour of the Bodhisatta’s” weapon of wisdom within himself”, it still describes murder to its readers. Other examples of Jataka tales mentioning murder are Takkariya tale, and in BOOK XII Dvadasa-Nipata there is tale No. 465 Bhadda-Sala Jataka, tale No. 471 Daka-Jataka and tale No. 481 Takkariya-Jataka. Although no laity commit murder in tales No. 471 and 481, they stage a bodhisattva advising a king not to kill, thus giving this kingship context which birthed Buddhism, through the very honourable Buddha. And although these stories may have met the minds of their original readers, they may have toyed with the temptations of Mahayana or modern Buddhists. Pertaining to dharma, reality, or truth, Buddhist code perhaps asks the question “Ought we to war?” whilst demanding that we do not. Sangha and laity rules are contradictory, because Sangha must “abstain from taking a life” but laity must abstain from “the onslaught of breathing beings”, forbidding non-injury.

Today, Boda Bala Sena monks in Sri Lanka kill and express violence towards Muslims to “protect our country, religion and race”, and in Burma, where historically rulers “justified wars in the name of…true Buddhist doctrine”, a monk army has been formed by Ashin Wirathra. Wheres Christian morality applies to the universal church, Buddhist laity and Sangha follow separate laws. However, renunciation normally occurs after ones work life ends, and so the tighter Sangha rules forbidding murder subtly do not pertain to society. Therefore, Buddhists fight in wars, and the present Dalai Lama is thought by some to be guilty of inciting Tibetans to war against the Tibetan government by having a dream that the Tibetan dharma protector deity Nechung was overridden by Dorje Shugden the ecumenical Gelugpa school. So the Sutras along, Jataka tales and dreams of clergy seem to permit war. In 2008 the Reverend Dai En Wiley Burch of the Hollow Bones Rinzai Zen school said "Without compassion, war is a criminal activity. Sometimes it is necessary to take life, but we never take life for granted.” But more recently dialogue creating Engaged Buddhism saw the Vietnam War mediated by monks who diverted military engagement. Buddhism is non-violence by equation again.

There are two more justifications for murder, one being self-immolation, normally as a political demonstration today and by fire. Due to the individual responsibility of the non-self for others’ advancement, political suicide has surfaced in modern times as Buddhism’s face, only for the protection of Buddhism. Thich Nhat Hanh concedes that suicide may be justified if it is: not motivated by despair or desire for death; allows bodily non-attachment; intentional on diverting the oppressors. It is an occasional cultural occurrence in China, Vietnam and recently in India and it does have textual validation in the Lotus Sutra:

Sacrificing one’s own body…[is] the most sublime worship of the law.

Lotus Sutra (Mahayana)

And also:

He then anointed his body with scented ointment…he covered his body with a divine jeweled garment and with the fragrant oil…he set his body alight, which illuminated worlds equal in number to the sands of eighty ko?is of Ganges Rivers…This is the true perseverance. This is called the true Dharma offering to the Tathagata.

The Lotus Sutra, BDK English Tripitaka Series, Translated for the Chinese, http://www.bdk.or.jp/document/dgtl-dl/dBET_T0262_LotusSutra_2007.pdf

Thich Quang Duc protested in 1963 against the treatment of Buddhists by the Catholic dictator Ngo Dinh Diem by using gasoline to burn himself to death. Self-immolations perhaps occur through a casual interpolation of the kingships background where bodhisattvas concerned themselves very much with politics, Emperor Asoka’s conversion having great effects. I do not claim the Buddha to have begotten a political religion, I claim him to have understood dharma enough to answer the problem of wars. Worldly passions were a reason to detach oneself from the world in favour of the Sangha. Theravadin suicide differs in political suicide today by Buddhists today which is for religious cause instead of for the political freedom of the masses. Theravadin victims would therefore attain enlightenment nonetheless, but today’s victims, upon the proper interpretation of the Sutras, Jataka tales and tantric images and rituals, I believe would not.

I have argued that the Sutras, Jataka tales, tantras and the setting into which the Buddha was born perhaps suggest that the laity can murder, within the historical context of politics. Animal laws here could be an abstraction upon examining the whole scene of Sutras, Jataka tales, historical wars, recent wars and the self-immolations. Modern news reports excite more murders in clashes with muslims, and murder is approached in the mind space as potentially allowable. An absolute respect for all human physical life prohibits abortion of any plausibility, leading to the support of the lives many disabled people who are in pain because neither involuntary nor involuntary euthanasia is right. Buddhist philosophy is about compassion and love from the individual, so perhaps today self-immolations along with religious wars should be objectively written as wrong in amended or edited Sutras and new Jataka tales and tantric images should be created. The definition of worldly passions has changed, and worshippers are now conscious of quality of life.

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