Michael Zimmermann

Buddhism and Violence Michael Zimmermann

One of the aims of this volume is to provide material, based on critical, unbiased research illustrating the fact that, at particular moments in their history and in certain aspects of their doctrines, the traditions of Buddhism, like other religious traditions, have actively or passively promoted - and may continue to promote - violent modes of behaviour or structural violence. The more comprehensive and systematic inquiry can only proceed once this fact is fully achknowledged and has challenged the dominate and obstinate perception of Buddhism as a religion that in its conception and history is categorically divorced from violence. The articles in this volume cover an extremely broad spectrum of the Buddhist world in term of regions and periods. They deal with aspects of violence starting in India before the Common Era and ranging to the support of Japnese militarism by Buddhist leadersand scholars far into the twentieth century.