In the
Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna
is taught by Krishna that it is his dharma as a warrior to fight the
righteous battle with his cousins and kill them, and that if he kills them
without passion or expectation, practicing karmayoga, he can achieve
salvation even while he does this. A similar mix of purposes, religious and
martial, though with major differences, can be found centuries later with
the samurai warrior class of Japan, and with the militaristic ideology that
later developed in modern Japan.
Although fighting battles and killing enemies would seem
to violate the Buddha-dharma, specifically the Precept of the Buddha
not to kill, an apparent violation that has troubled many over the years,
certain samurai, and later the modern military, ultimately could see
themselves as fulfilling a Buddhist purpose in what they did, even in the
horrors of World War II in the Pacific. The code of the samurai, later
called bushidô, the "Way of the Warrior," was in no way a religious
duty like Arjuna's dharma, but a connection between religion and
battle was made through the way in which Zen Buddhism wedded
Buddhist purposes to both the Taoist practice of an art or a craft and, in a
historical tradition dominated by a military class, the Japanese "martial
arts."
While the most important modern political application of
karmayoga has been Mahâtmâ Gandhi's
Satyagraha, "non-violent
resistance," which inspired Martin Luther King's conduct of the civil rights
movement in the United States, the mix of Zen and bushidô arguably
contributed to the aggression and war crimes of Japan during the "China
Incident" and the Pacific War. The ultimate lesson, as we shall see, is one
about the nature of morality.
"Zen" is
the Japanese pronunciation of the name of a
School of Buddhism that
originally began in China, combining Buddhist ideas with influence from the
ancient Chinese school of
Taoism. 
The Chinese name was "Ch'an"
(
, Chán in Pinyin -- the
character at far left is a modern simplified Japanese version), which itself
was the Chinese pronunciation of dhyana, "meditation," in Sanskrit.
It has become common to use "Zen" to refer to the Ch'an School both in China
and in the other places to which the School spread, like Korea and Vietnam.
This has occurred probably because Zen was popularized in the West by
Japanese practitioners like D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966). The chart
illustrates the historic flow of influence, with the Korean and Vietnamese
pronunciations, as well as the Japanese, of "Ch'an." The major schools of
Zen in Japan are also given.
Traditionally, Ch'an is supposed to have begun in China
with a semi-legendary Buddhist missionary from India, Bodhidharma
(died c.528) -- Japanese Bodai Daruma, or just Daruma. The
story is that Bodhidharma arrived in China, went to the Shao-lin (
)
Monastery, famous as the place were kung-fu (from
, "ability; work; service"),
Chinese boxing, is supposed to have originated (and so popularized in the
Kung Fu television series, starring David Carradine, in the 1970's), and
sat down to stare at a wall. After nine years, he suddenly achieved
enlightenment. Bodhidharma is often shown with legs that are whithered, or
have even fallen off, because of how long he had sat on them, cutting off
the circulation.
In this strange story, Bodhidharma is supposed to have
achieved "Sudden Enlightenment," whose characteristic is not just that it is
sudden but that it is inexplicable. There is nothing about the
wall, or about what Bodhidharma was thinking about (if anything), that
explains why or how he achieved enlightenment. This goes back to a
fundamental feature of Buddhist thought, that not everything about reality
is or can be explained. Thus, when the Buddha was asked about certain
things, he said they were "questions which tend not to edification," and
refused to answer them. The Buddha said:
Bear always in mind what it is that I have not
elucidated, and what it is that I have elucidated. And what have I not
elucidated? I have not elucidated that the world is eternal; I have not
elucidated that the world is not eternal; I have not elucidated that the
world is finite; I have not elucidated that the world is infinite; I
have not elucidated that the soul and the body are identical; I have not
elucidated that the soul is one thing and the body another; I have not
elucidated that the saint [arhat, one who achieves enlightenment
in Theravâda
Buddhism] exists after death; I have not elucidated that the saint does
not exist after death; I have not elucidated that the saint both exists
and does not exist after death; I have not elucidated that the saint
neither exists nor does not exist after death. And why have I not
elucidated this? Because this profits not, nor has to do with the
fundamentals of relgiion, nor tends to aversion, absence of passion,
cessation, quiescence, the supernatural faculties, supreme wisdom, and
Nirvana; therefore have I not elucidated it.
And what have I elucidated?
Misery [duhkha, pain, suffering -- from the root du, to
burn, pain, torment] have I elucidated; the origin of misery have I
elucidated; the cessation of misery have I elucidated; and the path
leading to the cessation of misery have I elucidated [i.e. the
Four Noble Truths].
