Angulimala, samurais and red shirts: responsibility for action

By Paisarn Likhitpreechakul Published on February 18-19, 2011 (Magha Puja) In this photo released by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Nuon Chea, former deputy secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, looks on during a joint hearing with other top Khmer Rouge leaders, Khieu Samphan, former head of state, and Ieng Thirith, former social affairs minister, at the court hall of the U.N.-backed genocide tribunal on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, Jan. 31, 2011 (AP) PART I "You did not have any intention, therefore you did not commit any sin." Most Buddhists will accept this statement as true to the Buddha's teachings when, for example, it involves a doctor who lost a patient's life despite the best professional effort. However, it is chilling when used by Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge's "Brother Number 2" to convince his subordinates of their innocence after their reign of terror caused millions of deaths.

Nuon Chea was not wrong to think of intention as paramount in Buddhism. The Buddha pointed at volition behind our deeds as the "karma" - not the action per se, even though "karma" originally means "action". According to Nuon Chea, therefore, no bad karma is incurred if one merely follows orders without "taking it personally". The author believes that the Buddha specifically rejected Nuon Chea's philosophical "license to kill" in a famous discourse, although this important point has until now been overlooked. Angulimala Sutta tells of the eponymous brigand who exhausted all his speed and strength while trying to attack the serenely-paced Buddha. Angulimala shouted for the Buddha to stop, only to be perplexed and converted when he was told, "I've already stopped, Angulimala. You stop, too."

Tradition explains that the Buddha referred to cessation of violence against other beings, and the discourse is considered a lesson in the redemptive power of the compassionate Buddha and the universal human potential for spiritual progress. Buddhist scholar Piya Tan adds depth to

this miraculous scene by describing Angulimala's chase after the Buddha as a Sisyphean run in which what went nowhere was not only Angulimala's feet but also his spiritual development. The shortcoming of the traditional explanation is that it doesn't sufficiently touch on the intention behind Angulimala's gruesome acts. An even bigger problem is that it doesn't explain the fact that the Buddha here performed a miracle despite his own prohibition of them elsewhere in the Cannon. (The same paradox applies to the Twin Miracle to which the author proposed an answer in a previous article.) The only exception to this reproach is the use of miracles as a teaching tool. The Buddha is known for his skillful means, tailoring his teachings to suit the audience's predispositions. But the obvious message that murder is unwholesome is so painfully obvious it's hardly worth being spelt out - much less accompanied with a miracle - to Angulimala, who was said to be among the brightest students at Taxila, the "Oxford of ancient India". In his paper "Who Was Angulimala?", Pali scholar Richard Gombrich brilliantly concluded that Angulimala, son of a Brahmin chaplain, was in fact an early worshipper of Shiva, the god of destruction. At the foundation of Brahmanical philosophies, which include Shivaism, is the belief that no karma is incurred if one does not attach oneself to the actions or their results. According to Indologist Johannes Bronkhorst, obtaining this mental attitude can be facilitated by making the physical acts an act of sacrifice - to Shiva in Angulimala's case. By supposedly eliminating all karma this way, Angulimala would hope to attain liberation from the cycles of rebirth and associated sufferings. This would explain why the hitherto kind and intelligent Angulimala came to follow his teacher's instruction to kill a thousand victims. If his education was the doctrine of detaching himself from actions, a gruesome mission with a high death toll would be a perfect proof of his success.

Had Angulimala only been emotionally insensitive to blood, then the Buddha's statement that he hadn't ceased violence would have sounded obvious - like a butcher being told that his hands are bloody - and solicited a "So what?" response. But if Angulimala had been philosophically desensitised to violence, then the Buddha's argumentative viewpoint would truly have caught him by surprise - like a high priest being told his lifelong worship actually leads to hell. It would certainly jolt Angulimala into an awakening - like a "moon coming out of hiding cloud". So when the Buddha said that Angulimala hadn't stopped incurring karma, it was not only Angulimala's violence that was rebuked but also its underpinning philosophy of moral suspension. The Buddha's presentation of the converted Angulimala to the king, therefore, declares not only a triumph of compassion over violence but also a philosophical victory. Buddhism emphasises mindfulness over our actions at all time. For the Buddha, we can never detach ourselves from or deny responsibility for our deeds because we are the sum of volitions reflected in them. Committing action in the name of a god, belief, ideology, cause, regime or institution doesn't lessen our moral responsibility. Other things that previously looked out of place and now make better sense are the two statements the Buddha gave Angulimala to proclaim. Why did the Buddha bother to give Angulimala the first version, "I have not intentionally committed violence to all beings", which both knew full well to be false? The key word here is "intentionally". This first statement can be considered an opportunity for Angulimala to openly disavow his former belief. Similar to Nuon Chea, Angulimala the Shiva worshipper would have no problem uttering it because he would claim no intention whatsoever against his victims. However, the converted Angulimala couldn't say it. The second version the Buddha gave allowed Angulimala to confirm his transformation, declaring that he hadn't intentionally committed any violence since he was (re)born into the Buddhist order.

