Zen at War

[erudito]

Brian Daizen Victoria’s Zen at War is a study of how Zen Buddhism became deeply complicit in Japanese militarism

Brian Victoria, a Soto Buddhist priest, directly challenges the “touchy-feelie” good image that Buddhism has in the West. Especially Zen Buddhism in the US. Zen at War is particularly confronting in what it shows about D T Suzuki’s

Comments

[taavi]

Thai buddhism has a lot of these problems as well - it is consistently supportive of an extremely repressive social order. Notoriously so during the 70s. One prominent monk, Kittiwutho, broadcast radio shows saying that "to kill a communist is not a sin" and threw students who had sought refuge from a public massacre out of his temple to get shot.

It's always difficult to say what is "original" and what isn't when it comes to translating philosophical concepts across different cultures, since they change so much in transition. What I chiefly took from Heidegger was his concept of the way we experience objects as relative to their function in our consciousness rather than "things in themselves": Ie most of the time we don't think of a hammer as "a hammer" but as "in order to drive in a nail". This is also a buddhistic concept (interdependent origination) but not one that "mainstream" buddhism has paid much attention to recently - the general trend as you say has been to turn inward to examining the will instead of examining the world and our relationship with it.

I remember Derrida ran into all sorts of problems trying to deny Heidegger's Nazism. Served him right.

Resonances

[erudito]

Victoria discusses the use of the law of causality to justify social inequality--such as many sects shameful support for the stigmatisation of outcasts (burakumin) until very recently. On the other hand, that one sees similar uses for the concept in Thailand and Japan actually argues against lacking a common element across cultures.

Part of the point of study was, surely, to understand concepts by shedding preconceptions. Which is not to say they then don't get embedded in social contexts and re-interpreted, of course they do. But it is far from the only thing that happens.

And yes, Derrida deserved his problems.