Opinion | Why Are We Surprised When Buddhists Are Violent? - The New York Times

Opinion | Why Are We Surprised When Buddhists Are Violent? - The New York Times

Opinion

THE STONE

Why Are We Surprised When Buddhists Are Violent?

By Dan Arnold and Alicia Turner

March 5, 2018

The Nya Thar Lyaung reclining Buddha is an important religious site in the Bago region of Myanmar.

The Nya Thar Lyaung reclining Buddha is an important religious site in the Bago region of Myanmar.Credit...Frank Bienewald/LightRocket, via Getty Images

Most adherents of the world’s religions claim that their traditions place a premium on virtues like love, compassion and forgiveness, and that the state toward which they aim is one of universal peace. History has shown us, however, that religious traditions are human affairs, and that no matter how noble they may be in their aspirations, they display a full range of both human virtues and human failings.

While few sophisticated observers are shocked, then, by the occurrence of religious violence, there is one notable exception in this regard; there remains a persistent and widespread belief that Buddhist societies really are peaceful and harmonious. This presumption is evident in the reactions of astonishment many people have to events like those taking place in Myanmar. How, many wonder, could a Buddhist society — especially Buddhist monks! — have anything to do with something so monstrously violent as the ethnic cleansing now being perpetrated on Myanmar’s long-beleaguered Rohingya minority? Aren’t Buddhists supposed to be compassionate and pacifist?

While history suggests it is naïve to be surprised that Buddhists are as capable of inhuman cruelty as anyone else, such astonishment is nevertheless widespread — a fact that partly reflects the distinctive history of modern Buddhism. By “modern Buddhism,” we mean not simply Buddhism as it happens to exist in the contemporary world but rather the distinctive new form of Buddhism that emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries. In this period, Buddhist religious leaders, often living under colonial rule in the historically Buddhist countries of Asia, together with Western enthusiasts who eagerly sought their teachings, collectively produced a newly ecumenical form of Buddhism — one that often indifferently drew from the various Buddhist traditions of countries like China, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Japan and Thailand.

This modern form of Buddhism is distinguished by a novel emphasis on meditation and by a corresponding disregard for rituals, relics, rebirth and all the other peculiarly “religious” dimensions of history’s many Buddhist traditions. The widespread embrace of modern Buddhism is reflected in familiar statements insisting that Buddhism is not a religion at all but rather (take your pick) a “way of life,” a “philosophy” or (reflecting recent enthusiasm for all things cognitive-scientific) a “mind science.”

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Buddhism, in such a view, is not exemplified by practices like Japanese funerary rites, Thai amulet-worship or Tibetan oracular rituals but by the blandly nonreligious mindfulness meditation now becoming more ubiquitous even than yoga. To the extent that such deracinated expressions of Buddhist ideas are accepted as defining what Buddhism is, it can indeed be surprising to learn that the world’s Buddhists have, both in past and present, engaged in violence and destruction.

There is, however, no shortage of historical examples of violence in Buddhist societies. Sri Lanka’s long and tragic civil war (1983-2009), for example, involved a great deal of specifically Buddhist nationalism on the part of a Sinhalese majority resentful of the presence of Tamil Hindus in what the former took to be the last bastion of true Buddhism (the “island of dharma”). Political violence in modern Thailand, too, has often been inflected by Buddhist involvement, and there is a growing body of scholarly literature on the martial complicity of Buddhist institutions in World War II-era Japanese nationalism. Even the history of the Dalai Lama’s own sect of Tibetan Buddhism includes events like the razing of rival monasteries, and recent decades have seen a controversy centering on a wrathful protector deity believed by some of the Dalai Lama’s fellow religionists to heap destruction on the false teachers of rival sects.

These and other such examples have, to be sure, often involved eloquent Buddhist critics of violence — but the fact remains that the histories of Buddhist societies are as checkered as most human history.

It is important to emphasize that the current violence against the Rohingya is not a straightforwardly “religious” matter. Myanmar’s long history of exclusion and violence toward the Rohingya has typically been framed by the question of who counts as a legitimate ethnic minority and who is instead to be judged a foreigner (and thus an illegal migrant). It is also significant that the contemporary nation-state of Myanmar represents the blending of the former military dictatorship and the democratically elected National League of Democracy led by Aung San Suu Kyi; in this hybrid form of government, the mechanisms and influence of civil society and public opinion are relatively new.

Nevertheless, the violence against the Rohingya is certainly related to increasingly popular campaigns in recent years to revive Myanmar’s Buddhist tradition (understood by some to be the marker of “real” Burmese identity) and to protect it particularly against the threat that Islam is thought to represent. Popular campaigns to this effect involve the politics of monastic hierarchies, revivalist education campaigns, the advancement of laws for the “protection of race and religion” and attempts to influence the 2015 elections. While the movement is diverse, there is little doubt that it is shaped by (and that it further fuels) a strong anti-Muslim discourse.

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This anti-Muslim discourse is, to be sure, exacerbated by all manner of sociopolitical considerations (in Myanmar as elsewhere there is widespread uncertainty at a time of rapid economic, social and political change), and these and other factors are used by a wide range of political actors to gain advantage in the new hybrid democracy. One notion central to this discourse, though, is the idea that Buddhism is under threat in the contemporary world — an idea that appears not only in Myanmar’s history but also in the Buddhist texts, written in the Indic language of Pali, that are taken as canonical in Myanmar. Indeed, many Buddhist traditions preserve narratives (undergirded by the cardinal doctrine of impermanence) to the effect that the Buddha’s teachings are always in decline.

Efforts to revive and preserve Buddhism against this supposed decline have driven many developments in Burmese Buddhism for at least two centuries. One such movement was the Buddhist leader Ledi Sayadaw’s colonial-era program of teaching insight meditation to Buddhist laypeople, who had not traditionally engaged in the meditative and other practices typical only of monastics. This lay meditation movement was later promoted as a practice available to an international audience — a development that is part of the history of contemporary Western fascination with mindfulness.

What is especially interesting is that Buddhist proponents of anti-Muslim discourse often assert that Myanmar is under threat from Muslims precisely because Buddhism is, they say, a uniquely peaceful and tolerant religion. In arguing that Rohingya are illegal immigrants who promote an exclusivist and proselytizing religion that is bent on geographical and cultural conquest through conversion and marriage, some Buddhist leaders in Myanmar thus exploit the very same presumption of uniform tolerance and peacefulness that makes many Westerners uniquely surprised by Buddhist violence.

There are, in fact, important historical reasons that the idea of distinctively Buddhist tolerance figures both in nationalist disparagement of Myanmar’s Rohingya and in widespread Western astonishment at the idea of Buddhists engaging in it. Both phenomena have something to do with Myanmar’s experience under British colonial rule, during which religion came to be an important and operative aspect of Burmese identity.

In this regard, it is not self-evident that being “Buddhist” or “Muslim” should be taken as the most salient facts about people who are many other things (Burmese, shopkeepers, farmers, students) besides. Nevertheless, religious identity under British rule came to be overwhelmingly significant — significant enough that it can now be mobilized to turn large numbers of Buddhists against the Muslim neighbors with whom they have lived peacefully for generations.

The British colonial state required, for instance, that every person have a single religious identity for the purposes of personal law and administration. Such policies reflected the extent to which colonial administrators typically interpreted all of the various cultural interactions in colonial Burma through the lens of “world religions.” According to this way of seeing things, relatively distinct and static religious traditions were defined in opposition to one another, with each one thought to infuse its communities of believers with distinctive characteristics. One of the characteristics ascribed to “Buddhists,” according to this rubric, was that they are generally tolerant and pacifist. The idea of Myanmar’s Buddhists as distinctively tolerant, then, became a key mechanism for dividing Burmese Buddhists from the Indian Hindus and Muslims living alongside them.

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Colonial discourse that praised Burmese Buddhists for their tolerance functioned in part to condemn the “superstitious” and “backward” practices of caste Hindus and Muslims in colonial Myanmar. This discourse was picked up by Burmese nationalists and is now invoked, tragically, to justify violence toward Rohingya Muslims.

There is a philosophically problematic presupposition that also figures in widespread surprise at the very idea of violence perpetrated by Buddhists — that there is a straightforward relationship between the beliefs people hold and the likelihood that they will behave in corresponding ways.

Even if we suppose that most Buddhists, or members of any other religious group, really do hold beliefs that are pacifist and tolerant, we have no reason to expect that they will really be pacifist and tolerant. As Immanuel Kant well understood, we are not transparent to ourselves and can never exhaustively know why we do what we do. We can never be certain whether or to what extent we have acted for the reasons we think we did (whether because, for example, “it was the right thing to do”), or whether we are under the sway of psychological, neurophysiological or socioeconomic causes that are altogether opaque to us.

