Zen and War - Excerpts of the teachings of John Daido Loori Roshi

The Main Case:

Xixian Faan of Lushan was asked by a government officer, “When I took the city of Jinling with an army troop, I killed countless people. Am I at fault?” Xixian said, “I am watching closely."

The Commentary:

Priest Xixian’s response, “I am watching closely” is at once fat-headed and misguided. He has missed an opportunity to cause an evil that has already arisen to be extinguished, and to cause good that has not arisen to arise. Both he and the general deserve thirty blows of my stick.

Governments and rulers are traditionally driven by power, politics, and money, and are usually not inclined toward clear moral commitments. However, for a Zen priest to avoid taking moral responsibility when asked is inexcusable. Enlightenment without morality is not true enlightenment. Morality without enlightenment is not complete morality. Enlightenment and morality are non-dual in the Way. One does not exist without the other. Nirvana is not beyond good and evil as is commonly believed. It is a way of living one’s life with a definite moral commitment that is practiced, realized, and verified within the realm of good and evil itself, yet remains undefiled by them.

Setting aside impostor priests and phony followers, you tell me, how do you transform watching into doing, the three poisons into the three virtues? More importantly, what is it that you call yourself?

The Capping Verse:

Utterly devoid of abilities, the guide can’t lead;
lost in self-deception, the evil one can’t find his way.
Take off the blinders, set down the pack and see
beyond god masks and devil masks, there is a Way.

Dharma Talk:

• Buddhism is normally understood as a very peaceful, even pacifist, religion. But this was not the case in World War II, when Buddhism was deeply integrated into the Japanese war machine. At the time, Buddhism played for the Japanese a role similar to that of Christianity for the Christian crusaders of the Middle Ages, or of Islam for Islamic militants of today: it was a religious, ideological justification of violent acts and the assumption of a position of superiority and dominance.

• The main case reads: “Xixian Faan of Lushan was asked by a government officer, ‘When I took the city of Jinling with an army troop, I killed countless people. Am I at fault?’” Xixian was a successor in the lineage of Fayan, one of the five great Zen schools in China. Xixian was asked by a government officer, probably a general, “When I took the city of Jinling”— the capital of China at the time—“with an army troop, I killed countless people.” I added a footnote to that line which says, “To kill and destroy is easy. To affirm life and nourish is difficult.” Of course, when you have an army of trained soldiers, it’s easy to annihilate unarmed civilians. Then the government officer asked, “Am I at fault?” The footnote reads, “Cause and effect are one. How can you not know?” Evil actions result in evil effects. Good actions result in good effects. What you do and what happens to you are the same thing. This is pretty basic Buddhism. How could the officer not know?

• “Xixian said, ‘I am watching closely.’” The footnote: “Stop watching and close the gap, and then there won’t be anything to protect.” What did Xixian mean by “I am watching closely”? Was he offering a teaching, or did he simply give a mild response that would not offend the warrior? Either way, it was definitely not a good enough answer. Definitely not intimate enough.

• The commentary says, “Priest Xixian’s response, ‘I am watching closely,’ is at once fat-headed and misguided.” It was a thoughtless answer. How could he have answered then? What would you have said to that general? Remember, he was asking for instruction. The Fayan school was said to be the first to employ koans as an instructional method. How about giving the officer a nice koan on the precept, Do not kill? “He has missed an opportunity to cause an evil that has already arisen to be extinguished and to cause a good that has not yet arisen to arise.” Good actions produce good effects. But there is no guarantee. Let’s say that an elderly woman is standing at a curb and a Boy Scout comes up to her and says, “Here ma’am, let me help you across.” But instead of being grateful she starts swatting him with her pocketbook, yelling, “Let go of me! Don’t touch me!” and the Boy Scout gets arrested for molesting an elderly woman. Clearly, trying to do good is no guarantee.

• “However, for a Zen priest to avoid taking moral responsibility when asked is inexcusable.” When we think of holy wars, western religions always come to mind. The God of Exodus ordered the extermination of the Canaanites. The instruction, according to the Bible, was to show them no pity. The commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” apparently did not apply to the slaying of gentiles. In 1095, Pope Urban the Second ordered the crusaders to Jerusalem to kill the enemies of God. He said, “A horrible tale has gone forth and a cursed race, utterly alienated from God, has invaded the lands of the Christians. Tear that land from the wicked races and subject them to yourselves.” In response, the people began shouting, Deus volt! Deus volt! “God wills it.” This then became the battle cry of the Crusades. In two days, Christian soldiers slaughtered 40,000 Muslims they saw as non-human filth. Nowadays, Islamic terrorists proclaim, “God is great!” as bombs explode the world over in the name of God and religion.

• On the other hand, Buddhism has always been seen as a religion of peace. How many times have we heard that there’s never been a Buddhist war? And beyond that, there are well-known examples of Buddhist pacifism. It is said that when the Shakya kingdom was threatened with invasion, the Buddha sat in meditation in the path of the advancing soldiers and stopped the attack. We also know that the Indian king Ashoka converted to Buddhism and dissolved his army. For hundreds of years, peace reigned in the land and the Buddhist teachings were promulgated. Ashoka’s stone edicts still exist as proof of his remarkable achievements. Later, when the dharma traveled to Tibet, the barbaric tribes were pacified. And in our own century, during the Vietnam War, Buddhist monks set themselves on fire to protest the fighting.

These are all positive examples. This is the way we think of Buddhism. But there’s also a dark side to our heritage—namely the Japanese Zen establishment’s dedicated support of the imperial war machine from the late 1800’s through World War II. This is very complex terrain.