And why have I elucidated this? Because this does profit, has to do with
the fundamentals of religion, and tends to aversion, absence of passion,
cessation, quiescence, knowledge, supreme wisdom, and Nirvana; therefore
have I elucidated it. [Henry Clarke Warren, Buddhism in Translation,
Harvard University Press, 1896, Atheneum, 1962-1987, p.122 --
Sutta-Pit.aka, Majjhima-Nikâya, Sutta 63]
The Buddha's refusal to "elucidate" that the saint exists
after death, or does not exist, or both, or neither, produces one of the
basic principles of Buddhist thought, the Fourfold Negation (or
"tetralemma"). The Greek
Hellenistic philosopher Pyrrho of Elis picked up this idea while
in India with the army of
Alexander the Great, and taught a skepticism where we are to "suspend
judgment" in all things, refusing to say of anything either that it is, or
that it is not, or both, or neither. The Buddhist origin of this is
unmistakable, even if we did not also have credible evidence of Pyrrho
having been in India. In Buddhism itself, a stronger idea developed, not
just that these issues do not "tend to edification," but that the nature of
reality is such that these rational alternates cannot apply to
it, so that, in fact, the saint neither exists after death nor
does not exist nor both nor neither -- because, whatever the
nature of the saint's existence, it is beyond rational comprehension, beyond
the affirmation or denial of any possible predicate.
We see this in a story recorded about Bodhidharma by
Tao-yüan (Dôgen, in Japanese) in about 1004. Desiring to choose a "dharma
heir" and return to India, Bodhidharma asked his closest students to state
the essence of his teaching [these are the Japanese versions of their
names]:
Dofuku said, "In my opinion, truth is beyond
affirmation or negation, for this is the way it moves."
Bodhidharma replied: "You have my skin."
The nun Soji said: "In my view, it is like Ananda's
sight of the Buddha-land -- seen once and for ever."
Bodhidharma answered: "You have my flesh."
Doiku said: "The four
elements of
light [i.e. fire], airiness [i.e. air], fluidity [i.e. water], and
solidity [i.e. earth] are empty [shûnya, i.e. neither existence
nor non-existence, etc.] and the five
skandhas are
no-things. In my opinion, no-thing is reality."
Bodhidharma commented: "You have my bones."
Finally, Eka bowed before the master -- and remained
silent.
Bodhidharma said: "You have my marrow."
[Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, Charles E. Tuttle, 1967, Anchor
Books, and Shambhala, 1994, pp.ix-x]
In Buddhism, the "marrow" here is a distinctively Ch'an
idea, that the ultimate teaching is silent. This is not, of course, an
unfamiliar idea in China, where Taoism was already the "Silent Teaching" and
the Tao Te Ching
said, "One who knows does not speak; one who speaks does not know"
[LVI:128]. This characteristically Taoist idea, then, is assimilated into
Buddhism through Ch'an. A Buddhist background for it, however, needed to be
discovered or....manufactured. The legend that developed was that
Bodhidharma was the 28th "patriarch" in a line of apostolic succession from
the Buddha's disciple, Mahâkâshyapa, who had smiled faintly and attracted
the Buddha's attention after the Buddha delivered a sermon and was just
twirling a lotus flower. Mahâkâshyapa understood that the real
teaching was the silent twirling of the lotus, and the Buddha recognized
that he alone understood this.
As it happens, one of the most important Buddhist texts
in the Mahâyâna
tradition is the Lotus Sûtra (in full, the Saddharma Pun.d.arîka
Sûtra, the "Sutra of the True Dharma of the Lotus Blossom," Miao-fa
Lien-hua Ching in Chinese and Myôhô Renge Kyô in Japanese), which
has the peculiar structure of referring to a sermon that the Buddha gives,
the Lotus Sermon, even while it is never clear that he actually does give
this sermon in the text (cf. Leon Hurvitz, Scripture of the Lotus Blossom
of the Fine Dharma, Columbia University Press, 1976). Although I don't
know if the claim was ever made, the Ch'an tradition could easily say that
the "Lotus Sermon" was in fact the silent twirling of the flower, which
could not be recorded in the text, but which did constitute the extra-texual
"silent teaching." As it happens, the episode with Mahâkâshyapa is supposed
to have taken place on Gr.dhrakût.a, "Vulture Peak" ("Mount of the
Numinous Eagle" to Hurvitz), which is where the sermon of the Lotus Sutra
was located.
