Buddhism is in many ways an exception among religions…but it’s not always as much of an exception as it could should would be. The BBC considers this unsurprising fact.
The principle of non-violence is central to Buddhist teachings, but in Sri Lanka some Buddhist monks are being accused of stirring up hostility towards other faiths and ethnic minorities. Their hard line is causing increasing concern.
Are they simply being accused of doing that, or are they in fact doing it? The second sentence seems to say they are.
[U]pstairs, a burly monk in a bright orange robe holds forth – for this is one of the main offices of a hard-line Buddhist organisation, the Bodu Bala Sena or Buddhist Power Force (BBS).
The peaceful precepts for which Buddhism is widely known barely figure in his words. Instead, the monk, Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero, talks of his Buddhism in terms of race. Most Buddhists here are ethnically Sinhalese, and Sinhalese make up three-quarters of the island’s population.
“This country belongs to the Sinhalese, and it is the Sinhalese who built up its civilisation, culture and settlements. The white people created all the problems,” says Gnanasara Thero angrily.
He says the country was destroyed by the British colonialists, and its current problems are also the work of what he calls “outsiders”. By that he means Tamils and Muslims.
Aka foreigners aka immigrants aka others aka mongrel races aka infidels aka vermin…
This firebrand strain of Buddhism is not new to Sri Lanka. A key Buddhist revivalist figure of the early 20th Century, Anagarika Dharmapala, was less than complimentary about non-Sinhalese people. He held that the “Aryan Sinhalese” had made the island into Paradise which was then destroyed by Christianity and polytheism. He targeted Muslims saying they had “by Shylockian methods” thrived at the expense of the “sons of the soil”.
And later, in 1959 Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike was assassinated by a Buddhist monk – the circumstances were murky but one contentious issue was the government’s failure to do enough to ensure the rights of the Sinhala people.
Now they’re turning their attention from Tamils to Muslims.
They are not the only Sinhalese who express discomfort at a visible rise in Muslim social conservatism in Sri Lanka. More women are covering up than before and in parts of the country Saudi-influenced Wahabi Muslims are jostling with more liberal ones.
Yet there is no evidence of violent extremism among Sri Lankan Muslims. Rather, they have been at the receiving end of attacks from other parts of society.
In the small town of Aluthgama last June, three people died in clashes that started when the BBS and other Buddhist monks led an anti-Muslim rally in a Muslim area. At the time, I met Muslim families whose homes and shops had been burnt and utterly destroyed, and who were cowering in schools as temporary refugees.
Complicated, isn’t it. “Muslim social conservatism” is a bad thing, cf the part about more women “covering up”; at the same time you don’t want to resist Muslim social conservatism in such a way that Muslims become targets.
Moderate Buddhists have also been targeted by hard-line ones.
That’s familiar too. Theocrats always do target secular believers.
Another country where fierce Buddhism has recently made headlines is Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. A Buddhist faction there, the 969 movement, is known for strident anti-Muslim campaigns that have triggered widespread violence.
Its leader, Shin Wirathu, was recently invited to Sri Lanka by the BBS. Both organisations say that even if Buddhism predominates in their own countries, overall it is under threat. “We want to protect it, therefore we signed a memorandum of understanding on forming alliances in the Asian region,” says Withanage.
Fighting Buddhism; just what Asia needs.
It’s a very human thing to embrace a group identity and then to ignore the parts of that identity that you don’t agree with. We see this kind of hypocrisy in Christians all of the time. “Love thy Neighbor” becomes “Love thy Neighbor — unless s/he is poor, brown or gay.” The group identity becomes more important than the tenets behind it.
Isn’t this Christopher Hitchens writ large? Religion poisons everything to the extent that already toxic ideas like racism gain greater impetus and “justification”.
Well, if you mean I wouldn’t have noticed this if Hitchens hadn’t pointed it out, then no. If you mean didn’t Hitchens also talk about this, then yes. If you mean Hitchens talked specifically about Buddhism and Sri Lanka, then yes.
