This is regarding the comments you have made on 22nd September, 2006 at 4:10 pm.

You have a wrong perception on Srilankan’s and Buddhism in Sri Lanka. I was worried after going through your comments realizing that you have not only criticized the religion but also the country.

Yes there’s a civil war going on in the country. But the comments you have made are confusing the minds of people who reads your words.

If u can send me an email address I can send u a Power Point Presentation including how the LTTE have treated Sinhalese, Christian and Muslim also how they have killed their own Tamil brothers.

What you have written is not what you have experienced by your self but I’m sure you have phrased them from some where else.

So let me correct you by sending you the true artifacts.

Always with Metta.
Live long my friend

Chairwoman,
>> it was he who decided that the Lotus Sutra was his ultimate gift to humanity.

Wait a sec, you do know that the Lotus Sutra was not authored by Nichiren, right? He merely focussed his teachings upon it, as he considered it the highest of Buddhist teachings. The Lotus sutra was probably put together in BCE 1 in Kashmir.It is supposed to be a discourse delivered by Sakyamuni himself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Sutra

as for the ‘merit’ earning, yeah it exists as it is possibly a much easier concept for most lay buddhists than the somewhat counter-intuitive ‘all karma, good and bad, binds you’ concept.

Only the discipline of Dharma can free one and those who do not devote themselves fully to the religious life (i.e., by entering the Sangha) cannot expect to achieve nirvana within the present life, but they can build up merit,providing a better rebirth, in which they might be able to live the religious life more fully. Hence merit is simply a means to a better chance of working out one’s dharma, not a means of achieving nirvana itself.

Oh please! A political party (JHU)that fields 260 candidates -ALL MONKS- in the 2004 elections is a long, long way from impartiality.

>> Anyway, both sides in the conflict have people of all races/religions fighting for them – what’s at stake isn’t religious

Maybe not for you, or even the Tamil tigers. but the monks from the JHU campaigned on a platform for
” establishing a dharmarajya in Sri Lanka, the JHU drew support mainly from the urban, middle-class voters, …. who were opposed to the peace negotiations with the LTTE, shifted loyalties to the JHU, which presented to the electorate a militant version of Sinhalese nationalism along with a message of moral regeneration.”

http://www.hindu.com/2004/04/12/stories/2004041201111000.htm

Hence, tagging a kovil onto your temple was a profitable plan. Cue their popularity.

I personally think the JHU (monk party) have no role in SL politics – the clergy are supposed to be impartial. Anyway, both sides in the conflict have people of all races/religions fighting for them – what’s at stake isn’t religious.

1)Ordinary views concerning reality are inadequate and ultimately delusory(maya).

2) Earthly existence is essentially flawed: we form false and improper attachments, and, as a consequence, reap a miserable existence. Through rebirth, we are locked into a vicious cycleof suffering and delusion. This cycle is called samsara.

3) Ignorance (avidy_) prevents us from understanding reality as it truly is, and prevents us from perceiving the true nature of our own reality.

4) Through dispelling ignorance, we can learn to perceive the true nature of reality, and to free ourselves from false and improper attachments. As a result, we can eliminate suffering, and escape the vicious cycle of eternal suffering.

5) Self-effort is mandatory: we cannot look to any external forces to solve our problems for us.

The major difference is Buddhism rejects the Upanishads’ idea of an abiding universal “self” or soul, the Atman. It has the concept of the non-self or non-soul, anatman, instead.

Buddhism 101:

>>think people get a bit confused about Buddhism, although the ultimate aim is Kosen Rufu (world peace),

Erm, this is not the ultimate aim of Buddhism, at least not as that bloke Gautama Sidddharta saw it. The aim of buddhism is to free oneself from the karmic cycle of successive lives – as all life is suffering, dukka.

>>Also if someone takes a warlike action that is ultimately a good thing, it could be good Karma.

Good karma is as binding as bad karma and it is not the aim of buddhism to “earn” good karma but to end karma (for oneself).

Btw, a buddhist has no soul- just in case that comes up next.

Anas, a note on the japanese examples you give above. Many of the east asian mahayana sects esp the Japanese ones have an eclectic mix of buddhist, taoist, confucianist and shinto beliefs, not to mention the founders’ personal fetishes. Suzuki may have yakked on all he liked about holy war, but there’s no mention of that in ANY mainstream buddhist texts or teachings. You betray your own ignorance of buddhism if you take suzuki as a reference for it.

Wonder why the Americans lost in Vietnam then! And the genocide in Cambodia was just an aberration? Nope, devoutly buddhist nations like the thais, khmers, burmese etc have as bloody a history as anyone else.

Didn’t you look at the links I posted?

With his oft-pictured gentle and sagacious appearance of later years, Suzuki is revered among many in the West as a true man of Zen. Yet he wrote that “religion should, first of all, seek to preserve the existence of the state,” followed by the assertion that the Chinese were “unruly heathens” whom Japan should punish “in the name of the religion.” Zen master Harada Sogaku, highly praised in the English writings of Philip Kapleau, Maezumi Taizan, and others, was also quoted by Hakugen [a Rinzai Zen priest and scholar teaching at Hanazono University in Kyoto]. In 1939 he wrote: “[If ordered to] march: tramp, tramp, or shoot: bang, bang. This is the manifestation of the highest Wisdom [of Enlightenment]. The unity of Zen and war of which I speak extends to the farthest reaches of the holy war [now under way]” (Victoria, 1997).

Holy war? Now where have I heard that one before?

[A]s a means of bringing into harmony those things which are incompatible, killing and war are necessary (in Victoria, 1997).

That was from Suzuki’s Master.

Another pertinent quote:

Likewise for the sagely Omori Sogen, “lauded as the ‘greatest Zen master of modern times,’ whose very life is ‘worthy to be considered a masterpiece of Zen art’”:

Instead of a master concerned with the “life-giving sword” … of Zen, we encounter someone who from the 1920s took an active part in the ultra-right’s agenda to eliminate parliamentary democracy through political assassination at home and promote Japan’s imperialist aims abroad. In short, a man willing to kill all who stood in the way of his political agenda, yet claiming the enlightenment of the Buddha as his own….
Hosokawa Dogen writes: “The life of Omori Roshi is the manifestation of traditional and true Zen” (Victoria, 2003).

and yet there was never a backlash against the religion or race of the perpetrators…it just didnt happen.

From http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/debates/fundamentalists.html:

In Sri Lanka 70% of the people are Buddhists. It is 2,550 years since the death of Buddha, who taught his followers to seek enlightenment and spiritual development rather than material gain. Many young men take monastic vows and devote their lives to studying his teaching. But in Sri Lanka, some militant monks have a distinctly 21st century interpretation of Buddhism.

It is hard to grasp the idea of Buddhists being fundamentalists but if fundamentalism is the intense politicisation of religion, then these extreme nationalist monks certainly come into that category.

This subject was heavily discussed in James Clavell’s famous novels “Shogun” and (to a lesser extent) “Gai-Jin”. From what I understand — assuming the writer’s descriptions were accurate — although Japanese warriors were indeed technically Buddhist, they regarded being born Samurai as a curse, as they believed themselves to be trapped in the whole “Bushido” Samurai ethos which obviously contradicted the more pacifist teachings of traditional Buddhism. Shintoism also had an influence on them, obviously.

I don’t know if this mindset still existed during the time of the Kamikazis — who were also influenced by Samurai culture — but I thought it was an interesting point anyway.

OK my head is now spinning. This is one of those subjects that needs conversation with interruptions and people jumping up and down and getting animated. It doesn’t work for me in print.