I think the Dalai Lama is one of the greatest men of peace that we have ever seen, but as far as Buddhism as a religion that is always peaceful goes, the historical record says otherwise.
A glance at history reveals that Buddhist organizations have not been free of the violent pursuits so characteristic of religious groups. In Tibet, from the early seventeenth century well into the eighteenth, competing Buddhist sects engaged in armed hostilities and summary executions
In Sri Lanka the 20th century civil war between the mostly Buddhist Sinhalese majority and the Hindu Tamil minority has cost 50,000 lives.
The Buddhist monk Buddhist monk Elle Gunavamsa wrote:
The sword is pulled from the [scabbard], it is
Not put back unless smeared with blood.
I turned by blood to milk to make you grow
Not for myself but for the country
My brave, brilliant soldier son
Leaving [home] to defend the motherland
That act of merit is enough
To reach Nirvāna in a future birth
In South Korea, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist order fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in pitched battles that went on for weeks. They were vying for control of the order, the largest in South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2 million, its additional millions of dollars in property, and the privilege of appointing 1,700 monks to various duties. The brawls partly destroyed the main Buddhist sanctuaries and left dozens of monks injured, some seriously.
I'm not saying that Buddhism is not non-violent, just that not all Buddhists, especially in Sri Lanka at the present, live up to the precepts of Buddhism, or reinterpret them to take the initiative in acts of violence.
That doesn't mean that the ideals are worthless, far from it, but we must be careful about painting too rosy a picture of how Buddhism may have worked out in practice; it is not as close to us as Christianity, and the historical picture (as with crusades, for example) is not so easily known to us. I've just summarised a few pointers to show things are not quite as rose-coloured in the Buddhism garden as might appear at first sight to be the case.
A glance at history reveals that Buddhist organizations have not been free of the violent pursuits so characteristic of religious groups. In Tibet, from the early seventeenth century well into the eighteenth, competing Buddhist sects engaged in armed hostilities and summary executions
In Sri Lanka the 20th century civil war between the mostly Buddhist Sinhalese majority and the Hindu Tamil minority has cost 50,000 lives.
The Buddhist monk Buddhist monk Elle Gunavamsa wrote:
The sword is pulled from the [scabbard], it is
Not put back unless smeared with blood.
I turned by blood to milk to make you grow
Not for myself but for the country
My brave, brilliant soldier son
Leaving [home] to defend the motherland
That act of merit is enough
To reach Nirvāna in a future birth
In South Korea, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist order fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in pitched battles that went on for weeks. They were vying for control of the order, the largest in South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2 million, its additional millions of dollars in property, and the privilege of appointing 1,700 monks to various duties. The brawls partly destroyed the main Buddhist sanctuaries and left dozens of monks injured, some seriously.
I'm not saying that Buddhism is not non-violent, just that not all Buddhists, especially in Sri Lanka at the present, live up to the precepts of Buddhism, or reinterpret them to take the initiative in acts of violence.
That doesn't mean that the ideals are worthless, far from it, but we must be careful about painting too rosy a picture of how Buddhism may have worked out in practice; it is not as close to us as Christianity, and the historical picture (as with crusades, for example) is not so easily known to us. I've just summarised a few pointers to show things are not quite as rose-coloured in the Buddhism garden as might appear at first sight to be the case.
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