In 1939, Zen Master Harada Sogaku made the statement, “If ordered to march, ‘tramp-tramp’… or shoot ‘bang-bang’—this is the highest manifestation of the wisdom of enlightenment, the unity of Zen and war. It extends to the furthest reaches of the holy war now underway.”

Harada preached that, “It’s the essence of truth that the Japanese people are chosen people whose mission is to control the world. The sword that kills is also the sword that gives life… Comments opposing the war are foolish opinions of those who can see only one aspect of things and not the whole.”

Yasutani Roshi, right alongside Harada Roshi and in our own lineage, was also pro-war. Actually, Yasutani Roshi was an ardent, right wing nationalist and anti-communist even after the war. He used vitriolic language, calling for universities to be smashed one and all, and referred to union workers as “traitors of the nation.”

Then there was Shaku Soen, one of the first Zen masters to come to the United States. He used phrases such as “just war” or “holy war,” stating that Japan was engaged in a war of compassion, fought by bodhisattva soldiers against the enemies of Buddha. Rinzai Zen master Nantembo preached, “There is no bodhisattva practice superior to the compassionate taking of life.”

Kodo Sawaki, teacher of Deshimaru and one of the great Soto patriarchs of this century, was an evangelical war proponent. In 1942 he made the statement, “It’s just to punish those who disturb the public order. Whether one kills or does not kill, the precept of forbidding killing is preserved. It is the precept forbidding killing that wields the sword. It is the precept that throws the bomb.” The precept that throws the bomb? That’s pretty astonishing abuse of Zen language. He also insisted, as did other Zen teachers, that killing done without thinking, in a state of no mind or no self, was an expression of enlightenment. This statement is lifted right out of Bushido, the way of the warrior.

It’s easy to become self-righteous about this because we don’t have a clue what it meant to live in a country closed off from the rest of the world, whose only information came from propaganda, newspapers controlled by a government calling westerners heathens, murderers, and so on. And there the Allies were, justifying those statements by dropping bombs on Tokyo and on the temples.

The next line of the commentary reads: “Enlightenment without morality is not true enlightenment.” Enlightenment is the realization of our identity with the ten thousand things. Not similarity. Not equality. Identity. My body and your body, my mind and your mind, are the body and mind of the universe. When this truth is realized, our consciousness transforms into prajna, or wisdom. With wisdom, compassion is born. And since all things are my self—since what happens to all things happens to me—I’m compelled to take care of all things. That’s compassion. How we do this is what the moral and ethical teachings of the Buddha, the precepts, are all about. Indeed, the precepts are the definition of the life of a Buddha.

“Enlightenment without morality is not true enlightenment. Morality without enlightenment is not complete morality.” Despite the statements made by some writers as Zen was first taking roots in this country, Zen is not beyond morality, but is a practice that takes place within the world. It is a religious tradition based on moral and ethical teachings that have been handed down through the mind-to-mind transmission, from generation to generation.

“Enlightenment and morality are non-dual in the Way. One does not exist without the other.” They are of necessity interdependent, mutually arising. “Nirvana is not beyond good and evil, as is commonly believed. It is rather a way of living one’s life with a definite moral commitment.” A moral commitment that comes from vow. Our vow is to live our lives as buddhas, to realize all sentient and insentient beings alike as one’s own body and mind, and then to act on that realization, to actualize that realization. And the only place that nirvana can be realized is within samsara. Just like enlightenment and morality, they are non-dual in the Way.

“Setting aside impostor priests and phony followers, you tell me, how do you transform watching into doing, the three poisons into the three virtues?” What do the precepts say about the transgression of the precepts? How do you turn the three poisons into the three virtues?

In 1992 the Soto School officially issued a statement of repentance, particularly with regard to the massacres in China. The statement said, in part: “The Soto School is a religious organization that supported Japan’s acts of aggression in China under the pretext of overseas missionary activities. It supported Japanese militarism and even participated actively in that militarism. This is extremely regrettable from the standpoint of religious persons. Unless the negative legacy of our school becomes the object of clear self-criticism, it will remain impossible to take the stance of opening our hearts toward other peoples in the spirit of true exchange.”

Atonement is definitely the first step. But it must be followed by communication with the victims and forgiveness. This process is completed by the commitment and vow not to commit evil again, to truly live in accord with the moral and ethical teachings.

The commentary concludes, “More importantly, what is it that you call your self?” That’s the whole point. If we recognize who we really are and realize that it’s not limited to this bag of skin—that it’s not limited at all—then there’s little doubt what our responsibility is to future generations, to the future of Buddhism.

Utterly devoid of abilities, the guide can’t lead;
lost in self-deception, the evil one can’t find his way.
Take off the blinders, set down the pack and see
beyond god masks and devil masks, there is a Way.

Utterly devoid of abilities, the guide can’t lead. For whatever reason, Xixian abdicated his responsibility and, by ignoring the opportunity to teach, created a karma that continued into 20th century Japan. Lost in self-deception, the evil one cannot find his way. The general’s delusion is understandable, in a sense. He was just doing his job. But the very fact that he asked that question implies that he had a sense that something wasn’t right.

Take off the blinders. Set down the pack. This instruction applies to both Xixian and the general. The blinders are the things that obscure our vision. The pack is all the stuff that we carry, that identifies us. It’s who we think we are. It’s the years of conditioning that we drag around with us.

Beyond god-masks and devil masks, there is a Way. What is that Way? For many Zen students, the most difficult aspect of all of this is to face the words and actions of these highly esteemed teachers. These men were living buddhas, fully enlightened people. Yet simultaneously, they were swept away by nationalist delusion. They knowingly perverted Buddhism and the Zen teachings and exhibited a total lack of compassion and wisdom. They participated almost directly in the death of tens of millions. There’s no greater abuse of the dharma than that. How can we reconcile these overwhelming contradictions?