Zen Priests who promoted breaking precepts on killing

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
GnosticMind
Posts: 128
Joined: Fri Mar 26, 2021 3:16 pm

Zen Priests who promoted breaking precepts on killing

Post by GnosticMind »

Since there has been much talk of Mahayana philosophy on the board recently and discussion of Buddhism and violence in the press ( in connection with Burma) and some mention of the perfect example of, the fallibility or infallibility of the ordained Sangha, I’d just like to add these following views of leading Monks in the early to mid 20th century, in which they are actively promoting killing and violence among Buddhists –

The first is from the writings of one of the most famous and respected of Mahayana monks of the 20th century, Ven Sawaki Kōdō

“My comrades (nado) and I participated in the Russo-Japanese War and gorged ourselves on killing people. If we had done this under normal conditions (heijō) there would have been a big fuss (taihen na hanashi). These days, newspapers often talk about exterminating the enemy here and there or raking them with machinegun fire. It sounds just like they’re describing some kind of cleaning.

Newspapers talk about such things as mowing down the remaining enemy using a machinegun to spray them with. If this were done to fellows relaxing in the heart of [Tokyo’s] Ginza area, i.e., strafing them as if they were animals or something, it would be a big deal. Looking back at it now, wars in the past were, to a considerable degree, an elegant (fūryū) affair. You just shot one bullet at a time, bang, bang. There were no machineguns spraying bullets about or big guys you had to take down with a bang. Nor was there poison gas that took care of everything. There wasn’t anything rough and tumble about it like that.

While at [the battle of] Baolisi temple I, too, chased the enemy into a hole and killed them, but I was not punished. Moreover, I received a pension. For that reason just because you kill someone doesn’t mean that you will always be punished. Whether you are punished or not depends on [society’s] rules, rules created by human beings.”

“On the True Meaning of the Zen Precepts,” Ven Sawaki wrote:

“The Lotus Sutra states that "the Three Worlds [of desire, form, and formlessness] are my existence and all sentient beings therein are my children." From this point of view, everything, friend and foe included, are my children. Superior officers are my existence as are my subordinates. The same can be said of both Japan and the world. Given this, it is just to punish those who disturb the public order. Whether one kills, or does not kill, the precept forbidding killing [is preserved]. It is the precept forbidding killing that wields the sword. It is this precept that throws the bomb. It is for this reason that you must seek to study and practice this precept.”

source -- https://apjjf.org/2014/11/24/Brian-Vict ... ticle.html

and -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dd%C5%8D_Sawaki
GnosticMind
Posts: 128
Joined: Fri Mar 26, 2021 3:16 pm

Re: Zen Priests who promoted breaking precepts on killing

Post by GnosticMind »

DT Suzuki, one of the most famous Zen Mahayana teachers in centuries, credited in large part for teaching the Western World about Buddhism, had the following ‘interesting’ take on violence and keeping precepts –
D.T. Suzuki, in Zen and Japanese Culture, wrote:

“The sword is generally associated with killing, and most of us wonder how it can come into connection with Zen, which is a school of Buddhism teaching the gospel of love and mercy. The fact is that the art of swordsmanship distinguishes between the sword that kills and the sword that gives life. The one that is used by a technician cannot go any further than killing, for he never appeals to the sword unless he intends to kill. The case is altogether different with the one who is compelled to lift the sword. For it is really not he but the sword itself that does the killing. He had no desire to do harm to anybody, but the enemy appears and makes himself a victim. It is though the sword performs automatically its function of justice, which is the function of mercy. . . . When the sword is expected to play this sort of role in human life, it is no more a weapon of self-defense or an instrument of killing, and the swordsman turns into an artist of the first grade, engaged in producing a work of genuine originality.”

Source:
https://apjjf.org/2014/11/24/Brian-Vict ... ticle.html

And –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._T._Suzuki
Yasutani Haku’un another leading Zen priest of the 20th century wrote of the “special characteristics of the Mahāyāna precepts.”