Thus, Ch'an claimed a special "transmission separate from
texts," which had to be confirmed in someone by a person in the line of
transmission from Mahâkâshyapa. The idea of the transmission apart from
texts could be fiercely denied by other Buddhist figures. Zen may sometimes
seem to dispense with texts altogether, but this tendency was even
criticized by some Zen figures, like Dôgen (1200-1253), who said that
without texts Buddhism was nothing but "bald headed monks." Indeed.
Since each person's enlightenment needs to be certified
by someone in the apostolic succession, Ch'an contains an essential element
that could easily become authoritarian and dictatorial, depending on the
personal authority of the certified teachers. But Ch'an contains the
opposite tendency also, at times seeming very antinomian, anarchic, and
individualistic, as in the saying that if you meet the Buddha on the road,
you should kill him -- since enlightenment is not be found in some person.
Other factors will determine which tendency predominates at different times
and places.
The indirect nature of the "silent teaching" can be
illustrated with a couple of examples. One is a story, the very first one I
ever heard about Zen (back in 1967):
A young man hears that there is a Zen master living
as a hermit in the forest. He decides to become his student. After much
searching, he finds the hut of the old master, and the man himself is
out in front of the hut, raking leaves. Introducing himself and
explaining his desire to become the master's student, the young man is
surprised to then receive no answer. The old man has continued his
raking and never even looks up or acknowledges the young man's presence.
This is naturally very disconcerting, and the young man stands and
thinks for some time. Then he does off in another part of the forest and
builds his own hut. Ten years later, while he is raking leaves, he
suddenly achieves enlightenment (satori). He immediately returns
to the old Zen master, bows, and says, "Thank you."
This little story exhibits the purest form of the "silent
teaching." Indeed, it is no less than the "silent treatment" by the old Zen
master. Few Zen masters are so reticent. The Japanese Zen master Bankei
(1622-1693) was famous for his popular lectures. But this story illustrates
very well the idea that enlightenment cannot be conveyed by language.
Indeed, there is a familiar saying that nothing can be said that can
do more for enlightenment than what a finger pointing at the moon can
do for seeing the moon. In this image, it is not hard to understand that the
finger is not the moon, has basically nothing to do with the moon, and that
once the moon is seen, the finger becomes superfluous and irrelevant.
Someone who continued pointing at the moon after all others had already seen
it would be thought a fool. I especially like his image because I had a cat
once, and whenever I used to set out her dinner and tried to point to it,
she always just looked at my finger. In Ch'an, one would say that we are
distracted by the language the same way that my cat was distracted by my
finger. With my cat, I could move my finger toward her dinner, and
eventually she would notice the food and forget about the finger. With
enlightenment, or even with the moon, such an expedient is not available.
Bodhidharma is supposed to have anointed as his successor
(the "second Patriarch" in China) his student Hui-k'o (Eka, the "marrow"
student above, in Japanese). After the death of the fifth Patriarch,
Heng-jen, there was a split in the tradition, resulting in the Northern
School, of Shen-hsui, who held that enlightenment is attained gradually (a
common idea in Buddhism at the time, when it was thought that merit,
from worthy deeds, needed to be accumulated over many lifetimes), and the
Southern school, of Hui-neng (638-713, Enô, in Japanese), who taught the
charactestic Ch'an idea of sudden and spontaneous enlightenment. The
Southern School is the one that became particularly antinomian, careless of
ritual, and emphasizing the "silent teaching" passed from teacher to
student.
Eventually the Southern School eclipsed the Northern
School, but by the 9th century, two more tendencies began to differentiate
Ch'an practice, over the manner of meditation. The basic practice of
meditation, as Bodhidharma seemed to be doing it himself, was called "just
sitting" (tso-ch'an in Chinese, zazen in Japanese --
or, more commonly,
). This is meditation without any
of the meditative aids familiar from India, mantras (words or
formulas), man.d.alas (diagrams), or mudrâs (gestures).
Staring at a wall for nine years is indeed "just sitting." This practice
becomes characteristic of the Ts'ao-tung School in China, the Sôtô
School in Japan.
Another form of practice also became popular, however.
Stories or questions that had arisen in the tradition could themselves
become the objects of meditation (as, in effect, mantras). These were
called kung-an in Chinese --
, kôan in Japanese
-- a term that originally meant a judge's table and which came to mean court
cases. So in meditation one can consider "cases." This became characteristic
of the Lin-chi School in China, the Rinzai School in Japan.
