
Zen and the Art of Divebombing (2016) - snailletters
http://www.friesian.com/divebomb.htm
======
uwagar
i thought i'd learn something reading this, i did, but thank u for wasting my
time.

basically, the 'west' is pissed off that Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, Confucianism
none of these originated west of Greece. it suffers from a sort of not
invented here syndrome. so its got to be bad right?

Silent teaching being the pinnacle of attainment of these isms could only lend
kamikaze pilots the moral ammunition to bomb pearl harbor yet the rational and
enlightened west is justified in returning the favor with hiroshima and
nagasaki that somehow isnt atrocious and doesnt blemish either on reason or
aristotle, the granddaddy of them all.

no other nation other than Japan would have forgiven USA for the bombs. every
other nation would have prepared themselves to take revenge. care to spend a
second to think that this could be because of the same 'fatalist'
buddhism/zen? to be honest this happened once b4 in the opposite with emperor
ashoka on the battlefield of kalinga when he saw all those soldiers dead and
their loved ones grieving, proceeded to take yes buddhism and dismantle his
empire -- why didnt USA do what ashoka did after hiroshima and nagasaki? --
man of reason until then. losing your reason and tapping into the 'It' inside
you thru introspection is the point of these isms.

now how can the tao/zen/buddhist masters take moral responsibility for the
suicidal japanese military as much as aristotle take moral responsibility for
the atom bomb?

no, no, lets throw the baby out with the bathwater. we have these weapons to
test on real people. lets reason the pros and cons and still go ahead and drop
them on their 'zenglightened' heads, that will teach them reason....that it
was better to kill them so others could live.

------
hodder
I was really hoping this was going to be an article about the guitar
technique:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dive_bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dive_bomb)

------
ncmncm
This was an amazing synthesis.

------
solidsnack9000
There is something basically confused about this article. To consider one
passage:

 _The brutality of the Japanese military, which was visited upon its own
people as well as on prisoners and civilians, itself has antecedents in Zen.
It has already been noted that the "silent teaching" may actually be expressed
by beatings, and that the Zen meditation hall is a place where someone sitting
zazen can be struck and beaten just to keep them awake. And we have the
following story:_

 _Gutei raised his finger whenever he was asked a question about Zen. A boy
attendant began to imitate him in this way. When anyone asked the boy what his
master had preached about, the boy would raise his finger._

 _Gutei heard about the boy 's mischief. He seized him and cut off his finger.
The boy cried and ran away. Gutei called and stopped him. When the boy turned
his head to Gutei, Gutei raised up his own finger. In that instant the boy was
enlightened. [Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, pp.169-170]_

 _We may stipulate that enlightenment is well worth a finger, and that Gutei
was a great enough Zen master to know that so bloody and permanent an
expedient would be effective -- and it is a nice thought that the boy has "no
finger" to raise up. But for ordinary fallible humans, this would be an
appalling act of brutality and child abuse, and it can be expected to be
little else if emulated in any way by subsequent teachers. Just as disturbing
is the circumstance that, although the names in the story are in Japanese, it
is actually a Chinese story, from Tao-yüan's collection. This makes for a very
dangerous precedent once it gets into a tradition, the Japanese one, where
positive reasons to value violence, for its art, arise._

(1) The author writes "...the names in the story are in Japanese...", but this
is a totally absurd statement. The whole story was written in Buddhist
Chinese, and was brought over to Japan that way, and read in Buddhist Chinese
in Japan. When the translator of the story _into English_ chose to
transliterate the names with Japanese pronunciations, it was just an arbitrary
choice; they could just as well have transliterated them with Chinese
pronunciations. (Then we would have to ask, which ones? Chinese pronunciation
has changed greatly in the last 800 years.)

(2) The author writes of this story that "...it can be expected to be little
else if emulated in any way by subsequent teachers." but they present no
evidence to show that this ever actually occurred. To the best of my
knowledge, Zen priests and monks did not cut off novice's fingers.