“Of course one should kill, killing as many as possible. One should, fighting hard, kill every one in the enemy army. The reason for this is that in order to carry [Buddhist] compassion and filial obedience through to perfection it is necessary to assist good and punish evil. . . . Failing to kill an evil man who ought to be killed, or destroying an enemy army that ought to be destroyed, would be to betray compassion and filial obedience, to break the precept forbidding the taking of life. This is a special characteristic of the Mahāyāna precepts.”

https://apjjf.org/2013/11/30/Brian-Vict ... ticle.html

Ven Sawaki ( sourced above) wrote, “Sawaki wrote:
The Lotus Sutra states that "the Three Worlds [of desire, form, and formlessness] are my existence and all sentient beings therein are my children." From this point of view, everything, friend and foe included, are my children. Superior officers are my existence as are my subordinates. The same can be said of both Japan and the world. Given this, it is just to punish those who disturb the public order. Whether one kills, or does not kill, the precept forbidding killing [is preserved]. It is the precept forbidding killing that wields the sword. It is this precept that throws the bomb. It is for this reason that you must seek to study and practice this precept.14 [Italics mine.]”
GnosticMind
Posts: 128
Joined: Fri Mar 26, 2021 3:16 pm

Re: Zen Priests who promoted breaking precepts on killing

Post by GnosticMind »

Leading German Zen priest Muhō Nölke, rather than criticise the Zen masters' attitude to killing -- said of the following controversy that it was "a great problem" for him --

Muhō Nölke,German-born, Sōtō Zen priest, who is currently the ninth abbot of Antaiji, a temple with which Sawaki was closely identified, having served as its fifth abbot. Thus, within the Zen tradition Sawaki becomes Nölke’s “great, great grandfather in the Dharma” and is, moreover, the best known of Nölke’s predecessors. In e-mail exchanges we had during the summer of 2007 (later posted on his temple website at the beginning of 2008) Nölke took issue with my presentation of Sawaki’s war-related writings.

Nölke explained why he felt the need to criticize my presentation as follows: “The reason why your presentation of Sawaki Kodo concerns me (and that is why I write this e-mail), is simply that I am translating his books and practicing in his lineage. So if it should be true that he was a war monger or a zen fascist, as he is called by some, and that this is somehow expressed in his teaching, it would be a great problem for me."

Apparently, the Zen monks were not guilty of breaking precepts -- it was all a matter of interpretation and translation -- the German modern day Zen monk Nölke wrote:

"It seems to me that there are roughly three different approaches to the precepts:

1) The orthodox or common-sense appoach [sic] to the precept as forbidding certain actions. You can either "keep" or "break" the precepts. In some traditions you can stay "clean" by excusing yourself from the percept (by disrobing etc) for the time you want to practice the action that is forbidden, i.e. have sex, kill people during war time [sic] etc.

2) The precepts as stating a "universal law". This seems to be the Mahayana interpretation that many Japanese Buddhist [sic] were and are still using. When Sawaki talks about the precept throwing a bomb, he is using this interpretion [sic]. Here you can not "break" the precept at all, because it is universal. You cannot kill universal life. Thus the precept becomes a tautology.

3) The percept as contradiction or koan, as Hisamatsu Shinichi's basic koan: What will you do when there is nothing at all you can do (and doing nothing at all is not an option either)? So it is not possible to "keep" the precept in the first place, but the function of the precept is to keep you aware of the contradiction of your life, and humble. It prevents the illusion "I am right, because I don't do wrong."

I tend to interpret the precepts in the third way, although I am aware that both the second and third interpretation make one volnurable [sic] to the temptation of not taking responsibility for one's actions."

( Sources as above)

plus --

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muh%C5%8D_Noelke
User avatar
DooDoot
Posts: 12032
Joined: Tue Aug 08, 2017 11:06 pm

Re: Zen Priests who promoted breaking precepts on killing

Post by DooDoot »

GnosticMind wrote: Tue Mar 30, 2021 7:27 am While at [the battle of] Baolisi temple I, too, chased the enemy into a hole and killed them, but I was not punished. Moreover, I received a pension. For that reason just because you kill someone doesn’t mean that you will always be punished. Whether you are punished or not depends on [society’s] rules, rules created by human beings.”
The above appear to be the words of a non-meditator; of a mind that has not gone deep into the heart to feel the effects of past karma.
There is always an official executioner. If you try to take his place, It is like trying to be a master carpenter and cutting wood. If you try to cut wood like a master carpenter, you will only hurt your hand.

https://soundcloud.com/doodoot/paticcasamuppada
https://soundcloud.com/doodoot/anapanasati
GnosticMind
Posts: 128
Joined: Fri Mar 26, 2021 3:16 pm