To put it another way…the power of religion to sanctify and thus shield from ordinary moral questioning and doubt and indeed revulsion horrific actions is something I thought about a lot while working on Does God Hate Women? Especially so while writing the final chapter.
@stevebown
The problem I have with HItchens is that this isn’t unique to religion. People will identify with a “tribe” and then use that tribe to justify whatever they want, even if it is counter to what the tribe originally stood for. Religion is an obvious example, but certainly not unique. Look at the American “patriots” who advocate very un-democratic things.
But religion has a whole extra level of moral authority that secular group loyalties don’t. I think that does make a difference.
Bogus moral authority, I should add. But the point is that the people who take it seriously don’t see it as bogus at all.
As someone who is partial to some aspects of Buddhist Philosophy, I found this book to be eye-opening: Buddhist Warfare by Michael Jerryson (Editor) & Mark Juergensmeyer (Editor). “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.”
ArtK, look at how little of the American “patriot” movement and rhetoric is not intimately bound up with conservative Christianity. The amount that isn’t is infinitesimally small.
Despite the atrocities committed by its followers, Buddhism seems far more rational than the so-called “Abrahamic” theistic religions, originally it appears to be more philosophy or applied psychology than a religion.
@6 Ophelia
“But religion has a whole extra level of moral authority that secular group loyalties don’t.”
Nazi and Communist ideologues successfully and lethally, inculcated the in/out group mentality in their followers, so I’m not convinced that religion is unusual in that respect. Also, there’s both archeological and historical evidence that, in societies without organised religion, during times of food shortage, humans in a particular clan, have sometimes, re-defined a neighbouring tribe as not real humans (like them) but prey animals and eaten them all.
Most westerners are familiar with Mahayana Buddhism, which dominates eastern Asia, and Vajrayana Buddhism, a related school found in the Himalayas. Those schools have a community aspect to salvation: when you do evil, you are holding back the whole community’s progress towards enlightenment, not just your own. As a result, they do tend to be more pacifist. Theravada Buddhism, which dominates south and southeast Asia, has no community element, so there are fewer religious strictures against the use of violence.
“This country belongs to the Sinhalese, and it is the Sinhalese who built up its civilisation, culture and settlements. The white people created all the problems,” says Gnanasara Thero angrily.
He has a partial point: most of the Tamils now in friction with the Sinhalese descend from mainlanders brought over from India by British tea plantation owners who wanted workers with no place to run away to.
Many modern third-world politicians rail against colonialism as a distraction from their own malfeasance, but it (colonialism) did produce a lasting and toxic legacy around the globe.
This evening I went to a slide show about Sri Lanka, put on by a pair who organize yoga-meditation-eco-travel in Sri Lanka. The trips stay well away from the Tamil area, but they assured us that the civil war is over since 2006 and there is no more strife there. The slide show had really pretty images of birds and elephants, though.
It has been a violent and on-going business for a long time. A former student of mine associated herself w/the Tamil Tigers and moved to Sri Lanka to open literacy programs and schools for war orphans. And she adopted the notion that “Buddhist monks are violent killers.” She didn’t get it that politics and religions can make very cozy bedfellows.
@12 Pierce Butler,
“He has a partial point: most of the Tamils now in friction with the Sinhalese descend from mainlanders brought over from India by British tea plantation owners ”
So, according to Gnanasara Thero, the genocidal civil war and subsequent ethnic/religious violence are entirely the fault of a previous generation of White colonialists, and the current generation of Sinhalese and Tamils is entirely blameless.
Buddhism is in many ways an exception among religions…
In what ways is it an exception?
– Teaches supernatural beliefs that erode the individual’s self-worth compared to an ideal which happens to be embodied by a church heirarchy (check)
– Core teachings include unverifiable supernatural statements including claims of knowledge of the supernatural that could not actually be gained by humans (check)
– Consists of a set of “philosophies” from an authority figure that are not actually philosophical arguments but rather statements from authority? (check)
– Founded by a semi-divine individual (check)
– Teachings of that individual carried by word of mouth for hundreds of years before being written down (check)
– Teachings cross-pollinated with other religions (check)
– Oral tradition codified then edited hundreds of years after the death of the founder (check)
– Schisms, excommunications, and dogmatic disputes (check)
– Big hats (check)
– Idols (check)
– Prayer (check)
– Collection plate (check)
@15 Marcus Ranum,
“In what ways is it an exception?”