It is a Japanese kôan, from Hakuin (1685-1768),
that is probably the most famous of all. To begin meditation, one might be
asked (by the master or by the abbot of one's monastary), "What is the
sound of one hand clapping?" Several simple answers might suggest
themselves. The sound of one hand clapping could be silence. "Silent
teaching," right? Or it might be slapping the hand against one's thigh, or
even clapping the palm of the hand with the fingers on the same hand. All of
these answers, however reasonable, might only earn a beating from the Zen
master. The point of all such kôans is that there is no
answer. The negation goes deeper than just saying either "silence" or "no
sound." The negation applies to the question itself: It is a
self-contradictory question. One hand cannot clap. So the whole idea
of the sound of one hand clapping is meaningless.
What is the point of asking meaningless questions?
Entirely to disrupt rational thought and make the mind jump the tracks that
normally confine it. Since that is the only way to get at enlightenment,
which also defeats rational thought, then even humble questions can do the
job. But how does one answer the question to the satisfaction of the Zen
master? With an answer just as meaningless and irrelevant as the question,
or perhaps by giving the Zen master a beating himself.
A monk asked Fuketsu: "Without speaking, without
silence, how can you express the truth?"
Fuketsu observed: "I always remember springtime in
southern China. The birds sing among innumerable kinds of fragrant
flowers." [Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, p.200]
Meditation by
"just sitting" and by trying to answer a kôan are what I call the
theoretical side of Ch'an. In mediation what you want is knowledge
or understanding. You are not doing anything. Indeed, in Zen
meditation there is a tendency for one to fall asleep, which is why a
proctor is often used to thrash sitters back to consciousness. Bodhidharma
may have achieved enlightenment after staring at his wall, but he had not
done anything practical, and, if his legs really whithered, he had damaged
his ability to ever do very much that was practical. We find,
however, a Zen tradition that displays a practical application of its
ideas. This is especially conspicuous in the Zen classic, Zen in the Art
of Archery (originally Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschiessens), by
the German philosophy professor Eugen Herrigel (1884-1955).
Herrigel had been interested in Zen for
some time and managed to get a teaching appointment in Japan, from 1923 to
1929, just so he could explore the "mysticism" of such a different
tradition. However, he was discouraged at every attempt to enter into the
practice of meditation. His Japanese hosts (in their own politely xenophobic
way) did not think that meditation would be to his taste (i.e. the gaijin
isn't up to it). What was eventually suggested, however, was that he study
an art under a Zen master. Archery was something he already knew a
little, so that seemed like an agreeable avenue. His wife simultaneously
took up flower arranging [note].
The archery techniques were rather different from what
was familiar to him. But the first lesson, drawing the bow, was not so bad.
The second lesson, however, was very bad. He was told by the archery master
that he must release the arrow without releasing the arrow: "You mustn't
open the right hand on purpose" [Zen in the Art of Archery, Vintage
Books, 1989, p.29]. This would seem to be a necessarily impossible task. If
one is to release the arrow, then the arrow will necessarily need to be
released? No? Evidently not.
Familiarity with Ch'an and Taoism, however, answers the
paradox of the instruction. An impossible task is a kind of kôan, but
to do this, to release the arrow without releasing the arrow,
without purpose or intention, this
is thoroughly explained by something else: It calls for Not-Doing (
),
the fundamental principle of Taoism. Taoism is about actions and
already has views about art and practice. The Zen practice of the "art of
archery" combines Taoist theory and Taoist purposes with Buddhist theory and
Buddhist purposes. The Taoist purpose of art is to perfect an art and
achieve beauty. These are purposes wholly alien to Buddhism. Back in
India, the idea that Buddhism might be used to achieve beauty in life would
be absolutely farcical. In India, Buddhist meditation on the transiency of
life might take place at a cremation ground or other places where death and
decay are present and obvious. By the time Buddhism gets to Japan,
meditation on the transiency of life might take place in the presence of
blooming Cherry Trees, whose flowers are indeed transient, but which are
certainly far more pleasant to contemplate than burning or rotting corpses.
Herrigel says:
The effortlessness of a performance for which great
strength is needed is a spectacle of whose aesthetic beauty the East has
an exceedingly sensitive and grateful appreciation. [ibid., p.27]
But it is not an "appreciation" that comes from Buddhism.
The Buddhist purpose of any practice, of course, is to achieve enlightenment
and Nirvana, the things that the Buddha "elucidated" above.
How are these Buddhist purposes accomplished through the practice of
an art? Or, more specificially, accomplished through Not-Doing? We can find
the answer by asking what is doing the practice if the artist
himself is "not" doing it. As it happens, Herrigel's archery master says
something about this:
Then, one day, after a shot, the Master made a deep
bow and broke off the lessson, "Just then 'It' shot!" he cried, as I
stared at him bewildered...