Zen Priests who promoted breaking precepts on killing

Post by GnosticMind »

Indeed I agree -- the problem is that these willful manipulations and distortions of the most basic and kindest of precepts -- the rule against harming living beings -- were not uttered by this or that marginal cult-leader : On the contrary, they were taught by the most famous Mahayana Monks of the 20th century -- DT Suzuki is the man who pretty much single handedly, introduced the Western world to Zen and Buddhism in general, thus, in his own way, changing the world (they introduced Buddhism to Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ajahn Sumedho, John Cage, Alan Watts -- the list goes on and on )

And yet, these 'wise men' were willing to so contemptuously contort and violate the most important of the precepts : they were intelligent men -- they must have known they were mangling the precepts to serve power.

Surely that is as good enough reason as any, to at least be skeptical of power and organisations and spokesmen, be it a Buddhist teacher, organisation, or a political organisation, or any other.
User avatar
Lucas Oliveira
Posts: 1890
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2015 10:07 pm

Re: Zen Priests who promoted breaking precepts on killing

Post by Lucas Oliveira »

Verse 127. Shelter Against Death

Neither in sky nor surrounding by sea,
nor by dwelling in a mountain cave,
nowhere is found that place in earth
where one’s from evil kamma free.

Image

Explanation: There is not a single spot on Earth an evil-doer can take shelter in to escape the results of evil actions. No such place is seen out there in space, or in the middle of the ocean. Neither in an opening, a cleft or a crevice in a rocky mountain can he shelter to escape the results of his evil action.

...

Verse 17. Evil Action Leads to Torment

Here one burns, one burns hereafter,
in both ways does the evil-doer burn;
evil I've done, remorsefully one burns,
and more one burns passed to realms of woe.

Image

Explanation: Those who do evil, those given to wrong doings, are tortured in mind both here and hereafter. Being born in a state of woe after death the doer of evil keeps on torturing himself more with the thought "I have done evil deeds. "

...

Verse 129. Of Others Think Of As Your Own Self

All tremble at force,
of death are all afraid.
Likening others to oneself
kill not nor cause to kill.

Image

Explanation: All tremble at violence, all fear death. Comparing oneself with others do not harm, do not kill.

http://www.buddhanet.net/dhammapada/
I participate in this forum using Google Translator. http://translate.google.com.br

http://www.acessoaoinsight.net/
User avatar
Lucas Oliveira
Posts: 1890
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2015 10:07 pm

Re: Zen Priests who promoted breaking precepts on killing

Post by Lucas Oliveira »

When the Dhamma arrives in a country, it is clear that it will be influenced by the culture of that country.

In China, for example, I have heard that monks could eat in the afternoon and at night because of the winter.

and as the monks suffered from persecution by some governments, they dedicated themselves to martial arts, mainly kung fu.

In Japan, where Zen was born, monks were very influenced by the Samurai culture, which is very strict, and because of the various wars that Japan went through, many monks had to witness several murders.

That is why it is important to research the Origin of the Dhamma and how each country and culture may have influenced each school of Buddhism and the monks.

:anjali:
I participate in this forum using Google Translator. http://translate.google.com.br

http://www.acessoaoinsight.net/
GnosticMind
Posts: 128
Joined: Fri Mar 26, 2021 3:16 pm

Re: Zen Priests who promoted breaking precepts on killing

Post by GnosticMind »

Indeed, I agree with what you say, points you have ably illustrated with those beautiful, radiant Sutta quotes -- but the problem of power relation, information and lies remains -- these Monks were men who introduced Buddhism to the West : that is a heavy responsibility -- in the West, they were treated like masters who could not be questioned and they had significant, huge influence -- and yet -- if they could brazenly manipulate and contemptuously lie about the precepts so openly -- what else did they lie about?

They knew what the precepts meant -- they had read all the historical vehicles and Pitakas, were intelligent men, highly educated, highly literate , well versed in Hinduism, Christian mysticism, philosophy ( Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Greek philosophy, the Stoics etc). They were not simple semi-literate village priests -- therefore, I strongly suggest people exercise caution before groveling and scraping before any power system, and axiomatically giving them the highest respect.