That doesn’t mean that we should (or can) jettison all reference to our stated beliefs, reasons, rationality; indeed, Kant also cogently argued that despite the efforts of all manner of determinists, we cannot coherently explain these away (for any attempt to explain away our rationality would itself represent a use of that faculty). But it does mean that we cannot infer from, say, a society’s widely held belief in toleration and peace that the actions of people in that society will be strictly guided by those beliefs.

We should thus be wary of any narrative on which historical events are straightforwardly explained by the fact that the people in any society hold whatever religious beliefs they do. It just doesn’t follow from the fact that someone is admirable — or for that matter, that she is vile — that it is because of her beliefs that she is so. Given this, we should expect that even in societies where virtuous beliefs are widely held, we will find pretty much the same range of human failings evident throughout history. Buddhist societies are no different in this respect than others.

Many of history’s great Buddhist philosophers would themselves acknowledge as much. Buddhist thinkers have typically emphasized that there is a profound difference between merely assenting to a belief (for example, that all sentient beings deserve compassion) and actually living in ways informed by that belief. To be really changed by a belief regarding one’s relationship to all other beings, one must cultivate that belief — one must come to experience it as vividly real — through the disciplined practices of the Buddhist path.

The reason this is necessary, Buddhist philosophers recognized, is that all of us — even those who are Buddhists — are deeply habituated to self-centered ways of being. Indeed, if that weren’t the case, there would be no need for Buddhist practice; it is just because people everywhere (even in Tibet, Myanmar and Japan) are generally self-centered that it takes so much work — innumerable lifetimes of it, according to many Buddhists — to overcome the habituated dispositions that typically run riot over our stated beliefs.

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The basic Buddhist analysis of the human predicament makes sense, as well, of the irony of colonialist conceptions of Buddhism and of the misguidedness of colonial attempts to exploit religious identities. According to a Buddhist analysis, we go through life thinking we’re advancing our own interests, while actually producing ever more suffering because we misunderstand ourselves.

Similarly, as the case of Myanmar shows, the colonial origins of the modern secular state have, in some ways, insidiously fostered the hardening of religious identities. To that extent, the violence perpetrated by Buddhists in Myanmar, astonishing though it might seem to us, may not be so far from the origins of our own ways of perceiving the world. It is clear that this violence is driven by Burmese participation in (and interpretation of) global contemporary discourses that also shape societies in Europe and North America, where the vilification of Islam and of immigrants has (not coincidentally) also been widespread.

Indeed, our own perception of Buddhism as peaceful and tolerant may itself contribute to a global discourse that has, among other things, represented Muslims as less than full citizens — indeed, less than fully human — in Myanmar as in many other places.

Dan Arnold is an associate professor of philosophy of religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School and the author of “Brains, Buddhas, and Believing.” Alicia Turner is an associate professor of humanities and religious studies at York University and is at work on a book about religion in colonial Burma. This essay was commissioned by the University of Chicago’s Stevanovich Institute.

Now in print: “Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments” and “The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments,” with essays from the series, edited by Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley, published by Liveright Books.

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Weren’t Buddhists Supposed to Be Pacifists? – Foreign Policy

Weren’t Buddhists Supposed to Be Pacifists? – Foreign Policy


Weren’t Buddhists Supposed to Be Pacifists?
Their religion may stress peace, but some Buddhists are showing that they’re entirely capable of violence in the name of faith.
BY CHRISTIAN CARYL | APRIL 23, 2013, 10:51 PM


The man’s body lies on a blanket striped in white and blue. He’s wearing a dark brown tank top and a dark blue flowered sarong. Someone has tied his hands behind his back with rope. There are deep red gashes on his head and shoulders — some of them presumably the wounds that ended his life.

The man in the photo is a Muslim. The people who killed him were almost certainly Buddhists. He was a victim in last fall’s sectarian bloodshed in western Burma, which pitted members of the two religions against each other. The image comes from a new report by Human Rights Watch that carefully documents the violence that took some 200 lives and resulted in the forced displacement of some 125,000 people. (A more recent wave of violence within the past few weeks has taken some 40 additional lives and triggered another surge of refugees.) The report argues persuasively that state institutions, including the police, often stood by while Buddhist rioters went after their Muslim neighbors — and in some cases may have even helped to organize the attacks. A mere 4 percent of Burma’s population of Burma is Muslim, while well over 90 percent are Buddhists. Perhaps the fact that the government sided with the majority probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise. (The allegations didn’t stop the International Crisis Group, a leading western humanitarian organization, from giving an award to President Thein Sein earlier this week.)
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But wait: Isn’t Buddhism a religion that places respect for life and the embrace of peace at the very center of its worldview? The Buddha himself placed compassion at the root of his teachings, and in Burma itself, it was Buddhist monks who set the rigorously non-violent tone of the massive anti-government demonstrations back in 2007. The chants of the saffron-robed protestors were powerfully moving: "May all beings living to the East be free; all beings in the universe be free, free from fear, free from all distress!"

It turns out, sadly, that some Buddhist monks don’t see this as a binding ethical imperative. Monks have been prominent among those inciting the recent bloodshed. The most notable is U Wirathu, a monk at a prominent monastery who’s made a name for himself lately as an apologist for anti-Muslim sentiment and the organizer of the "969" movement, which has been issuing stickers and signs emblazoned with that number (which has symbolic significance for Burmese Buddhists) to identify businesses that refuse to serve Muslims — exactly the kind of policy the monk is aiming to promote. He’s said to have referred to himself as "the Buddhist Osama bin Laden." How can this sort of bigotry possibly be reconciled with the teachings of the Enlightened One?

I’m happy to say that there are plenty of other Buddhist monks in Burma who have been pushing back against their chauvinist colleagues. But to understand what’s been happening, we also need to take a closer look at those who claim to be standing up for Buddhism even as they’ve doing things that don’t seem to be easily reconcilable with their religion.


First of all, the notion of Buddhism as an inherently pacifist religion has a strong element of Western oversimplification. Buddhist teaching has never prohibited believers from fighting in defense of a just cause. As the scholars Michael Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer show in their book Buddhist Warfare, Buddhists have participated in wars ever since their faith came into being. Militant monks have fought for Chinese rulers (and against them) for centuries. Japan’s samurai warriors were ardent Buddhists, men who cited the Buddha’s teachings on the impermanence of physical existence as a good argument for soldiering.

When the Dalai Lama urges his fellow Tibetans to maintain non-violence in their struggle against Chinese rule, his fans in the West tend to see this as a typically Buddhist attitude. But, as some astute observers have pointed out, the Dalai Lama’s embrace of civil disobedience may owe as much to Gandhi and Martin Luther King as it does to his fellow believers. (Nor, intriguingly, did it stop His Holiness from approving the killing of Osama bin Laden, though he later qualified his position when it became clear that the al Qaeda leader was unarmed when he was shot.) Indeed, his religious authority hasn’t been enough to prevent over 100 Tibetans from killing themselves as a protest against Chinese policy despite his injunctions against suicide. (Happily, in the wake of the Human Rights Watch report, he has been urging the monks in Burma to end the violence there.)

But doctrine is only part of the problem. All religions — Buddhism included — tend to create a powerful sense of collective identity among their followers. All of the great world religions emphasize the sanctity of human life, and strive to limit the use of violence to what’s admissible in certain cases. But those careful distinctions tend to go out the window when a group of believers feels that its values are under threat.

As the current crisis in Burma demonstrates, modern Buddhists are just as susceptible to identity politics as anyone else. In March, police in Sri Lanka stood by as Buddhist monks led a mob that pillaged a Muslim-owned garment warehouse. Sri Lanka, which has been convulsed for years by a civil war between majority Buddhists and minority Tamils, is home to several hard-line Buddhist political movements, including something called the "Buddhist Strength Force," which has recently made a name for itself with vitriolic anti-Muslim rhetoric. "It is the monks who protect our country, religion, and race," said Sri Lankan Defense Minister Gotabhaya Rajapaksa in a recent speech — reinforcing suspicions that militant monks enjoy tacit government support.

The government in Thailand, meanwhile, has armed local Buddhist groups to counter a simmering Muslim insurgency in the south of the country. The militias, which are distinct from the regular army and the police, have the job of defending Buddhist communities against potential attacks — and perhaps deepening the sectarian dimension in that long-running conflict.

