Buddhist Warfare

✍ Scribed by Michael Jerryson; Mark Juergensmeyer

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Year: 2008;2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 543 KB
• Edition: Illustrated
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

Though traditionally regarded as a peaceful religion, Buddhism has a dark side. On multiple occasions over the past, fifteen centuries, Buddhist leaders have sanctioned violence, and even war. The eight chapters in this book focus, on a variety of Buddhist traditions, from antiquity to the present, and show that Buddhist organizations have used religious images and rhetoric to support military conquest throughout history.

Buddhist soldiers in sixth-century China were given the illustrious status of Bodhisattva after killing their adversaries. In seventeenth-century Tibet, the Fifth Dalai Lama endorsed a Mongol ruler's killing of his rivals. And in modern-day Thailand, Buddhist soldiers carry out their duties undercover, as fully ordained monks armed with guns.

Buddhist Warfare demonstrates that the discourse oh religion and violence, usually applied to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, can no longer exclude Buddhist traditions. The book examines Buddhist military action in Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand and shows that even the most unlikely and allegedly pacifist religious traditions are susceptible to the violent tendencies of man.