A rare thing has happened, which is that Michael Jerryson wrote something I agree with. In "Navy Yard Shooting: Why It's Not a Religion Story," he points out that in other recent mass shootings in which the perpetrator was Christian, the shooter's religion wasn't played up as part of the story. In most of these recent acts of mass violence, what the shooters had in common was a history of mental instability, possibly psychosis. Slapping a "religious violence" label on these shootings is inaccurate and misleading, Jerryson says, whether the shooter is Christian or Buddhist. I agree.
As I've written over the past couple of posts, all kinds of bad actions are labeled "religious violence" that, arguably, are not. Or only partly.
What is religious violence? If you can find sacred scripture that advocates or condones violence (and I sincerely don't believe this applies to Buddhism), yes, that would be religious violence. If religious institutions advocate or take part in violence, even in violation of their tradition's teaching, yes, that would be religious violence. You can find examples of such violence in Buddhist history.
Let's say an authentically ordained clergyperson, a member in good standing of some religious institution, advocates or commits violence on behalf of his religion. Let's assume he is not psychotic and believes he is doing the right thing, even if it violates his religion's teachings, and even if he's acting on his own without support from his superiors. This may be what's going on with a few Buddhist monks in Burma, calling for violence against Muslims. I won't argue with calling this "Buddhist violence," especially if other Buddhist authorities in Burma don't take a firm stand against it. However ...
Let's try another scenario. What if, say, someone with no Zen training and no Zen credentials suddenly decided to promote himself as a "Zen master" (this has happened). He writes some books that claim to be about Buddhism but are really a mashup of Vedanta, New Age, and some stuff he thought up in the shower. He has no association with any Buddhist lineage or institution, but he's got a good sales pitch, and he gains a devoted following of people who assume he is what he says he is (again, this has happened).
Now, let's say our hypothetical phony Zen master murders someone. Is that "Buddhist violence"? I can just about guarantee that someone would call it that. But if he's entirely untethered from any Buddhist tradition, lineage, or institution, and his teachings only look sorta kinda Buddhist from a distance, but aren't really Buddhist, then I say it isn't.
By the same token, as I wrote in an old post about an alleged act of Buddhist violence --
These were some political assassinations carried out in Japan in the 1930s by a group headed by a NisshÅ Inoue. Inoue called himself a priest of the Nichiren school, but he was never ordained, and as far as I know no school of Nichiren Buddhism in Japan claimed him as its own. He was a fake, in other words. So why is what he did "Buddhist terrorism" and not "some charismatic psychopath pretending to be a priest terrorism"?
Michael Jerryson elsewhere has listed the 1995 sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subways as "Buddhist violence" because they were carried out by an allegedly Buddhist organization, Aum Shinrikyo. But according to what information I could glean from the web, Aum Shinrikyo was focused largely on the prophesy of Armageddon taken from the Christian Book of Revelations. It was actually a new religion that blended some of the more feverish elements of Christianity with current popular culture, yoga, and some Buddhist and Shinto iconography. The founder, Shoko Asahara, was not ordained and had no affiliation with any established Buddhist institution in Japan.
But apparently Asahara mentioned the Lotus Sutra in an interview, which to Jerryson qualifies the sarin gas attack as official "Buddhist violence," even thought there is nothing in the Lotus Sutra that would even remotely justify the sarin gas attack.
Bad things do happen when charismatic psychopaths set themselves up as religious leaders. For example, in 1978, an ordained Christian minister (in both Assemblies of God and Disciples of Christ, I believe)Â named Jim Jones had five visitors to his Guyana compound murdered, and then ordered his own followers, more than 900 people, to commit suicide.
Was that "Christian violence"? Or was it a kind of group psychological pathology that expresses itself as religion, but that can't really be blamed on Christianity?
Most Christians probably would argue the latter is closer to the truth. By most accounts, in the final years of his "ministry" Jones's preachings had little to do with the teachings of Jesus. Certainly those final violent actions were about Jones's authority as a cult leader. He was being challenged, and it appears that rather than risk loss of his status he chose to die -- and to take his followers with him.
By the same token, both Stephen Prothero and Michael Jerryson have, at one time or another, pointed to a 6th century Chinese monk named Faqing as a perpetrator of Buddhist violence. Faqing proclaimed himself to be Maitreya , raised an army, and attacked monasteries that didn't recognize him as the future Buddha. He had his followers take narcotics and told them that if they killed ten enemies they would become bodhisattvas. I say the story of Faqing has "charismatic psychopath" written all over it. He's a Chinese equivalent of Jim Jones, and like Jones, had gone so far off the reservation that nothing he did could justifiably to attributed to his earlier religious affiliation.
So now that Michael Jerryson has said something sensible, maybe he will re-think his earlier judgments on what constitutes "Buddhist violence" and what doesn't.
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