What all three of these countries have in common is an ominous trend in which governments and religious institutions are lending support to destructive sectarian forces. Muslims may well bear some of the responsibility for the killings in Burma, but the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that most of the violence was committed by far more numerous Buddhists who enjoyed crucial support from local officials and religious leaders.

None of this, of course, is to argue that Buddhists are uniquely evil. It’s merely to point out that some of our idealized notions a
bout the purity of Buddhism don’t live up to real-world scrutiny. We shouldn’t give Buddhist extremists a pass any more than we would their Muslim, Christian, or Jewish equivalents; otherwise we run the risk of becoming complicit in their crimes. Just because the conflicts they create are in far-away, exotic places is no excuse for complacency.

The world is too small for that.

The Buddha Taught Nonviolence, Not Pacifism

The Buddha Taught Nonviolence, Not Pacifism

The Buddha Taught Nonviolence, Not PacifismArticle
Paul Fleischman
Spring 2002

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Paul Fleischman is a psychiatrist and a Teacher of vipassanā meditation in the tradition of S.N. Goenka. He is the author, among other works, of Cultivating Inner Peace and Karma and Chaos.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I have found myself musing about non­violence, its contributions, its limits, and its place in the Buddha’s teaching. I have also been surprised to hear many of my acquaintances confuse the Buddha’s teach­ing of nonviolence with pacifism (which I will here take to mean the objection to any kind of violence for any reason), so that, due to their confusion, they find themselves either rejecting nonviolence as hopelessly naive and inadvertently destruc­tive, or embracing the politicized group allegiances of pacifism, which they imagine incorrectly to present what the Buddha taught.

The Buddha did not intend to form either a religious or political position, nor a philosophy of society. Historically, he lived before the era of organized, sys­tematic theorizing about the human collective. He addressed himself as an indi­vidual to individuals. Even when he spoke to large groups, as he frequently did, he focused on individual responsibility. He understood every group—for example, the democratic states that existed in the India of his times—as resting upon the insight, conscience and actions of each of its participants. He had no theory of, nor belief in, supervening collective struc­tures of society or government that could amend or replace the bedrock of indi­vidual choice.

Rather than a theologian or a systems thinker, the Buddha was a liberator, a spiri­tually attained practitioner and teacher of the path to nibbāna, freedom from hate, delusion and fear. His goal was to help as many beings as possible live in equa­nimity, harmony and loving kindness. He was against all embracing belief systems—a position that confounded many of his contemporaries, and that still puzzles people today who want to understand what “ism,” what philosophy, he pro­pounded. Many people still yearn to find in his words some “Buddhist fundamen­talism” by which they can anchor ideo­logical convictions and security against the turmoil of life.



The “Dhamma,” or path to liberation for which the Buddha was spokesman, is not an idea but a mode of conduct and a way of life that leads to personal realiza­tion. Its goal is to release its practitioners from authorities and ideologies, not anarchistically or capriciously, but through training, by deepening their personal ex­periences of the nature of their true self and its ethical implications. It is through these long cultivated, gradually deepening experiences that the Buddha led his fol­lowers to autonomy from ideas philoso­phies, scriptures, even from himself. His classic similes focused on direct tangible experience. Like a man from whom a poi­soned arrow is removed, the student of Dhamma will experience relief from pain. Like a man who eats nourishing food, the student of Dhamma will know the taste of liberation. These direct experiences of life’s meanings and values are the Buddha’s teaching. Many practitioners of Dhamma do not call themselves “Buddhists,” just as the Buddha never did.

Morality is the first guidepost on the path the Buddha taught. Why is morality given so much initial attention in a non ideological, experiential path?

In order to see oneself, to know one­self, to experience one’s own true nature, one must focus observation repeatedly, continuously, as a lifetime practice, on who one really is. This lifestyle of awareness, meditation, and observation requires openmindedness—hence the Buddha’s emphasis on freedom from rigid beliefs—but the path also requires patience, calm and integrity. To make mindful observa­tions of oneself as a way of life, one needs a steady, focused mind. This can only be obtained when honesty, harmony, mod­esty and sincerity are already adhered to. It is for this reason that whenever the Bud­dha taught Dhamma, he started with the five moral precepts: not to steal, lie, use intoxicants, commit sexual misconduct… and not to kill. Nonviolence is a prereq­uisite to, and the first step of the Buddha’s teaching. It appears not as a belief, but as a practical necessity to the intentional and aware path of Dhamma. Initially, for the student of the Buddha, nonviolence is a psychological necessity for self-develop­ment.


The Dhamma…is not an idea but a mode of conduct and a way of life…

However, this utilitarian and personal introduction to nonviolence as a moral precept is only the surface layer of the Buddha’s teaching. Continuing to eschew ideology or philosophy, the Buddha’s guidance was toward experiences that deepen discernment. The student is led to the point where he or she sees them­selves clearly through the practice of medi­tation. What happens to the moral pre­cept of nonviolence when a person has lived a way of life that directs them to encounter the transience of personal ex­istence, the insubstantiality of ourselves, of our perceptions, of our viewpoints, of our history, of our world? Is there any value or meaning to nonviolence for a small, temporary being, born out of past causes, destined to live briefly then die, a passing aggregate of mind and matter scintillating for a moment in the vast cor­ridors of endless time?

As a student of the Buddha matures on the path, he or she opens to new per­spectives, and the mind becomes more able to see various viewpoints simulta­neously. The path the Buddha taught is a deepening realization, without reduction to doctrine. Experiential apprehension of nonviolence replaces mere moral adher­ence to it. In the depth of realization of personal impermanence, certain truths become self-evident. All things are im­permanent; all beings are transient; all be­ings suffer the common experiences of loss, decay, death. While each person, plant, or animal, has its own causes, its own seeds, that brought it into being, all share the bond of birth and death. Ulti­mately, nonviolence is a recognition of the simple facts that the quality of our life is the same as the quality of our moment-to-moment thoughts and feelings, and that enmity, hatred and violence never im­prove our state of mind. Just as a man would not seethe with violence against his own body, he wouldn’t harm himself by seething with violence…period. Libera­tion means nonviolence.

The Buddha’s path begins with behav­ioral acquiescence to vows not to kill, but it culminates in an identification with nonviolence as the essence of what liberates the mind and heart from hate, fear and self promoting delusion. “All fear death. Comparing others with oneself, one should neither kill nor cause to kill.” [Dhammapada 129] Nonviolence is the essence of what the Buddha taught. Non­violence is liberating because in each and every moment that it suffuses one’s mind, in that moment the mind feels compassion, identification and empathy with other beings.

For the Buddha, nonviolence is a pre­cept that enables the journey to experi­ence the root meaning of itself. Initially, the student obeys the precept of nonvio­lence. Eventually, he or she comes to embody nonviolence as a cherished tone quality of life.



II

Here are two key differences between nonviolence as taught by the Buddha, and pacifism. First, the Buddha did not teach social and political phi­losophy; and second, he taught a path of life, not a blanket ideology. Guiding each interested individual to walk the path, the Buddha encouraged a pure mind that seeks the least harm. He recognized dif­ferent levels of personality development, different social roles and obligations, different responsibilities and necessities in­cumbent on different individuals according to their history and choices. The Bud­dha taught people according to their “karma.”

Himself a member of the warrior caste, the Buddha maintained cordial re­lations with kings. Numerous suttas in the Pali Cannon record his conversations with Kings Pasenadi and Bimbisara. Shun­ning political involvement, the Buddha never advised his royal students to con­vert their kingdoms into democracies, de­spite the fact that many local states were in fact kingless republics. Although we have on record numerous discourses that the Buddha gave in the presence of, or even directly to, royalty, he never counsels them to abandon legal administration with its attendant consequences and punish­ments for crimes, nor to abandon war­fare and protection of their state.

In a poignant conversation that oc­curred when both the Buddha and King Pasenadi were 80 years old, the king praises the Buddha, his teaching and the conduct of his followers, while describ­ing himself as “… an anointed warrior-king, able to have executed those who should be executed….” After the king de­parts, the Buddha comments to the medi­tators around him that the King’s insights were “monuments to the Dhamma” that should be learned and remembered as “fundamentals of the holy life.” [Majjhima 89] This passage clarifies that the Buddha neither condemned nor even rebuked the king for his fulfillment of the kingship, with it dire responsibilities.


Ultimately, nonviolence is a recognition… that enmity, hatred and violence never improve our state of mind.