"What I have said," the Master told me severely, "was
not praise, only a statement that ought not to touch you. Nor was my bow
meant for you, for you are entirely innocent of this shot. [ibid.,
pp.52-53]
When Herrigel achieves not-doing, he does not release the
arrow, but "It" releases the arrow. When Herrigel asks what "It" might be,
he is told, "Once you have understood that, you will have no further need of
me" [p.52].
In Taoist terms, the answer to what the "It" might be is
fairly simple: When we achieve not-doing, it is the Tao that does
whatever is done. But the Tao is not part of Buddhism -- except perhaps as
the Fourth Noble Truth, the "Way" -- but certainly not as a metaphysical
agent. What releases the arrow for Buddhism?
Well, if the purpose of Buddhism
is to achieve enlightenment, then the purpose of Buddhism is to become a
Buddha. If achieving not-doing means achieving enlightenment, then it is
one's own self as a Buddha that releases the arrow. Of course, in
Buddhism there is no
self, so we cannot really say it is "one's own self" that becomes a
Buddha. What we find instead is that it is one's "Buddha Nature" that
is realized in enlightenment. So we can say that one's Buddha Nature is "It"
and that it is the Buddha Nature that releases the arrow.
Now, Herrigel's teacher does not discuss the Buddha
Nature, so in Zen in the Art of Archery ones never does learn what
"It" is. While the Buddha Nature is commonly discussed in Mahâyâna Buddhism,
and also in Zen (e.g. Bankei), there is a Zen tradition to avoid the idea as
not "tending to edification." Thus the Chinese master Chao-chou (778-897,
Joshu in Japanese) was asked whether a dog had a Buddha Nature. Since dogs
are sentient beings, and all sentient beings can be reborn as humans and
become Buddhas, dogs would ordinarily be said to certainly have a Buddha
Nature. However, Chao-chou answered "Wu!" in Chinese. This is often
translated as "No!" but it is not the ordinary Chinese negative for "no" or
"not" (which would be pu -- in Wade-Giles, bu in Pinyin --
Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary, character 5379,
[Harvard University Press, 1943,
1972]). Chao-chou uses Mathew's character 7180,
, whose meaning is given there as
"without; apart from; none. A negative" [p.1065]. Chao-chou is not really
answering "no" to the question, i.e. to deny that a dog has a Buddha
Nature; he is saying not to ask the question, which is hard to do in one
word -- but this is the traditional and reasonable interpretation of his
answer. Since the Japanese pronunciation of wu is mu
(hence, the "mu kôan"), one Japanese author playfully suggested that Chao-chou
was simply making a noise like a cow ("Moo!") and not answering the question
at all. In the "Gateless Gate," the Chinese master Ekai (1183-1260, Japanese
pronunciation), comments with a poem stating the unanswerability of the
question:
Has a dog a Buddha-nature?
This
is the most serious question of all.
If you say yes or no,
You lose your own Buddha-nature.
[Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, p.165]
The "silent teaching" thus may avoid the issue of the
Buddha Nature altogether, but if we want to know what not-doing has to do
with Buddhism, it is the Buddha Nature that is available in place of the
Taoist Tao. This ties together Buddhist practice and Taoist practice and the
dual goals of enlightenment and beauty.
Further debates occur about whether the Buddha Nature is
acquired, through practice and the accumulation of merit, or is
original, i.e. inherent in all beings capable of enlightenment. This
question would, of course, be even more irksome for the likes of Ekai, so we
need not consider it any more here, except to give a characteristic quote
from Bankei, whose whole teaching rested on the "unborn" Buddha-mind, i.e.
everyone's original Buddha Nature:
Not a single one of you people at this meeting is
unenlightened. Right now, you're all sitting before me as Buddhas. Each
of you received the Buddha-mind from your mothers when you were born,
and nothing else. This inherited Buddha-mind is beyond any doubt unborn,
with a marvelously bright illuminative wisdom. In the Unborn, all things
are perfectly resolved. [The Unborn, The Life and Teaching of Zen
Master Bankei, 1622-1693, translated and with an Introduction by
Norman Waddell, North Point Press, San Francisco, 1984, p.35]
Bankei's statement, "In the Unborn, all things are
perfectly resolved," highlights another aspect to this. If Buddhist practice
can produce beauty, then maybe this world, the place of birth, disease, old
age, and death, is not so bad after all. Maybe we don't really need to
avoid rebirth -- the goal of all Indian religion. Indeed, the Chinese
influence in Ch'an tended to turn Buddhism from a world-denying religion
into a more world-affirming religion. This can be stated in traditional
Buddhist terms. The Buddha himself achieved enlightenment under the Bodhi
Tree, but the Sutta-Pit.aka states clearly that he achieved Nirvana
at his death -- "and rising from the fourth trance, immediately The Blessed
One passed into Nirvana" [Buddhism in Translation, op. cit.,
p.110]. We have a special term for that occasion, the pari-nirvân.a,
the "complete" Nirvana. If the purpose of Buddhist practice is to be free of
sam.sâra, the round of birth and death, then this could only be
accomplished through a parinirvân.a.