"Angulimala Sutta", therefore, is a story not only about the Buddha's compassion but also his wisdom, countering moral suspension with mindful moral responsibility. To read it merely as a tale of an individual man's spiritual struggle deprives Thai society of the moral foundation that Buddhism has to offer, especially now that more and more people are following Angulimala's former murderous path. PART II Prior to last May's crackdown on red-shirt anti-government protestors, which disastrously resulted in dozens of deaths, there were calls for Prime Minister Abhisit to perform his duty and "return Bangkok to normalcy". To justify the foreseeable bloodshed, some of these callers cited a key part from the Hindu sacred scripture "Bhagavad Gita" when the demigod Krishna urged Arjun to perform his soldierly duty by going to war with his own cousins. A poem dedicated to prime minister cried out, "Go to war, Abhisit!" Although Mahatma Gandhi and most modern Hindu thinkers would interpret Gita verses like "Holding pleasure and pain alike, gain and loss, victory and defeat, then gird thyself for battle; thus thou shalt not get evil" as addressing a spiritual battle inside oneself, fundamentalists see it literally as a validation for an actual war. Imbued in such an interpretation is the ancient Brahmanical belief that no karma - and, therefore, moral responsibility - is incurred if one detaches oneself from the actions or their results. In other words, not committing oneself to an act is as good as not committing it.

As proposed in yesterday's first part of this article, this ancient doctrine was likely held by Angulimala as a liberation philosophy before it was rebuked by the Buddha in Angulimala Sutta. Indeed, it would have been surprising if the Buddha hadn't dealt with this kind of Brahmanical soteriology after having extensively criticised its social institutions - particularly the caste system - and debated with other main rival schools on how to free oneself from cycles of rebirth. But this kind of belief is far from being a thing of the past - not least because it's often confused with the Buddha's teachings. Khmer Rouge "Brother Number 2" Nuon Chea's distortion of Buddhism to excuse the Khmer Rouge's atrocities, cited in yesterday's article, is but one example. Zen Buddhism underpinned Japan's Code of Bushido - "the way of the warrior" - and equipped samurais with bravery in the face of death, as well as the determination to carry out their bloody tasks. Brian Victoria, author of "Zen At War", summarized: "There is a Zen belief that you can transcend good and evil. And once you've done this, you act in a spontaneous and intuitive manner. Once you believe that discriminating thought is no longer important - in fact, that not only is it not important, but that it has to be discarded - then all ethical concerns disappear." During the Second World War, many Japanese Buddhist leaders cited Buddhism to defend Japan's militaristic expansion, calling it a just war against evils that "must be unflinchingly prosecuted". What passes here as Buddhism is actually closer to Angulimala's religion, as nothing can be further removed from the Buddha's teachings than war and violence. While those who called on Prime Minister Abhisit to crack down on fellow citizens may have the grand delusion of being modern-day Krishnas,

they are more appropriately compared to Angulimala's teacher who sent him on a bloody mission. Rather than the title "Abhi-Siddhatta" coined by a government cheerleader to echo the Buddha's birth name, others unflatteringly called the prime minster "Anguli-Mark" for the resulting bloodshed. Combining his nickname with Angulimala also highlighted the Buddhist position that doing something out of duty doesn't make one less responsible for it - no matter if it's those who authorise violence or those who carry out the order. Although Angulimala Sutta obviously censures violence, it is arguably more about moral suspension, of which murder is but one possible result. Therefore, it applies not only to soldiers and their commanders. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, is believed to have read verses from the Gita to calm his mind and justify his central role in building the world's first nuclear bombs. His case is a great example of how one man's moral suspension can affect the lives and deaths of millions, even though he was "just doing his job". "Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds" (by artist Yuri Loenov) Even more chillingly, it is moral suspension on a grand scale that allows great atrocities like the Holocaust and genocides to happen. Roman historian Tacitus understood this best when he wrote, "The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all."

"Angulimala Sutta", in its broad sense, speaks not only to aggressors, their supporters and accessories, but also to those who keep silent, allowing violence to happen. Last year's film "The Reader" powerfully portrays the guilt and anguish of post-war Germans who, in their own ways, became accomplices to the Holocaust by "just doing their jobs" or turning a blind eye. A Thai monk during the height of the Cold War infamously proclaimed, "It's not sinful to kill communists". A similar "license to kill" sentiment became extremely loud last year against red-shirt protesters. Judging from the noises clamouring for a crackdown, there are many Angulimalas in our society in the guise of "Buddhists". In this 21st century, there are more and more to-die-for "religions" which tell us it is righteous to "do everything necessary" to safeguard those values - violently if unavoidable. But no matter how noble a cause is - national unity, the monarchy, freedom, democracy, peace, the environment, justice, equality or human rights - it is our moral responsibility to be vigilant and stop ourselves from directly or indirectly doing violence to other human beings. Neither can we keep silent when violence happens, especially when it's committed in our name as a movement, society or country. We must be firm in the Buddha's path of non-violence because the Buddha's teachings don't allow us to hide from our moral responsibility behind any doctrine or cause at any time. Those who favour violence as a means to end conflicts - for example, inciting a war with a neighbouring country to serve the religion of nationalism - should listen carefully and hear the Buddha's word: "I've stopped, Angulimala. You stop, too."