A similar window into the early and ancient interpretation of the Buddha’s teaching comes from King Ashoka, who lived several hundred years after the Bud­dha, but who is credited as being the great­est Buddhist king both in the extent of his influence and in the depth of his understanding of Dhamma, and who is responsible for the famous edicts carved in rock, which constitute “the oldest surviving In­dian written documents.” These wise and humane passages, which imply a level of civilized conduct to which humankind still aspires, praise such virtues as self-exami­nation and religious tolerance. They are based on Dhamma—the universal path to liberation—and never mention Buddha or “Buddhism.” Explicitly banning ani­mal sacrifice (which had been the fore­most religious ritual before the Buddha’s time), the edicts praise non-harmfulness but stop short of rigid absolutism: “Not to injure living beings is good.” Although Ashoka’s conversion to Dhamma led him to abandon military conquest (of which he had already done a lifetime’s share), and to claim conquest by Dhamma is the only true conquest…,” he did not, accord­ing to an authoritative historian “…abjure warfare, never abandoned armies…and he avoided disastrous pacifism…retaining the option of capital punishment…” There is no reason to imagine that the Buddha ever encouraged those of his students who held administrative responsibilities to promul­gate an anarchic abnegation of govern­mental function.

In a brief discourse, the Buddha is challenged by a general who claims that Dhamma is mere passivity. The Buddha replies that he teaches inactivity in regard to unwholesome things and “activity by way of good conduct in deeds, words and thoughts.” There is no further blan­ket position taken towards government, warfare or the karma of Generals. What constitutes good conduct is left to the General’s discernment. The Buddha gave the principle, not the details of the infinite varieties of interpretation and application.


The student of Dhamma seeks the least harm at all times.

None of this, however, justifies hatred or violence in service of personal goals or gains. For the government servant who, for example, as a soldier must kill, the Buddha implicitly asks of him two ques­tions. The first is: “Can you do this task as an upholder of safety and justice, fo­cused on love of those you protect rather than on hate for those you must kill? If you are acting with vengeance or delight in destruction, then you are not at all a student of Dhamma. But if your hard job can be done with a base of pure mind, while you are clearly not living the life of an enlightened person, you are still able to begin walking the path towards harmony and compassion.” The Buddha’s ethics clearly allows differentiation between situations like American soldiers fighting to liberate the concentration camps at the end of World War II, versus death camp guards and mass murderers. If the sol­dier is acting in a protective, pure hearted way of life, he may be an agent of justice who simply is the vehicle by which the karma of the murderers ends in their own death.

However, the Buddha’s teaching im­plies a second question for soldiers, po­lice and all of us.



III

Fundamental to the Buddha’s teach­ing is the concept of volition or “kamma” (often rendered in English as “karma.”) Our quality of life is a prod­uct of our choices. Every major choice in life entails commitments, limitations, and consequences. Although no consequence is permanent—because liberation from all kamma is possible, though it may take life­times, even millions of them!—a man who accepts the kingship or who becomes a soldier also accepts the responsibilities in­cumbent upon the role. He can be a good king and improve his own lot as he pro­vides security and justice to his subjects, and he can meditate and thereby take steps on the Path of Dhamma, but he cannot claim the exemptions and privileges of a “Bhikkhu.” Implicitly the Buddha asks us all to examine our fundamental position in life, our deepest choices.

According to the Buddha, a commit­ted student of his path by definition practices nonviolence, but those who have not chosen this role may, or must, fulfill other social roles and follow other precepts. The Buddha’s teaching asks us all to consider whether we are ripe to take up the re­sponsibilities and limits incumbent on the life of a committed practitioner of Dhamma.

Therefore, while the Buddha never lec­tured at his longtime student, King Pasenadi, to forsake his throne, when the aging king felt death closing in on him, he concluded, with the help of the Buddha’s questioning, “There is no scope or use for battles when aging or death are closing in…what else can I do but walk in Dhamma?” So different choices are appropriate for different people and for different life stages in the same person. The Buddha respected and befriended King Pasenadi while he remained king, and the king mirrored that mutual respect and persevered as a student of the Buddha while continuing with Royal prerogative and problems; until the king, based on his own insight and volition, ripened to a new level of commitment to Dhamma and to nonviolence.

It is to serious, committed meditators, who are lifelong practitioners of moral precepts, daily meditation, and a purified mind, that the Buddha gave his often quoted, stunning guidance on nonviolence, “Even if bandits brutally severed him limb from limb with a two handled saw, he who entertained hate in his heart on that account would not be one who followed my teaching.” [Majjhima 21] Please note that this famous passage does not preclude skillful and vigorous self-defense that is free of hate.

The committed meditator is not only nonviolent, but is also a witness to non­violent potential in daily living. This again expresses “…activity by way of the good…” as the Buddha advised the gen­eral. By example and in speech, the com­mitted meditator seeks the least harm for all beings in all situations. On the other hand, this lifelong practitioner of Dhamma does not promote him or her­self as a political leader. His or her wit­ness is personal, exemplary and public, but not power seeking nor self promotional. Two key criteria the Buddha imposed on himself and his followers were: never to speak for the sake of worldly advantage, and never allude to yourself.


The ethics of a committed meditator spring from a whole life of the practice of self-examination.

According to the positions one has un­dertaken, different relationships to nonviolence evolve. The committed medita­tor purifies his or her mind so that all violence becomes impossible, but he or she does not automatically condemn the gov­ernmental servant who diligently seeks to ascertain justice while defending society against violence, and who is thereby oc­casionally called to the use of force. When asked whether a judge should abjure capital punishment, Mr. Goenka replied that the judge should uphold his legitimate judi­cial functions, while at the same time work­ing for the long-term elimination of capital punishment.

The Dhamma is not an ideology but is a set of tools for assessing one’s own volitions, responsibilities, feelings and be­haviors, in order to align them with non­violence, according to one’s abilities and capacities. As a group, serious practitio­ners of Dhamma form a voluntary set of devoted, non-violent witnesses who give a ballast to the reactive society around them. The Buddha’s teaching of nonvio­lence for serious meditators makes them properly defined as what American Selective Service calls “conscientious objectors” to war.



IV

Freud echoed conventional wisdom when he wrote that civilization con­sists of good conduct despite the wayward unconscious trends of the human mind. The Buddha stepped outside of convention when he insisted that the mind, not conduct, was the true target of transfor­mation. For him, nonviolence is an essen­tial rule, a culmination of a meditative way of life, a product of individual choice and position, and a non-stop, non-situational way of being.

Here is another key difference between the Buddha’s nonviolent position and pacifism: nonviolence is continuous, a perva­sive and quotidian effort. Before and after any war, before and after outbreaks of violence, the student of Dhamma, the committed meditator, lives the life of non­violence towards his friends, acquaintan­ces, animals, trees and food. He even “…holds himself aloof from causing in­jury to seeds or plants.” The student of Dhamma seeks the least harm at all times. Realistically as a surgeon she may have to incise her patient’s body, or as a police­man arrest the armed robber, or as a teacher, discipline the unruly student. Re­alistically, in the ambiguous rough-and-tumble of house holder’s life and public discourse, the student of Dhamma may need to call upon difficult decisions, unpopular stances, and unflattering sentences; and he or she will be called upon also to recognize the complexity and ambiguity that rests on the shoulders of those who have positioned themselves to make de­cisions in a world of turmoil and suffering. But the lifelong devotee of Dhamma understands that the goal of every mo­ment is to generate empathy and com­passion, to minimize anger and hate.



This double layer is part and parcel of the Buddha’s teaching: to generate skillful, maximally beneficial conduct simultaneously with affiliative, non-retalliatory, identifitory feelings. Nonviolence is only the surface layer of a heart of love and compassion. Few honest people can say they feel nothing else, but for the student of the Buddha’s path, for the practitioner of Dhamma, a pure heart is the goal of every moment, no matter how many thou­sands of times one’s real feelings fall short of this ideal.

Due to this focus on volition, Dhamma awakens its practitioners to con­tinuously assess one’s own state of mind, and not just to act. What appears to be noble restraint from retaliation may only be fear or expeditious tactics. What ap­pears to be strong defense of helpless people may only be ego-boosting aggres­sion. The Buddha’s primacy on intention allows him to consider a proper role for benign force, as Dr. Olendzki has shown in his analysis of the Buddha’s discussion of how a parent must act if a small child were choking on a pebble [Insight, Fall 2001]. In this case, even drawing blood could be compassionate. Nonviolence has room for strong actions whose origins rest in concerned and caring motives.

Similarly, passive, acquiescent enabling of violence is not Dhamma. We have seen how the Buddha reassured the gen­eral that Dhamma is not inactivity. We have also seen how speaking up on be­half of Dhamma is part of the definition of a committed meditator. If one truly believes that qualities of heart and mind constitute enlightenment, and that the high­est welfare for all beings is a life of har­mony and peace, then permitting some­one else to perpetrate harm without con­sequences is not nonviolence.

