A religion of peace with a shrine to war heroes: Sri Lankans light oil lamps to commemorate the fallen of the civil war.
Often ethnic identity is the real issue – it just happens that one of the ethnic groups in question has historical Buddhist affiliations, the others do not.Īt one point the Sri Lankan conflict of 1983-2009 saw three different civil wars playing out at once, as much as anything along ethnic and political lines: Sinhalese vs Tamils, Sinhalese extremists vs the Sinhalese government, and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam vs other Tamil militant groups. When it comes to “Buddhist violence”, as with any perceived religious conflicts, religion is only one factor in a complex situation. Justifications for such actions have typically been based on defending the Dharma (the Buddhist teachings), occasionally demonising or dehumanising the enemy to make it less karmically wrong to kill them.Ī particularly uncomfortable example of this is found in the fifth century Sri Lankan quasi-mythological Mahavamsa chronicle, in which monks reassure a king that out of the millions he’d just slaughtered only two were Buddhists and the others were more like animals than humans. Buddhist violenceīut Buddhists have been involved in violent conflicts pretty much since the religion first emerged. Selling weapons is considered an inappropriate livelihood for a Buddhist. The Buddha discouraged violence and counselled kings to find alternative ways of resolving problems. The framing still has serious traction and leads to a certain cognitive dissonance when, for example, Buddhists make the headlines for the wrong reasons.Īvoiding “onslaught on living beings” and instead cultivating loving-kindness towards them is at the heart of Buddhist ethics it’s the first of five moral precepts, and the one that you have to take if you opt to take any of them at all.
Christianity was placed in the Goldilocks spot between the two. Buddhism was too other-worldly, pacifist, and passive to the point of stagnation. In their eyes Islam was too aggressive and focused on strict adherence to rules. In encountering different beliefs among colonised peoples, missionaries adopted a strategy of framing other religions in such a way that Christianity could be presented as superior and attractive. According to historian Professor Jonathan Walters, the roots lie with colonialism and Christian missionaries.
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