Buddhism and Violence: Definition and Justification of Violence in Japanese Zen Buddhism

Questions at the intersection of religion and violence always attract great interest among researchers, and in that sense Zen Buddhism is not an exception. Despite the popular view of Buddhism as exclusively pacifist religion, both history and philosophy of Buddhism are replete with examples of not only engagement in the acts of violence, but also attempts to justify it with respect to certain circumstances. The present study tackles the ethical issues of Mahayana in general, and Zen in particular, by identifying key philosophical and ethical beliefs that allow to specify the composition of violence and its justificatory framework. To this end, the fundamental philosophical dogmas of Mahayana, specifically Madhyamaka, Yogacara and Huayen, were under consideration, in addition to Chinese religion of Daoism, all which, in turn, form the basis for formation of ontological and epistemological views of Zen. Taking the epistemological picture into account, it is notable that the central idea of ethical Zen theory is the category of enlightenment, which, according to Hakuin and Dogen, is a transformative epxerience that radically changes the point of view of the moral agent. In spite of this, most examples of the vow violation and the use of violence, in ordinary sense of the word, by enlightened Bodhisattvas, whose main goal is to save all sentient beings, suggest that the actor knows not only what methods will lead to the desired outcome, but also the conviction in the efficacy of these methods, which fall under the general scope of Upaya-Kausalya (J. 善巧 方便, "Skill in means"). To resolve this issue, we turned to Hakuin and Dogen to determine whether a certain kind of omniscience, and thus moral infallibility, of an enlightened agent is characteristic of Bodhisattva. Both Hakuin and Dogen are skeptical about the idea of moral impeccability of Bodhisattva, while also maintaining that Bodhisattva him/herself has only what we provisionally called cognitive purity - the absence of cognitive, karmically induced biases in the process of perceiving the world around us and interacting with other people. As Dogen points out, despite the possibility of using violence "for the sake of salvation", it can never come from unenlightened intent, and ultimately, violence is an "unskillful" method that generates Karma. In order to clarify the scope of Skill, we introduced two possible types of knowledge in Zen. The first one, called Prajna, or wisdom, denotes the awareness of Nirvana that is difficult to express in verbal form and incommunicable directly, which also explains the multiplicity of approaches in the process of teaching. On the other hand, the second kind of knowledge, tentatively called Kausalya, or Skill, includes two subtypes under the general definition of goal-oriented and performative knowledge. The first type - cognitive purity - is expressed in the practical rectification of cognitive functions in accordance with empirical experience of Nirvana in order to correctly understand the surrounding reality. The second type has a theoretical orientation, and includes knowledge in a conventional sense, that can be exemplified with knowledge of sutras, social and political theories, such as Confucianism, and the sciences. Ultimately, the first represents the microlevel and the second the macrolevel of resolving the soteriological problem of Buddhism. The key outcome of this work is the hypothetical assumption that phenomena at the junction of Japanese Zen and violence, such as Bushido and Showa era militarism, are the result of lack of Kaushalya, which, in its essence, makes it possible to qualitatively judge the legitimacy of different methods on the path towards the soteriological goal of Buddhism to save all sentient beings. This present study might be of particular interest to researcher of Buddhist ethics, as well as historians with focus on Zen Buddhism.