For the committed disciple of the Buddha’s path, it is essential not only to refrain from killing, but also to refrain from encouraging others to kill. The Bud­dha addressed this problem regarding veg­etarianism, where the path contained the sometimes contradictory advice to accept whatever food is given to you, yet also not to kill or cause animals to be killed. The conclusion to this problem was: one should never eat meat of an animal killed intentionally on one’s behalf, since this would be encouraging others to kill; but if meat already is present in the food not specifically prepared for you, but now offered to you, one should just accept the gift as given.

This quaint example shows both the seriousness of the concern not to induce others to kill, but also the pragmatism and flexibility with which it was interpreted. How does this apply to the follower of the Buddha, who encourages police or army to protect the civil order? Isn’t he or she encouraging others to kill on one’s own behalf? Conversely, if the practitio­ner of Dhamma passively allows, permits or facilitates violence, isn’t this encourag­ing the violent perpetrator on his destruc­tive and downward course?

The Buddha’s path of nonviolence guides us through a personal scrutiny, not a pat answer, taking systematic mediation as our most penetrating tool, how to avoid killing, and to be spokespersons for Dhamma—neither violent nor passive. To the extent that one has extracted oneself from lifestyles of force—such as military service—and to the extent that Dhamma has become a committed way of life, then Buddha’s answer, by speech and example, is unambiguous: The Buddha promoted nonviolence by spreading Dhamma in its fullness, not by focal political activity or “single issue” thinking. Through exem­plary lifestyle, through self-restraint, through verbal explanation, the follower of the Buddha acts on behalf of the good.

The historical record contained in the Pali Canon describes the Buddha as finding a middle path between involvement in specific political issues—which he never did—or complicitous acceptance of injustice—which he also attempted to avoid. Never a direct critic of particular govern­ments or policies, he was assertive and forthright in teaching Dhamma, the way of life.

Ultimately, right speech is described by the Buddha as : “Thus does he live as one who binds together those who are divided…a peacemaker, a lover of peace…a speaker of words that make for peace.” Well spoken speech has five marks: it is timely, true, gentle, purposeful and kind-hearted. While the Buddha is described as participating in public presentations of his experiential, dogmaless Dhamma, and thereby disagreeing with other peoples’ practices or traditions, he never did so with an oppositional, conversional fervor. He did not indulge in the excited prophetic banner of charismatic religion or of youthful fidelities. He expressed his non-violent ethic but he did not campaign for it. His tone, topic and style were uni­form.



V

We now see the Buddha’s teach­ing of nonviolence as a sieve, through which his students filter the particles of reality. To the extent that one is committed to the path, everything must be passed through this sieve, which de­mands of us to examine our choices, our own inactions. In response to one event—for example, the terrorist attacks of Sep­tember 11, 2001— different sincere followers of the Buddha’s way may find themselves arriving at different positions, because each of them is working with a mirror of self-insight rather than with a political formulation. One Dhamma practitioner may see force as the best method of saving the most lives; another may see force as misguided revenge. In fact, in the complex series of actions that followed, force may have indeed oper­ated as preservation against further de­struction as well as a vengeful retaliation, both.


Nonviolence as the Buddha taught it was directed at each interaction in each moment…

For all practitioners of Dhamma how­ever, the core questions are the same: “How can I, given my position, abilities, development and flaws, best bring to bear nonviolence in my wishes, word and deeds?” The ethics of a committed medi­tator spring from a whole life of the prac­tice of self-examination. Lacking one fixed relationship to state or government, the lifelong Dhamma practitioner may move between cooperation, distance, wit­ness and correction.

Even with its clear verbal discourses and its vivid example of the Buddha’s life, the Dhamma is not easy to apprehend because it does not conform to thought systems or preconceptions. Though it emphasizes right action in society, it dif­fers from issue-specific politics or social work. Though it emphasizes nonviolence, it differs from pacifism. It is an embracing systematic teaching that places non-violence at the cornerstone of its foundation, but it is unaligned with gov­ernment, movements or religions. It is knowable only as a way of life embed­ded in meditative insight. It is often de­scribed as an absence rather than a pres­ence—an absence of hate, ill will and de­lusion, an absence of viewpoints and be­liefs. It is a clearing away of self-absorp­tion that is the root of suffering.

The Buddha never claimed he could bring peace to the whole world. The nar­cissistic time-scales of the pre-scientific scriptures of the West never occurred to him. He saw that suffering beings are limitless in time and space. The Buddha speaks to us from his position within an endless universe in which our current struggles for peace are not triumphal but eternal. But he also rejects defeatism or cynicism and promises this: a practical path to reduce suffering, which includes a generous dispensation of itself to others.

Nonviolence as the Buddha taught it was directed at each interaction in each moment but was not a comforting myth for denying inescapable truths. Dhamma is a long path, a footpath, rarely culmi­nated by the rare few, and not a fantasy exit from the exigencies of the human condition. There are no global solutions even hinted at anywhere in the Buddha’s dispensation of Dhamma. His followers practice non-violence because it anchors them in alertness and compassion, ex­presses and reinforces their own mental purification, builds identification with other beings, human, animal, even seeds; and because it is their most cherished realization: mind matters most; cultivation of love, peace and harmony is always the only irrefutable doctrineless meaning that people can experience.

In times of war and times of peace, every day, the committed meditator dwells in love and compassion, radiated outward to all, to those who are alive, or who once were, or who will be; to those who are human or to other living beings; to those who intend good and to those who in­tend harm, not agreement but loving kind­ness is sent.

It is through devotion to nonviolence as a compass that one sees glimmerings of nibbāna along the horizon. Who would prefer a heart of hate to a heart of love?

This article is excerpted from a longer essay by the same title, published by Pariyatti Press. The full essay may be obtained by contacting Pariyatti.

[This publisher, by the way, is an excellent source for hard-to-find dhamma books. —ed.]

If you found this article helpful, please consider supporting the work of BCBS.

How Bill Gates Premeditated COVID Vaccine Injury Censorship « Aletho News

How Bill Gates Premeditated COVID Vaccine Injury Censorship « Aletho News

How Bill Gates Premeditated COVID Vaccine Injury Censorship

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | March 30, 2021

In 2000, everything about Bill Gates’ public persona changed. He morphed from a hardnosed and ruthless technology monopolizer into a soft, fuzzy and incredibly generous philanthropist when he and his wife launched the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.¹

It was a public relations coup. May 18, 1998, the U.S. Justice Department, in collaboration with 20 state attorneys, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft.² At that time, the company was 23 years old and was ruling the personal computer market. The Seattle Times described the fallout from the antitrust lawsuit:³

“The company barely escaped being split up after it was ruled an unlawful monopolist in 2000 for using its stranglehold on the PC market with its Windows operating system to cripple competitors, such as Netscape’s Navigator Web browser.”

How would the world be different today if the company had been split? Yale law professor George Priest described the antitrust lawsuit as “one of the most important antitrust cases of its generation.”⁴ In 2002, a court settlement placed restrictions on Microsoft to curb some of its practices for five years.

It was later extended twice and then expired May 12, 2011. The lawsuit had a dramatic effect on “the emergence of an entirely new field called IP (intellectual property) antitrust,” Iowa law professor Herbert Hovenkamp told the Seattle Times.⁵

Later, large sums donated from the foundation made the news multiple times, including $9.5 million to GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines), a second $7.5 million to GAVI and $6.8 million to the World Health Organization in 2017.⁶

By June 2020, in the middle of a global pandemic, the Gates Foundation’s donations totaled 45% of WHO’s funding from nongovernmental sources.⁷ Once mainstream media’s attention was no longer on Gates’ antitrust activities and focused on the philanthropist actions of the foundation, Gates publicly turned his attention to vaccinating the world, long before COVID-19.⁸

Event 201: A Preplanned Pandemic

In a deep dive into the Gates Foundation’s charitable donations, The Nation found there were $250 million in grants to companies where the foundation held corporate stocks, including Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Sanofi and Medtronic. The money was directed at supporting projects “like developing new drugs and health monitoring systems and creating mobile banking services.”⁹

What Gates had discovered was an easy path to political power, allowing him to shape public policy without being elected to office. In other words, favorable headlines could be bought with charitable contributions.¹⁰ One event that Gates has personally supported and participated in was Event 201.¹¹

Writing in The Defender, Robert Kennedy Jr. describes the exercise that Gates organized in October 2019. Many high-ranking men and women with governmental authority participated in Event 201, which coincidentally simulated a worldwide pandemic triggered by a novel coronavirus, just months before SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, changed the world.¹²

They included representatives from the World Economic Forum, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Johns Hopkins University Population Center, the World Bank, the Chinese government and vaccine maker Johnson & Johnson. During the event, the group developed strategies to control a pandemic, the population and the narrative surrounding the event.