(1) It’s an exception in one essential way, Buddhism is not theistic.
(2) “Teaches supernatural beliefs that erode the individual’s self-worth compared to an ideal which happens to be embodied by a church heirarchy (check)”
Uncheck, compared with the so-called “Abrahamic” religions, Buddhism as originally practised, placed an individual’s ‘salvation’ entirely in his or her own hands, there’s no sky father to pray to, no divine intervention, no deity to grovel before. God or the gods appear to be irrelevant.
(3 “Consists of a set of “philosophies” from an authority figure that are not actually philosophical arguments but rather statements from authority? (check)”
Uncheck. You could also be describing Confucianism, Communism or neoliberal ideology. Apart from “prayer’, the rest of the list down to “Collection plate” doesn’t designate practices that are exclusively religious, so they’re not a useful test. For example, all political philosophies are syncretic to some degree and I’d categorise flags and images of Marx and Lenin as idols.
[meta]
rjw1,
1) Functionally indistinguishable from pantheism as actually generally practiced, but it certainly can be atheistic.
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism#Life_and_the_world
3) Ahem. That Marcus could also be describing other things doesn’t negate (indeed, endorses) the claim.
(Tsk for (3))
Buddhism is no more monolithic and unanimous than the ‘Native American Spirituality’ so beloved of ignorant yuppies.
Even if Sri Lankan muslims aren’t a serious threat to their neighbors. The influx of Saudi money and Wahhabi teaching will guarantee that the become one.
Rjw@#16
(1) It’s an exception in one essential way, Buddhism is not theistic.
Unless you define “theistic” as specifically requiring a white guy with a white beard in a big chair, it certainly is. It’s slightly different from the stereotypical theistic religions but hardly such as matters. Instead of a god that always existed and zapped the whatever into being you’ve got darma, which always existed and instead of a god that judges souls and cares about when they masturbate you’ve got karma and instead of an afterlife you’ve got rebirth… But there’s no jackal-headed god that weighs your soul, or guy with a beard, or one-eyed guy with a beard – there’s a universal wossname that doesn’t weigh your soul but recycles it based on what you did … those are differences in detail not in substance. Sure, it’s “not theistic” if you want to argue about the size of god’s beard of whether it calls itself by one name or another but, whatever. Amuse yourself.
Buddhism, like other religions, bootstraps existence on a power that judges and has always existed and creates and is conveniently incomprehensible and unmeasurable. If you want to say that’s not “god” it’s mighty god-shaped and it has exactly a god-shaped hole in its “philosophy” were other religions put a god to fill that role. If you’re going to forcibly be so naive as to not see the tremendous resemblances between buddha and jesus and odin and other redemptive cult wisdom-bringers then you can choose to believe he wasn’t a god-man who sprung from a slit in his mother’s side and started spouting platitudes. After all, Kim Jong Il wasn’t a god either and his miraculous advent was similar. 😉
That’s why I argue buddhism isn’t even a philosophy. It doesn’t actually argue for a constructed world-view, it asserts a bunch of premises as if they were known facts … Because uh: buddha was wise and therefore the stuff he said was correct and true. Yeah, Aristotle did that, too. But Aristotle, at least, tried to make arguments that hung together. Plato tried. Hume destroyed. Buddha bloviated.
Uncheck, compared with the so-called “Abrahamic” religions, Buddhism as originally practised, placed an individual’s ‘salvation’ entirely in his or her own hands
You’re arguing my point, if you want to use the word “salvation” but, anyway… I see what you tried to do there with the “as originally practiced.” Dude you have no idea how buddhism was originally practiced any more than jesus’ followers 200 years later know what he said — what we know of buddha is collected fables mounded together and edited down 200+ years after his supposed life. Just like jesus and mohammed, coincidentally. So you can’t dismiss buddhism’s religion-like nature by presupposing some kind of imaginary rationalist philosophy that existed before you’d have any possibility of knowing about it.