On the other hand, was the Buddha really still
suffering after he achieved enlightenment? If not, then he had achieved
Nirvana already and sam.sâra had actually been transformed
into a place without suffering. The metaphysical possibility for this had
been opened in Mahâyâna Buddhism by the Mâdhyamika ("Middle") School.
The greatest philosopher of this school, and possibly the greatest Buddhist
philosopher ever, Nagârjuna (c.150-250), had applied the Fourfold
Negation to most attempts at rational understanding, even to the difference
between Nirvana and sam.sâra, which thus come out neither the same,
nor different, nor both, nor neither. This ambiguity opened the way for
world-affirming Chinese interpretations, and probably for the much more
worldly tantrism of the
Vajrayâna stage of
Buddhism even in India. Ch'an, with its Taoist side, was never very
interested in being free of the world, and when it became attached to the
practice of arts and skills, it could even see itself as supremely
successful at participating in worldly affairs. Other schools of Chinese
Buddhism, like T'ien T'ai (Tendai
in Japan), became similarly world affirming, as did some distinctively
Japanese schools.
Thus, we often find statements in East Asian Buddhism
that the fruit of enlightenment is to see that life and the world are just
fine the way they are. This is rather astonishing in comparison to the
original message and milieu of Buddhism back in India, but it naturally
reflects both the internal evolution of Buddhist thought and the powerful
influence, once the message arrives in China, of a civilization that no one
would ever mistake for being world-denying, or "otherwordly" in any sense.
Now, I have been considering the case of Eugen Herrigel
learning the "art of archery"; but there is something odd about that art. It
was not invented in order to shoot at straw targets, as Herrigal and his
teacher do. No, archery had the very practical purpose of use in hunting, to
shoot Bambi, or in war, to shoot people. Indeed, Herrigel's teacher says,
"We master archers say: one shot -- one life!" [p.31]. Archery is a
martial art, i.e. an art of war.
Although archery was originally the most important
martial art in Japan, and shooting targets from horseback is still a
practiced sport, eventually the sword became for the warrior class of
Mediaeval Japan, the samurai, the most imporant weapon, at least in
theory. "The sword is the soul of the samurai" -- though this became the
case mainly during the Edo
Period, when there was rarely real fighting, apart from duels, and when
firearms, which had decided battles in the 16th century, had all been seized
and destroyed. The Edo samurai were required by law to carry two
swords, and no one else was permited to carry more than one short
sword (the wakizashi) for self defense. Today the basic techniques of
sword fighting can still be learned in the sport of kendô (the "way
of the sword"), and the techniques special to using an actual sword can be
learned in the martial art of iaidô (the "art of drawing the sword").
Both of these disciplines can be considered parts of kenjutsu (the
"art of the sword").
The sword as an art easily fits a Taoist paradigm,
articulated through the kôan of a Chinese master, who said that
before he ever studied Ch'an, he always thought that mountains were just
mountains. Then when he began studying, he found that mountains were not
mountains (a typical Taoist paradox). After long study, he stopped worrying
about this and mountains went back to being mountains again.
This easily describes the stages
of reaching enlightenment through meditation, but it can also describe the
stages of learning an art or skill, not just something like the sword, but
even very humble skills.
For instance, learning to drive an automobile with a
clutch, which cannot be done without some instruction, actually involves a
very simple rule: (1) step on the clutch, (2) put the engine in gear, and
(3) slowly step on the gas pedal and the release the clutch at the same
time. This simple procedure always turns out to be very difficult to effect.