At no time did they investigate using current therapeutic drugs and vitamins or communicating information about building immune systems. Instead, the aim was to develop and distribute patentable antiviral medications and a new wave of vaccines.

As Kennedy reports, Gates spoke to the BBC¹³ April 12, 2020, and claimed these types of simulations had not occurred, saying “Now here we are. You know we didn’t simulate this; we didn’t practice, so both the health policies and economic policies … we find ourselves in uncharted territories.”

Yet, videos of the event are available¹⁴ and Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security released a statement naming the Gates Foundation as a partner in sponsoring the pandemic simulation.¹⁵ It seems strange and alarming that a man with the responsibility of running the Gates Foundation and the powerful influence he has over global public policy decisions had forgotten an exercise he organized only six months before the interview.¹⁶ Or was it deception?

Uncanny Prediction or Planned Event?

During the pandemic exercise, the global experts “modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic.”¹⁷ After questions arose about whether the exercise had “predicted the outbreak in China,” Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security released a thinly supported statement, saying:¹⁸

“… the exercise served to highlight preparedness and response challenges that would likely arise in a very severe pandemic … Although our tabletop exercise included a mock novel coronavirus, the inputs we use for modeling the potential impact of that fictional virus are not similar to nCoV-2019.”

Kennedy characterizes the fourth simulation in Event 201, writing that “the participants primarily focused on planning industry-centric, fear-mongering, police-state strategies for managing an imaginary global coronavirus contagion culminating in mass censorship of social media.”¹⁹

The transcript of the fourth simulation shows that the participants discussed communication strategies using dissemination of information and censorship on social media.^20,21 Communication strategist Hasti Taghi, who works for a major media company and leads strategic initiatives with the World Economic Forum,²² said:

“So, I think a couple of things we have to consider are even before this began, the anti-vaccine movement was very strong and this is something specifically through social media that has spread.

So, as we do the research to come up with the right vaccines to help prevent the continuation of this, how do we get the right information out there? How do we communicate the right information to ensure that the public has trust in these vaccines that we’re creating?”

The question the group undertook wasn’t how to communicate the truth about the vaccine development, manufacture and distribution, but rather how to “communicate the right information to ensure the public has trust in these vaccines that we’re creating?”

The issue of gaining public trust to take a vaccine was significant in this simulation, even though the U.S. population is well indoctrinated in the perceived value of annual flu shots and childhood vaccinations. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a list of 26 different types of vaccines currently in use in the U.S.

In addition to the long list of recommended childhood vaccinations, there are adult vaccines against shingles, tetanus and pneumococcal pneumonia that are routinely given. Why, then, did the global experts in communication and control believe communicating the “right information” would be necessary to “ensure the public trust”?

Group Calls for Social Media Censorship

This was only one of the highly predictive conversations during Event 201 that played out in 2020 as the global COVID-19 pandemic unfolded. George Gao, director-general, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention,²³ predicted:²⁴

“By and long, we have more cases in China and also death cases reported. And also, my staff told me that before there’s misinformation and there’s some belief. People believe, ‘This is a manmade … some pharmaceutical company made the virus,’ so there’s some violations of human … That is because of this misinformation.”

Others agreed with the need for social media censorship as it may pertain to the spread of “disinformation” about the pandemic or vaccines and vaccine injury, without regard to the source. The idea was to remove any information that did not align with the government’s mandates and ideas. Kevin McAleese, who is a communications officer with a Gates-funded agricultural project, said:²⁵

“To me, it is clear countries need to make strong efforts to manage both mis- and disinformation … If the solution means controlling and reducing access to information, I think it’s the right choice.”

During the ensuing conversation, Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security,²⁶ replied, “In this case, do you think governments are at the point where they need to require social media companies to operate in a certain way?”²⁷

At each step of the simulation, the global “experts” agreed that information censorship through media platforms would be necessary to control the flow of the “right information” in order for people to willingly follow the leader.

What is interesting about the transcript from Event 201 is that what was planned and shared was frighteningly close to what has happened since January 2020. It may have been a coincidence to predict one or two major public health decisions, but it appears that the group was either phenomenally prophetic or they shaped the decisions and events of 2020 from behind the scenes.

Framing the Vaccine Message to Trigger Action

From the outside, the driving force behind economically devastating lockdowns, warp speed vaccine development and population control and surveillance strategies has been to “flatten the curve” and lower the death rate of SARS-CoV-2. Yet, as I and others have exposed, when these strategies are analyzed, it’s apparent there is more than what meets the eye.

In July 2020, Yale University²⁸ announced a study of the trigger words and phrases that would have a higher likelihood of promoting an otherwise individualistic society to quietly follow mandates (not laws) to control behavior. The phrases tested were believed to be most successful at conveying feelings about health, helping others and fear.

The hope was to manipulate behavior in such a way that it lowered the governmental risk for riots and dissidence. The study was conducted by Yale University using 4,000 participants who were randomized to receive one of 12 different messages. After the message, they were then evaluated to “compare the reported willingness to get a COVID-19 vaccine at three and six months of it becoming available.”²⁹

The primary outcome of the study was to find the right combination of phrases and messaging that would increase the number of people who got the vaccine. The study began July 3, 2020, and the last participant underwent testing by July 8, 2020.³⁰ To date, the results of the study have not been published.

The president of the U.S. announced in July 2020 that there would be an “overwhelming” vaccine campaign launched by November 2020.³¹ In December 2020, the National Institutes of Health released a COVID-19 vaccination communication recommending behavioral and social science actions that might address vaccine hesitancy and increase the number who take the vaccine, including:³²

• Framing accepting a vaccine as a social norm including “promotional materials that induced peer pressure to vaccinate.”
• Encouraging those who vaccinate to share their positive experience on social media.
• Nudging a person into accepting the vaccine by making it convenient and easy, leveraging electronic portals to send messages and using competition, gamification and incentives to encourage behavioral changes.
• Assessing the values of the target audience and then embedding those values into messages about vaccinations. Examples might include being a protector of the community, building on desires to go back to normal activities or as a way of enacting equality and social justice by protecting vulnerable people.

In other words, many of the messages that you’ve been seeing in the media and your doctor’s office have been designed to trigger emotions that would lead you to take the vaccine. These same pressure tactics are not routinely used in the media for some of the more common adult vaccinations including pneumococcal, tetanus, hepatitis or shingles vaccines.

It’s Time to Speak With One Voice and Fight for Freedom

As I’ve written before, what we lose as a society when we acquiesce to these mandates and controls will be exponentially harder to get back. One of the freedoms we give away is allowing our thoughts and beliefs to be censored on social media without fighting back.

It is essential to safeguard your constitutional rights and civil liberties against unlawful overreach, and yet many appear to be willing to give up easily. Although the government has a duty to protect the health and welfare of its citizens, this must be balanced against the loss of civil rights and liberties.

We’re currently facing a battle of freedom versus tyranny. For example, multiple studies have demonstrated that long-term lockdowns are clearly not in the public’s best interest.^33,34 Instead, it’s tantamount to abuse. And yet many have gone along with these mandates, which were not laws.

It’s vital to understand that the vast majority of information you consume in mainstream media is carefully designed propaganda that has been crafted from nearly two decades of personal data collected from you.

Although Yale University undertook a study with 4,000 participants for a COVID-19 messaging campaign, that data had been gathered and collated through your use of social media.

As I have carefully identified in many previous articles, this plan will result in a progressive loss of your freedom and liberty that eventually results in tyranny and slavery. It is crucial to be vigilant and seek the truth so that you can understand how to distinguish between fact and a fictional narrative that promises you liberation but eventually enslaves you.

My newest book, “The Truth About COVID-19,” will be available April 29, 2021, on Amazon. In it, I investigate the origins of the virus and how the elite has used it to slowly erode your personal liberty and freedom. In addition, I’ll also show you how to protect yourself against the disease and what you can do to fight back against the technocratic overlords.

