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Zen at War

  • 18-08-2012 3:12pm
    #1
    18AD
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,821 ✭✭✭


    I was watching a talk the other day where Zizek points out that some of Zen was supportive of war, especially on the Japanese front. He speaks of it in relation to D. T. Suzuki and how war in the eyes of an enlightened person would simply be a detached view of the dance of karma.

    Admittedly I was a bit taken aback by this. It kind of makes sense, and yet seems so contrary to other Buddhist teaching.

    I found this today:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War

    Interesting how Zen is embroilled in politics. Something obvious that I never really considered.

    A nice quote from the end of that wiki article:
    "Now that we’ve had the book on Yasutani Roshi opened for us, we are presented with a new koan. Like so many koans, it is painfully baffling: How could an enlightened Zen master have spouted such hatred and prejudice? The nub of this koan, I would suggest, is the word enlightened. If we see enlightenment as an all-or-nothing place of arrival that confers a permanent saintliness on us, then we’ll remain stymied by this koan. But in fact there are myriad levels of enlightenment, and all evidence suggests that, short of full enlightenment (and perhaps even with it—who knows?), deeper defilements and habit tendencies remain rooted in the mind." - Bodhin Kholhede

    Here's the whole talk if anyone's interested. It's long and with some NSFW content. The Zen comment is lost in the middle somewhere.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhAMgVFKokk


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