Buddhist Ethics by Damien Keown

Author:Damien Keown [Keown, Damien]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192589996
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2020-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

Box 10 From the Dhammapada (trans. Norman)

‘He abused me, he struck me, he overcame me, he robbed me.’ Of those who do not wrap themselves up in it hatred is quenched. (v.3)

All tremble at violence; to all life is dear. Comparing (others) with oneself, one should not kill or cause to kill. (v.129)

Whoever, having laid aside violence with regard to creatures moving and still, neither kills nor causes to kill, him I call a brahman. (v.405).

The early history of Sri Lanka was convulsed by war between Sinhalese and Tamils, and King Duṭṭhāgamaṇi (1st century bce) is regarded as a national hero for defeating the Tamil general Eḷāra who had invaded the island from south India. Duṭṭhāgamaṇi’s victory was glorified in a famous chronicle known as the Mahāvaṃsa (5th–6th centuries ce) which relates that his army was accompanied by Buddhist monks and that Buddhist relics adorned the spears of the soldiers. Monks disrobed and joined the army to fight in what the chronicle depicts as a ‘holy war’, although no such concept is legitimized in orthodox teachings. Despite this apparent endorsement by the saṅgha, after his victory Duṭṭhāgamaṇi (like Aśoka before him) felt remorse at the loss of life, whereupon, according to the chronicle, he was reassured by enlightened monks (arhats) that he was responsible for the deaths of just ‘one and a half people’. The meaning of this cryptic remark seems to be that in contrast to Buddhists, Tamils counted only as half persons, since they were ‘evil men of wrong views’ little better than ‘beasts’.

In modern times, leading Sinhalese monks such as the late Walpola Rahula have spoken with approval of ‘religio-nationalism’ and described Duṭṭhāgamaṇi’s campaign as a ‘crusade’. Contemporary supporters of Sinhalese nationalism include monks who believe that only the expulsion of non-Buddhist minorities from the country will bring a lasting peace. These monks have been inspired by an ideology known as ‘Jathika Chintanaya’ (‘nationalist thought’) which expresses its values in the slogan ‘Raṭa, Jātiya, A¯gama’ (‘country, race, and religion’). Buddhist organizations expressing such nationalist sentiments include the Bodu Bala Sena (‘the army of Buddhist power’). Human rights abuses were widespread in the Sri Lankan civil war, and although hostilities ceased in 2009, harassment, intimidation, torture, exploitation, and violence by Buddhists have continued, including attacks on Muslim and Christian minorities.

Buddhists were inevitably caught up in the turbulent history of South-East Asia in the 20th century as Communist and Maoist movements fought for political power in Vietnam and Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge destroyed almost all of Cambodia’s 3,600 Buddhist temples and reduced the number of monks from 50,000 to barely 3,000. The fear of Communist insurgency in Thailand led some monks to take a militant stand. In the 1970s the monk Kittivuḍḍho made a number of controversial public statements to the effect that killing Communists in defence of the Thai nation, Buddhism, and the monarchy was a religious duty that justified the suspension of the ordinary rules of morality. He compared Communism to the devil Māra and spoke of the killing of Communists as an act of great merit.

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