Sources and References

• ¹ Britannica, Gates Foundation
• ² The Ringer, May 18, 2018
• ^3, 4 Seattle Times, May 12, 2011
• ⁵ Seattle Times, May 12, 2011, Breakup avoided para 2
• ⁶ Spears, October 17, 2017
• ⁷ Devex, June 5, 2020
• ⁸ The Seattle Times, November 23, 2020
• ^9, 10 The Nation, March 30, 2020
• ^{11, 12, 19, 20} The Defender, March 11, 2021
• ¹³ YouTube, April 12, 2020
• ¹⁴ YouTube, March 13, 2020
• ^15, 17, 18 Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security
• ¹⁶ Center for Health Security, Event 201
• ²¹ Event 201, Transcript September 23, 2020, page 9
• ²² Center for Health Security, Hasti Taghi
• ²³ Event 201, George Fu Gao
• ^24, 25, 27 Event 201, Transcript September 23, 2020
• ²⁶ Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Tom Inglesby
• ^28, 29 Clinicaltrials.gov COVID-19 Vaccine Messaging, Part 1, Identifier: NCT04460703 Study description
• ³⁰ Clinicaltrials.gov COVID-19 Vaccine Messaging, Part 1, Identifier: NCT04460703 Study design
• ³¹ Reuters, July 30, 2020
• ³² National Institutes of Health, COVID-19 Vaccination Communication, starting page 16
• ³³ University of Waikato, June 2020
• ³⁴ European Journal of Clinical Investigation, 2021; doi.org/10.111/eci.13484

Buddhism: A Pathway to Peace and Conflict Resolution

Buddhism: A Pathway to Peace and Conflict Resolution




Hoya Paxa
Buddhism: A Pathway to Peace and Conflict Resolution

By: Harshita Nadimpalli

June 24, 2016

On June 22, the Royal Thai Embassy and the Berkley Center invited two Western-born Theravada Buddhist monks, Ajahn Pasanno Bhikkhu and Ajahn Jayanto Bhikkhu, to share their perspectives on how Buddhist principles are relevant for conflict resolution and peace. The event was moderated by Katherine Marshall, senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and executive director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue.


Ajahn Pasanno shared that in a world of human suffering and conflict, Buddhism teaches that individuals must first understand their own personal suffering and understand their own hearts. Only then can an individual understand and empathize with others; otherwise, he said that empathy becomes theoretical. Ajahn Jayanto, too, addressed how Buddhist principles of peace and communal harmony stem from individual responsibility and individual recognition of oneself; lack of individual reflection can make us numb to the suffering and condition of the community around us. He reminded the audience that “we are all brothers and sisters in suffering,” and that although we can get caught up in our ideals, it is important to recognize that we are no different or better than any other individual. We are all caught in the same problem of human suffering in this world, and although we are born into different situations, we share a collective responsibility to address the problem of suffering and conflict in the world. Ajahn Jayanto then explained that the roots of outside conflicts, on a larger scale, stem from the same things that drive our personal conflicts, such as greed, desire, etc. So when we understand ourselves, that increases our capacity to understand conflicts and better equips us to judiciously respond to those.

Ajahn Jayanto used a metaphor of a sinking ship to further illustrate this point. When a ship is sinking, everyone who is onboard must work to save the ship, and each person has a different role; some may have to use buckets to bail out the water, some may have to work on fixing the holes in the ship, etc. Thus, each individual has a unique role in addressing complex problems, whether it’s a sinking ship, or violence and conflict in the world. Understanding that role through self-awareness and self-reflection is what Buddhism encourages each individual to start with in the journey to bring peace to the world.

Another theme that Ajahn Pasanno addressed was that humans have a desire to always know what is right or wrong and to define everything as either black or white. But human relationships and conditions are often gray, and it can be difficult to accept this, and be comfortable without forcibly categorizing everything. At the event, I could sense a deep inner peace that the monks possessed that stood out from the rest of the room; it wasn’t nonchalance, but rather, it was this exact ability to organically embrace the present situation that Ajahn Pasanno had described.

When asked about the role Buddhism plays in the state, Ajahn Pasanno stressed that with his experience in Thailand, Buddhism does not engage with the state or directly become involved in the political process; although sometimes, Buddhist monks are consulted for advice. He expressed that when religion becomes tied to a state or state policy, it loses its autonomy and its ability to have “spiritual gravitas.”

Finally, addressing religious extremists, Ajahn Jayanto said that some people point out all the harm that religiously-affiliated people are doing in the world; but it is equally easy to point out all the harm that non-religious people do as well. So it’s important to focus on the individual, rather than their affiliation, and not attribute actions of an individual to an entire group of people made up of countless more distinct individuals who are not doing harm.

What resonated most with me was when Ajahn Pasanno said, “The Buddha didn’t actually teach Buddhism...he taught the way of human understanding.” This event reminded me of the importance and role of the individual in creating peace, because often, the focus is on what governments and institutions can do as whole organizations to create change. But each organization is made up of individuals and is only as strong as the individuals it is composed of, and thus, we cannot ignore individual responsibility. Individual respect and empathy transcend the boundaries of religion as we strive towards cultivating a more peaceable world.

원효의 화쟁사상

원효의 화쟁사상

Ⅰ.序論

원효 사는 의상과 함께 신라의 이 거승으로 한 정신 지도자이며 민족 역사상에서 보기 드문

인이며 성자이다.

그 다면 먼 그의 사상을 알기 에 그의 생애부터 간단히 살펴볼 필요가 있겠다.

원효는 신라 진평왕 39년에 태어났으며 속성은 설씨이고, 이름은 서당이다. 태어나면서부터 매우 특하 으며 10 에 출가하 다. 출가 후 그는 의상과 같이 당으로 유학을 떠난다. 가는 도 에 ‘해골물’을 마시고 모든 것은 마음뿐이라는 진리를 깨치고 당 유학 길을 포기하고 다시 신라로 돌아와 생교화에 힘쓴다. 원효는 운융무애한 일심을 몸소 깨닫고 스스로 무애인이라 칭하고, 마음에서만 아니라 행동에서도 무애로 움을 얻으려 했다. 그래서, 그는 그때부터 속인의 모습으로 술집이나 창가에 들어가 놀기도 하고, 도살장에 도 들어가며 거기에서 뛰고 춤추며 ‘무애가’를 부르는가 하면, 때로는 한 한 곳에서 좌선을 하는 등 도무지 일정한 형식이나 규율에 매임이 없었다. 원효의 이러한 행동을 당시의 사람들, 더구나 일반 승려들조차 이 해하지 못하 으며, 당시 임 님께서 인왕백고좌회를 열고 국의 석학고승들을 모집할 때도 원효의 사람됨 을 이해 못하는 승려들의 반 로 그의 높은 학덕에도 불구하고 제외되었다. 훗날 원효는 이를 빗 시를 읊기도 했다. 1)

원효는 무애가를 부르고 다니다 요석공주와의 사이에 설총을 낳는다. 이후 자각 성지의 높은 종교 각 체험과 무애도의 실 을 성취한 후, 그의 장년 시 를 불교의 화를 해 국 각지를 순회하고, 불교의 진리를 들이 쉽게 알아들을 수 있는 가요나 춤에 담아 하는 등 헌신하 다.

이러한 그의 노력으로 불교의 진리가 그들의 생활 속 깊이 고들 수 있었으며, 귀족, 천민의 구별을 월 한 생활불교로 발 할 수 있었다. 원효의 함은 그의 여러 사상에서 엿볼 수 있는데 본 에서는 그 화쟁사상에 해 알아보려 한다.

Ⅱ.本論

1. 화쟁사상

이는 모든 논쟁을 조화시키려는 불교사상으로 신라시 원 과 자장에서 비롯되어 원효에 의해 집 성 되었으며 근본원리는 극단을 버리고 和와 諍의 양면성을 인정하는 데서 출발하고 있다. 이러한 원효의 화쟁사상을 엿볼 수 있게 하는 것으로 먼 그의 여러 서를 들 수 있다. 먼 『十門和諍論』을 들 수 있는데, 여기서 그는 화쟁의 내용을 10문으로 분류한다.2) 『涅槃宗要』에



1) 옛날 백개의 석가래를 구할 때에는/ 참여할 수 없었는데,/ 오늘 하나의 들보를 가로지르는 데는 / 오직 나 홀로 구나./ 「 강삼 매경」을 강설하는 법당에서 구름처럼 몰려든 청 을 보며 지은 시다. 교재 『한국철학사(道家․佛家哲學), 60p

2) 이 책의 문이 다 하지 않아 10문제 해서는 후 내용과 다른 술들을 통해 추정할 뿐인데, 이는 三乘一乘․空有異執․人法異執․三性異義․五性成佛․二障異義․涅槃異義․佛身異義․佛性異義․眞俗異執의 화쟁문 등으로 간주된다. 원효는 三乘과 一乘, 空과 有, 眞과 俗 등의 異執과 異諍을 화해시키고 회통시키고 있는 것이다. 이 十門의 십이라는 수는 화엄에서의 원만수이니 無盡 의 의미이다.

