Are you aware of any other atrocities in the name of Buddhism?
There are quite a few historical examples of Buddhists resorting to violence or supporting it, in countries such as Sri Lanka, Thailand, China and Japan, as well as most recently in Burma.
In the case of Japan, the scholar and Zen Buddhist Brian Daizen Victoria has published two books examining the behaviour of prominent Zen Buddhist teachers in Japan during World War Two. He found that some of the teachers who later became famous in the West either actively encouraged the Japanese military to do what they did or did not speak out against Japanese militarism. Many wrote essays and pamphlets arguing that the actions of the military were not inconsistent with Buddhist teachings (see the mention of upaya-kausalya below). Some insisted that the establishment of a Japanese world empire was compassionate as it would lead to a better civilisation in which Buddhism could flourish. In a sense, what we have here can possibly be described as an example of a teaching about racial supremacy: only the Japanese are equipped to create the best kind of Buddhist society.
An important influence in this respect was a text called the
Hagakure, a Shinto and Zen-influenced older manual of bushido (the samurai code). Its philosophy was adapted to justify acts of genocide and war crimes in China, the appalling treatment of prisoners of war, to encourage the
kamikaze pilots to fly their planes into US warships, and to urge Japanese civilians to sacrifice themselves when it looked as if the Japanese mainland would be invaded at the end of the war. Japanese soldiers who surrendered were traumatised by the shame they felt in doing so, because the code of
bushido demanded that they die or kill themselves rather than be taken prisoner. Unsurprisingly, one result of all this was that casualty rates amongst Japanese troops were astronomical in the last days of the war: 97% at Saipan, 98.8% at Attu in the Aleutians, and 99.7% at Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands. Between 62,000 and 150,000 Japanese civilians also perished on the island of Okinawa. In other words, some of the main victims of the bushido code were the Japanese people themselves.
A couple of extracts from the Hagakure:
Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku – ritual disembowelment - at the death of one's master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead.
Yamamoto Kichizaemon was ordered by his father Jin'-emon to cut down a dog at the age of five, and at the age of fifteen he was made to execute a criminal. Everyone, by the time they were fourteen or fifteen, was ordered to do a beheading without fail. When Lord Katsushige was young, he was ordered by Lord Naoshige to practice killing with a sword. It is said that at that time he was made to cut down more than ten men successively.
A long time ago this practice was followed, especially in the upper classes, but today even the children of the lower classes perform no executions, and this is extreme negligence.
Last year I went to the Kase Execution Grounds to try my hand at beheading, and I found it to be an extremely good feeling. To think that it is unnerving is a symptom of cowardice.
The justification for violence can also be traced to a mainstream teaching in Mahayana Buddhism called upaya-kausalya (in Sanskrit). It permits actions that are otherwise restrained by the Buddhist ethical code, especially the principle of ahimsa, if they further the Mahayana aim of bringing others to enlightenment.
Am typing this very fast and am unable to provide further detail at this time but there is a chapter in Peter Harvey's An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics that looks at some of this. Brian Daizen Victoria's research is also summarised online in one or two places.
The only truly non-violent world faith of significance that I know of is Jainism.
Personally, I am not unsympathetic to Buddhism. As far as I am concerned, its teachings on anatta (no-self) and emptiness (sunyata) are extraordinarily profound.
But the history of the faith is not untainted with respect to war and violence.
