When looking at what does and does not constitute "religious violence" or a "religion of peace," I'm reminded of King Menander's chariot. If you take the chariot apart piece by piece, at what point does it stop being a chariot and become a pile of wood? Reflecting on this, we see that the thing we call a chariot is empty of intrinsic chariot nature. Put another way, the chariot does not become a pile of wood; both "chariot" and "pile of wood" are objects we're creating in our heads.
Here in Relative World, sometimes we attach labels to things without clearly examining what we're labeling. Indeed, most of the time labels are a substitute for insight. Being able to label a phenomenon gives us a sense of knowing something that we really don't know at all. Like the chariot/pile of wood, what we think we "know" often is just a projection.
So when Stephen Prothero, professor of religion and author, says Buddhism is not a "religion of peace," I don't necessarily disagree. But I do wonder, how does one determine such a thing? What constitutes a "religion of peace"?
If by "religion of peace" you mean one that is adamantly pacifistic, by many measures Buddhism falls short. Buddhists, including monks, have fought in wars going back many centuries. On the other hand, the Buddha's teaching is uncompromising about war. Thanissaro Bhikkhu said,
"The Buddha never taught a theory of just war; no decision to wage war can legitimately be traced to his teachings; no war veteran has ever had to agonize over memories of the people he killed because the Buddha said that war was okay."
However, no compounded thing is ever perfect. For example, we know that in the 7th century Buddhist monks of the famous Shaolin temple fought in a war that helped establish the Tang Dynasty. In the 16th century the monks helped defend the Chinese coast from Japanese pirates. In the 17th century, soldiers fighting on behalf of the 5th Dalai Lama routed an encampment of Karma Kagyu Buddhist monks, killing many and sending the 10th Karmapa into exile. I could go on.
So, arguably, if by "Buddhism" you mean the teachings of the historical Buddha, one could say it is a religion of peace. If you are speaking of Buddhist institutions, especially in cultural and historical contexts, then it isn't. But then, by "religion of peace" you might be talking about one that promotes inner peace. Exactly what constitutes "Buddhism" is another debatable point.
Likewise, events that get labelled "religious violence" fall on a long continuum. At one end, you might find the sacred teachings of a religion directly calling for violence. At the other end would be an individual who self-identifies as a devout something-or-other who commits an act of violence for reasons that have nothing to do with religion. Falling somewhere between those two extremes are crusades and inquisitions and charismatic cult leaders. There are also psychotics and psychopaths. There are well-meaning people who persuade themselves they have to do something awful for a greater good. There are politicians, hustlers and fanatics of various stripes who use religion to achieve ends that are not religious at all.
My point is that lumping all these things together in the same box labeled "religious violence" doesn't help us understand any of it. And declaring whether some tradition is or is not a "religion of peace" is mostly meaningless.
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