That’s irrelevant, though. What I actually meant by my point is that buddhism like confucianism (yes) and most other religions, teaches that man is flawed and miserable and that submission to authority handed down from the enlightened is the path to happiness and/or eternal life / eternal happiness. Nietzsche accurately nailed it as slave morality: it’s the usual sit down, shut up, do what the guy with the big hat says (oh, and make sure you donate regularly) respect the authority of the guys with sharp sticks and don’t forget to bow and scrape appropriately. And, if you want to say that buddhism isn’t authoritarian, you’re welcome to be that naive if you want to but you risk achieving an implosion density of obtuseness to get there.
You could also be describing Confucianism, Communism or neoliberal ideology.
Confucianism is a fantastic example of a slave morality designed to encourage the masses to sit down, shut up, and accept the rulers that fate has placed over them. Because, reasons. So is communism.
You are right that buddhism sucks as much as confucianism or communism or whatever; that was kind of my point. So, we agree.
And if you want to say buddhism isn’t theistic because there’s no big white beard, then we can agree on that, too.
One thing that I found exceptional about Buddhism is that faith is not expected or required. There are lots of sillinesses in it and some ridiculous interpretations of various texts. And some mean people.
But no faith was necessary.
And meditation is very relaxing.
Indigenous Asian Buddhisms =/= exported/tourist Buddhism.
From what I’ve heard, many peasants and un(der)educated proles, and more than a few monks, take it for a set of magic rituals for specific outcomes; the social hierarchy & monetary angles deriving from that get duly exercised.
rjw1 @ # 14: … according to Gnanasara Thero, the genocidal civil war and subsequent ethnic/religious violence are entirely the fault of a previous generation of White colonialists, and the current generation of Sinhalese and Tamils is entirely blameless.
Enlightened beings do not project their preconceptions and resentments onto others, least of all those one has not even met. Release your attachments to arbitrary and sweeping conceptualizations and cultivate your empathy, rather than denying what scraps of knowledge you may encounter, so that all of us may a little sooner reach enlightenment and escape the wheel of illusion.
Namasté!
@19 Marcus Ranum
“Unless you define “theistic” as specifically requiring a white guy with a white beard in a big chair”
Since I’m not a certain character from “Alice In Wonderland”, I’ll use the dictionary definition of ‘theism’, beards, a specific ‘race’ and chairs are not compulsory attributes for a theistic deity.
Yes, Buddhism does have a history of political violence going at least all the way back to its adoption as main ideology by state power, nothing new here. The concept of Dharma especially turned out be be most flexible when accounting for the king’s need to slaughter a lot of people and it was used in that function by japanese extremists as well.
Though from what I gather, the ethnic strifes in SE-Asia are the result of politics and parties being ethnified to an almost fascist degree before, during and after the corresponding period. Sometimes with the assistance of helpful colonizers who just wanted to return the natives to their original political culture.
Pierce R. Butler says
“He has a partial point: most of the Tamils now in friction with the Sinhalese descend from mainlanders brought over from India by British tea plantation owners who wanted workers with no place to run away to.”
NO, he doesn’t have a point. You’re conflating Hill Country Tamils who were brought to Sri Lanka from Southern India in the 19th and 20th centuries by British colonialists to work in plantations with Sri Lankan Eelam Tamils. The majority of Tamils in Sri Lanka are known as Eelam Tamils who have been living in Sri Lanka for as long as Sinhalese who themselves originally came from Northern India. The Sinhaleses’ revered historical Buddhist book, the Mahavamsa, portrays Tamils as infidels and invaders and Sinhalese nationalists use it to justify the claim that Sri Lanka is a Buddhist nation from historical time and it only belongs to the Sinhalese.
@24 Anders,
Very interesting. My initial opinion was that there were Tamil communities in Sri Lanka long before the Indo-European speaking Sinhalese arrived on the island.