It takes, not more instruction, but just constant practice. Eventually, it
becomes easy, smooth, and natural, and the driver simply forgets about it,
doing it automatically, which is good, since a driver needs to look where he
is going. Learning the use of a sword has an added aspect that a completely
ignorant person can still pick up a sword and, in general, know what to do
with it. Such a person can even be dangerous, since in a fight he will be
desperate and there is no telling what they might do. Someone who receives
instruction, however, is endangered by their own concentration on the
techniques they are learning. They may even be a worse swordsman than the
ignorant person, until the techniques become natural and automatic. This is
easily explained by the circumstance that ignorance is much more like
"not-doing" than is the "doing," effort, and trying of the stage of
instruction.
Another humble example also illustrates the Taoist
principle of "No-Mind" (wu-hsin,
), which is the emptiness of
thought that results from the not-doing of the mind. Typing is a skill that
anyone can practice, since the identity of the letters is usually printed on
the keys. Anyone can thus sit down and type, by the "hunt and peck" method,
usually using just index fingers. People can go their whole lives typing
like this and doing just fine. On the other hand, "hunt and peck" can never
be all that fast, and anyone might wish to increase their speed and facility
by taking lessons in "touch typing," where all the fingers are assigned to
particular keys. Beginning instruction, one's typing is certainly much worse
than even the slowest "hunt and peck" typist; and it takes some time to
develop ease and facility with the method. Eventually, however, one's
fingers become accustomed to hitting certain keys, and speeds of 70, 100, or
more words-per-minute can be achieved. A very odd thing may then happen.
Years after I had learned to type, I realized that I had actually
forgotten, consciousnessly, where all the keys were. My fingers would
go them them automatically when typing a word, but if I asked myself,
"where is such-and-such a key," it often took some thought, or looking, to
identify where the key was. This loss of memory, while retaining an
automatic skill, is a perfect example of "No-Mind." With the sword, the
ideal was to be able, with thought, to spontaneously draw, strike, and kill
all in the same blinding motion. I think this is why baseball is popular in
Japan -- a game with a great deal of standing around but where, once the
ball is hit, the action proceeds in a flash, and players who stop to think
what to do will certainly commit an "error."
With the sword, there is indeed little else to really do
with it but kill. But war and killing raise the awkward problem, for anyone
in East Asia, that they violate the moral precept of the Buddha not to kill.
This injunction was taken very seriously in the entire history of Buddhism,
and even in Japan it was long believed that fowlers and fishermen would fall
into one of the Buddhist Hells (of which there are many) because they killed
sentient beings. They did not practice what, in the Eightfold Way, would be
called "right livelihood." And besides, if the purpose of Buddhism is to
eradicate suffering, doesn't killing inflict suffering? But if
fowlers and fishermen would fall into Hell for their professions, what about
men whose livelihood involved killing, not just sentient beings, but human
beings? This would mean the samurai. What is going to prevent them from
falling into Hell?
It has now become common to see the samurai as resorting
to Zen to effect their salvation. Thus, in his Zen and Japanese Culture
[1938, Bollingen Series LXIV, Princeton University Press, 1959], D.T. Suzuki
said:
We have the saying in Japan: "The Tendai is for the
royal family, the Shingon for the nobility, the Zen for the warrior
classes, and the Jôdo for the masses." This saying fitly characterizes
each sect of Buddhism in Japan. [p.63]
Actually, it doesn't. One of the greatest samurai of all,
the first Edo Period Shôgun,
Tokugawa Ieyasu, was a
patron of Jôdo, or "Pure Land" Buddhism. The great appeal of Jôdo for
a samurai was its teaching that all of us are hopelessly sinful, all
destined for Hell, and that our only chance for salvation is to rely on the
power of the original Vow of the Buddha Amitâbha (Amida Butsu
in Japanese) to cause all beings who call on him to be born into his Western
Paradise, his Pure Land, where they can work out their salvation without
suffering or distractions (like sex -- people are born from lotuses).
Invoking Amida means chanting the "Nembutsu" -- Namu Amida Butsu --
where namu comes from Sanskrit namas, "bowing, obeisance,
adoration."
Jôdo, and the closely related Jôdo Shin-shu, are still
the most popular forms of Buddhism in Japan; and so Suzuki's saying that it
is for the "masses" is, as far as that goes, accurate. But besides a samurai
like Ieyasu, and his predecessor
Toyotomi Hideyoshi
(who is buried on Amida-yama in Kyôto), we also have a counterexample
to Suzuki in perhaps the greatest Japanese epic, the Heike Monogatari
(The Tale of the Heike, c.1240 -- or see the story of "Hoichi the
Earless" in Masaki Kobayashi's classic 1964 movie Kwaidan). As the
fleet of the samurai clan of the Taira is defeated at the battle of
Dan-no-ura by the
Minamoto clan in
1185, and the child emperor Antoku is about to die with his grandmother,
Nii-no-ama, when she jumps with him into the water, she first tells him to
face East, to honor the Sun goddess Amaterasu-ômikami at Ise, and to the
West, to invoke the Buddha Amida and his Pure Land.