서 『涅槃經』의 핵심 내용인 열반을 드러내는 방편 한 화쟁을 통해서임을 엿볼 수 있다.[1]) 이 외에도 그 여러 서에서 그의 화쟁사상을 엿볼 수 있다.

화쟁 사상이란 “뭇경 의 부분 인 면을 통합하여 온갖 물 기를 한 맛의 진리바다로 돌아가게 하고, 불교의 지극히 공변된 뜻을 열어 모든 사람들의 서로 다른 쟁론들을 화회(和會)시킨다."[2]) 즉 모든 것이 물에 기름처럼 분리되고 서로 배척하는 것이 아니라 서로 섞이고 녹아 회통하는 것, 한 마디로 마음을 히 하 여 남을 껴안아 서로 받아들여 화합하는 것이다.

원효의 화쟁 사상을 이해하려면 시 상황의 이해가 필요하다. 원래 부처님께서 말 하신 참뜻은 하나이 건만 당시의 시 상황은 사람에 따라 종 에 따라 무도 다양하게 해석하여 서로 자기의 이론만 옳다고 다투는 상황이었다. 이에 원효는 ‘하나의 마음’으로 돌아가 모든 생명에게 이로움을 주는 삶의 요성을 강 조하며 립하는 여러 종 를 통합하고자 했으며, 이에 따라 원효는 화쟁의 논리로 각 종 의 서로 다른 이 론을 인정하면서도 이를 보다 높은 차원에서 통합하고자 했으니 이것이 화쟁 사상이다.

2. 화쟁의 근거 : 一心

에서 살펴본 원효의 화쟁사상의 근거는 바로 하나의 마음, 즉 일심이다. 원효는 일심의 근원으로 돌아 갈 것을 히 강조하고 있다. 『 승기신론』은 一心二門으로 되어있다. 이문(二門)이란 진여문(眞如門)과 생멸문(生滅門을) 말한다. 그런데, 원효는 더럽고 깨끗한 모든 법은 그 본성이 둘이 아니고 진(眞)망(妄)두 (二)문(門)이 다르지 아니하므로 일(一)이라하고, 그 성품은 스스로 신기하게 이해하므로 심(心)이라 하며, 진리는 말을 여의고 사려가 끊어졌으므로 어떻게 지목하여 부를 것인가를 몰라 부르기 쉽게 일심이라 하 다는 것이다.[3][4]) 일심은 본래 정멸이지만 생은 무명에 따라 분별망상을 일으켜 이 번뇌의 물결에 따라 육 도에 윤회를 거듭한다는 것이다.

일심은 우리들 앞앞이 갖추고 있는 본래의 마음이며 이 마음이 바로 깨친 바탕이기도 하다. 하나인 마음 은 더러움과 깨끗함이 둘이 아니고 참과 거짓 한 서로 다르지 않기 때문에 하나라고 한다.6) 일심은 주 (나)과 객 ( 상 세계)의 구별을 떠난 무분별의 마음을 말한다. 『화엄경』에 ‘삼계유심 만법 유식’ 이라는 말이 있다. 삼계(색계, 욕계, 무색계)는 본래 모든 분별을 넘는 진여일심의 경계이지만 우리들 속의 분별심 때문에 우리 앞에 수만가지 상들이 나타난다고 하는 것이다. 원효가 해골박에 썩은 물을 마 시고 바로 화엄경의 내용, 모든 것은 내 마음속에 있는 것을 깨달은 것이다. 즉 깨끗한 것과 더러운 것, 좋 은 것과 나쁜 것을 분별함으로 쾌, 불쾌의 감정에 흔들리고 괴로워 하는 우리의 마음은 본래 일체 분별에서 자유한 일미평등의 평화스러운 마음, 곧 진여일심이며 원효는 이를 직 체험하 던 것이다. 원효는 이러한 마음의 근원, 일심이 구에게나 깃들여 있으며 이러한 마음을 회복한다면 구나 극락에 갈수 있다고 했다. 회복의 수단으로 육바라 의 실천을 강조한다.

이상의 내용을 간추려 보면 원효의 화쟁사상을 크게 세가지 에서 요약할 수 있다.

첫째 형이상학 에서 세상 모든 것은 일심에서 비롯되므로 모든 립 인 이론들은 결국 평등하다는 것이다.

둘째 언어철학 입장에서 화쟁은 언어로 표 된 이론을 상으로 하므로 진리를 달, 는 왜곡하기도 하는 언어 자체의 성격에 해 정확하게 악하고 언어에 집착하지 않으면 이견의 립에서 벗어날 수 있다는 것이다.

셋째 윤리 태도로서 자기의 견해만 맞다고 하는 아집․집착을 버릴 때 쟁론이 해소된다는 것이다.

Ⅲ. 結論 

이상과 같이 원효의 화쟁사상을 살펴보았다. 원효의 사상을 아무리 머리로 이해하려해도 실로 복잡하고 어렵다는 것을 알았다. 알 듯 하다가도 처음 보는 단어처럼 생소하고 멀어져 가는 느낌을 받기도 했다. 짧 게 나마 결론을 지어보면 다음과 같다.

그의 사상은 여러 술 등에서 볼 수 있듯이 그 어느 한가지를 가지고서 그의 사상을 변시키기 쉽지 않 으나, 그 사상을 피력하는 기본 인 태도는 화쟁의 입장이라 할 수 있겠다. 이러한 원효의 화쟁사상은 일심 에 근거를 두고 있으며 통일신라 후의 여러 종 들의 난립과 갈등을 화해시키고, 무엇보다 민 의 고통을 해결해 주려 노력했다. 이는 오늘날 우리가 직면하고 있는 수많은 갈등과 모순을 풀어나가는 방안을 모색하 는데 시사해 주는 바가 크다고 볼 수 있겠다.

를 사는 우리는 늘 상 사회생활이나 단체생활에서 자기와 동조자의 견해는 옳고, 남의 견해는 그르다 고 업신여기고 때론 얕잡아 보기도 한다. 원효는 이러한 소견이 좁은 사람을 두고 『십문화쟁론』에서 갈 구멍으로 하늘을 보는 것에 비유했다. 자기만 옳고 남은 그르다고 하여 남의 법은 받아들이지 않으면 이런 사람들을 크게 어리석은 사람이라고 하 다. 우리는 주 어디서든 립과 반목을 경험하고 살아가고 있다. 종교간의 갈등, 국가간의 립, 개인 이기주의, 집단 이기주의, 지역이기주의, 노사분규 등등 만 뜨면 팽팽 한 립을 보며 산다.

이러한 실 속에서 원효의 화쟁사상은 큰 가르침을 다. 원효의 말 처럼 마음의 근원을 회복하여 마 음을 깊이 통찰하고 일체의 차별상을 없애고 만물이 같이 평등하다는 것을 깨쳐 만물을 차별없이 사랑하 는 자 비의 마음을 얻어 구나 어디에도 걸림이 없는 무애의 삶을 살아갈 수 있다면 다툼도 화도 쟁 도 없는 구나 동경하고 있는 고요하고 평화로운 삶을 살수 있지 않을 까 그려본다.

※ 참고문헌

1. 황 선 편 , 『원효의 생애와 사상』, 국학자료원, 1996.

2. 정용선, 『한국의 사상』, 한샘출 사, 1994.

3. 한국동서철학연구회, 『東西哲學通論』, 문경출 사, 1993.

4. 교재, 『한국철학사』

5. http://dreamwiz.com

6. http://Tms.inchon-mah.ed.inchon.kr

7. http://members.tripod.co.kr

8. http://myhome.netsgo.com/buddihismsc

9. http://von.ulsan.ac.kr

10. http://zen.buddhism.org/zen/wohyo.html




[1] ) 이경은 불법의 大海이고, 方等의 秘藏이니, 그 교됨은 측량하기 어렵다. 진실로 넓어서 끝이 없고 깊고 깊어서 바닥이 없다. 바 닥이 없으므로 다하지 못함이 없고 끝이 없으므로 다 포섭하지 못함이 없다. 여러 경 의 부분을 통섭하고 만류의 一味에 돌아가 佛意의 至公을 열고 百家의 異諍을 화해시켜, 드디어 시끄러운 四生으로 하여 無二의 實性에 돌아가게 하고 꿈꾸는 긴 잠을 大覺의 극과에 도달하게 한다.


[2] ) http://www.dharnet.net, 2 p.


[3] ) 황 선 편 , 『원효의 생애와 사상』, 국학자료원, 1996, 484 p.


[4] ) 교재, 『한국철학사』, 66 p .