Monks are as flawed as anyone else, and power corrupts.
GnosticMind
Posts: 128
Joined: Fri Mar 26, 2021 3:16 pm

Re: Zen Priests who promoted breaking precepts on killing

Post by GnosticMind »

It is also highly problematic that the modern day Zen monk ( the German monk mentioned in the article) when confronted with the facts of these distortions, he did not criticise the monks, but rather, he tried to justify them and use weasel words to claim they had broken no precept but rather 'it was all a misunderstanding, a mistranslation'

What does that tell us about the extent to which those in power will lie and create clouds of obfuscation, anything to secure their hierarchy, their world view, and maintain their privilege, even lying about precepts and covering up for 'holy' men who excused ( and indulged) in extreme violence?
User avatar
JamesTheGiant
Posts: 2147
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2015 8:41 am
Location: New Zealand

Re: Zen Priests who promoted breaking precepts on killing

Post by JamesTheGiant »

Wow! That is horrifying. A bizarre inversion of truth. Like a negative photo. Truly, Mara was in full power in those monks and writers.
User avatar
Lucas Oliveira
Posts: 1890
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2015 10:07 pm

Re: Zen Priests who promoted breaking precepts on killing

Post by Lucas Oliveira »

to be a Zen monk, they follow the path of the Bodhisattva whose principle is to help all beings, to have compassion for all beings.

so these monks are unlikely to encourage the breaking of precepts, especially the first precept which is not to kill.

90% of what these monks say is about kindness.

there may be some phrases in some lectures that may seem the other way around.

But for these monks to be respected in the West, their speech must be in accordance with Buddhist teachings and encourage kindness and compassion for all beings.

and most of these monks are not enlightened and can have impurities and say the wrong things.

also most people still have impurities and can misinterpret what these monks are saying.
Verse 227. There Is No One Who Is Not Blamed

An ancient saying, Atula,
not only said today -
‘They are blamed who silent sit,
who often speak they too are blamed,
and blamed are they of measured speech’ -
there’s none in the world unblamed.

Image

Explanation: O’ Atula, This has been said in the olden days too - it is not just for today. They blame the person who remains silent. They find fault with the person who talks too much. Even with the individual who speaks in moderation, they find fault. In this world there is no one who is not blamed.

http://www.buddhanet.net/dhammapada/d_anger.htm
:anjali:
I participate in this forum using Google Translator. http://translate.google.com.br

http://www.acessoaoinsight.net/
GnosticMind
Posts: 128
Joined: Fri Mar 26, 2021 3:16 pm

Re: Zen Priests who promoted breaking precepts on killing

Post by GnosticMind »

In Japan, Zen is fading, very fast -- it has very, very little support from general society. The temples are considered irrelevant to most people's day to day lives and are mostly tourist destinations -- it is the same in Korea.
User avatar
Dan74
Posts: 4529
Joined: Sun Mar 01, 2009 11:12 pm
Location: Switzerland

Re: Zen Priests who promoted breaking precepts on killing

Post by Dan74 »

Perhaps these Zen figures were a product of their times, so when Japan was in the grips of nationalism and militarism and both were believed to be virtuous, righteous and patriotic, they were influenced by that, as young men? Do we not see how values change and what was considered right for our grandparents is no longer acceptable? Do their writings from this era invalidate everything they did afterwards? And does it invalidate the patriarchal Zen teachings passed down centuries before all this happened?

Perhaps you could give these questions some careful consideration.

I think this is what Muho Nolke tries to do - grapple with these issues, rather than go for the glib condemnation. Mind you, he is a little known monk and does not present himself as any kind of great authority on Zen, let alone enlightened, if you listen to his talks.

Also, a small corrective, Zen did not originate from Japan (only the word "Zen"). Chan Buddhism originated in China and then cam to Korea, only afterwards to Japan, where it is known as Zen.
_/|\_
User avatar
zerotime
Posts: 480
Joined: Thu Jun 25, 2009 10:55 pm

Re: Zen Priests who promoted breaking precepts on killing

Post by zerotime »

this is what sometimes is named the harvest of the anecdote.

- please, explain to me how was the Roman Empire
- ok, listen, I'll tell you an anecdote
SteRo
Posts: 5950
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 10:27 am
Location: Εὐρώπη Eurṓpē

Re: Zen Priests who promoted breaking precepts on killing

Post by SteRo »

Cleared. αδόξαστος.
Post Reply