(3) The presence of one story like this -- or even a hundred -- in the
folklore of Buddhism offers _no support at all_ for the idea that Buddhism in
Japan or China offers some unique spur to warfare. There are many more such
cruel folk stories in the non-Buddhist folklore of these countries. This leads
to an important area of omission for the other: syncretism. Unlike in the
West, exclusive adherence to one religion was never the norm in East Asia,
where most people participated in rites and practices derived from the native
folk religion -- Shinto in Japan -- as well as Buddhism.

For many hundreds of years, Buddhist sects in Japan administered the Shinto
shrines as well as the Buddhist temples, and Buddhist temples today still
celebrate Shinto holidays, like 7-5-3.

It is entirely unlikely that Chinese Buddhism was the inspiration for the
reverent character of obedience in Japan. Long before Buddhism, Japan settled
into a certain kind of stable relationship with authority. Despite all the
turmoil and internal warfare, the emperor was never overthrown and the
imperial family today is the same family that was the imperial family 2500
years ago (long before Buddhism entered the country). Such continuity is
reflective of certain deliberate choices, and reverence for authority is one
of them.

One difficulty that faces Western people in considering Zen in Japan, is a
tendency to attribute to Buddhism in Japan a level of power and authority that
it never had, in analogy with the Catholic Church. The author makes this
mistake.

~~~
vsef
The core argument of the article is not that Buddhism was either a unique spur
to warfare or the specific source of obedience.

The article is about how Zen has at various historical moments, despite core
anti-violence Buddhist beliefs, been used to justify and excuse violent acts,
or even be directly referenced in learning martial killing arts. Then the
question is: How has a deeply anti-violence religion found pro-war or pro-
violence logic when in those contexts. The author looks for explanations of
this contradiction in the Taoist elements of Zen.

The article references
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War),
it is factual that (some) Zen leaders supported the imperial holy war in WWII.
Enough that some contemporary leaders have issued apologies.

I think the question is more similar to: Christianity has explicitly stated
principles of non-violence and against killing, yet has also been used at
historical moments to justify holy war, during WWII did not prevent (some)
German churches from aligning with Nazism and violent anti-Semitism, etc. What
are the historical philosophical strands in Christianity that have allowed it
(sometimes) to be used to justify acts that would seem to be in direct
contradiction to its core.

~~~
solidsnack9000
_The core argument of the article is not that Buddhism was either a unique
spur to warfare or the specific source of obedience._

It _does_ try to argue that, over and over.

 _The article is about how Zen has at various historical moments, despite core
anti-violence Buddhist beliefs, been used to justify and excuse violent acts,
or even be directly referenced in learning martial killing arts. Then the
question is: How has a deeply anti-violence religion found pro-war or pro-
violence logic when in those contexts. The author looks for explanations of
this contradiction in the Taoist elements of Zen._

Buddhism is not a deeply anti-violence religion -- that is a complete
misrepresentation on the part of the author. The reason is, yes, to be found
in the Taoist elements -- in that, the author is correct.

 _I think the question is more similar to: Christianity has explicitly stated
principles of non-violence and against killing, yet has also been used at
historical moments to justify holy war, during WWII did not prevent (some)
German churches from aligning with Nazism and violent anti-Semitism, etc. What
are the historical philosophical strands in Christianity that have allowed it
(sometimes) to be used to justify acts that would seem to be in direct
contradiction to its core._

This is a great parallel -- it is a similar argument. It is similarly
misguided. No religion that is non-violent would have survived for very long;
but neither would a religion have survived for very long if it was much
inclined to violence. From a marketing standpoint, the non-violent parts sell
better, so people talk about those. The violent parts are kept closer to the
chest. Sometimes they get out of hand.

If we accept for the sake of argument that a religion offers a perfect and
complete teaching, it doesn't mean people can't mishandle it from time to
time. A religion and its handling are indissoluble. Sometimes, this aggregate
is in the wrong. We should try to learn from this and do better, which is to
say: we should add to the historical strands, not subtract from them. This is
the essence of religion.