She turned her face to the young sovereign, holding
back her tears. "Don't you understand? You became an Emperor because you
obeyed the Ten Good Precepts in your last life, but now an evil karma
holds you fast in its toils. Your good fortune has come to an end. Turn
to the east and say goodbye to the Grand Shrine of Ise, then turn to the
west and repeat the sacred name of Amida Buddha, so that he and his host
may come to escort you to the Pure Land. This county is a land of
sorrow; I am taking you to a happy realm called Paradise." [The Tale
of the Heike, translated by Helen Craig McCullough, Stanford
University Press, 1988, p.378]
The Jôdo sect did not yet exist at this time, but Pure
Land practice was widespread. Thus, not only do we find samurai, like Ieyasu
and Hideyoshi, as Pure Land patrons, but also important persons from the
"royal [actually, imperial] family."
In Pure Land practice, the whole issue of the sinfulness
of war and killing is conveniently avoided. People are expected to sin
anyway, so if we must, we don't have to worry about it too much. All we have
to worry about is getting to the Pure Land. This is not just a Japanese
approach. Rebirth into a Buddha Land (there are several besides Amida's) is
also one of the possibilities in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Not as good
as Nirvana, but better than being reborn here.
There were also, however, samurai who were patrons of
Zen. This began with the
Hôjô Regents of the
Kamakura Shoguns,
but later one of the most important figures was Oda Nobunaga, the first
local lord, besides Hideyoshi and Ieyasu, who was responsible for the
unification of Japan in the 16th century. The personalities of the three
figures are captured in a parable about how each of them would get a bird to
sing: Nobunaga would say, "Sing, or I'll kill you"; Hideyoshi would say,
"Sing, or I'll make you sing"; and Ieyasu would say, "Sing, or I'll wait for
you to sing." Distinguished by his ruthlessness, Nobunaga became infamous
for burning the Tendai temples on Mt. Hiei, above Kyôto, and he is buried in
a complex of Zen temples, the Daitokuji, in the same city.
How would Zen enable the samurai to avoid the sinfulness
of their profession? Mainly through the Taoist expedient of not thinking
about it. The "silent teaching" can very effectively avoid moral issues,
including breaches of the precepts, by dismissing them with all other
conceptual and rational issues. Taoism, of course, expects that by
not-doing, by not thinking about moral principles, things will take care of
themselves.
Exterminate benevolence, discard rectitude
[righteousness],
And the people will again be filial...
[Tao Te Ching, translated by D.C. Lau, Penguin Books, 1963, p.
23, XIX:43]
A version of this also turns up in Robert Pirsig's Zen
and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: "Peace of mind produces right
values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right
actions...." [p. 267]." Pirsig apparently thinks that the right meditative
attitude, "peace of mind," will spontaneously produce right values,
thoughts, and actions, without the mediation of rational examination and
analysis -- the kind of thing that
Socrates, whom Pirsig
dislikes, might do. This is a version of
moral aestheticism.
With Zen, its effects can be tested. Did the mastery of archery by Eugen
Herrigel produce "right values, thoughts, and actions"? Evidently not, since
he returned to Germany and became an enthusiastic Nazi. Is there anything in
Zen and the Art of Archery that might provide some moral principle
prejudicial to things like Naziism? Really, no. D.T. Suzuki himself, writing
in the 1930's, said:
Zen has no special doctrine or philosophy, no set of
concepts or intellectual formulas, except that it tries to release one
from the bondage of birth and death, by means of certain intuitive modes
of understanding peculiar to itself. It is, therefore, extremely
flexible in adapting itself to almost any philosophy and moral doctrine
as long as its intuitive teaching is not interfered with. It may be
found wedded to anarchism or fascism, communism or democracy, atheism or
idealism, or any political or economic dogmatism. It is, however,
generally animated with a certain revolutionary spirit, and when things
come to a deadlock -- as they do when we are overloaded with
conventionalism, formalism, or other cognate isms -- Zen asserts itself
and proves to be a destructive force. [ibid., p. 63]
As he was writing, "fascism" actually meant Adolf Hitler
and Benito Mussolini, and "communism" actually meant Josef Stalin. They were
all of them, indeed, a "destructive force" -- they may have been responsible
for the deaths of up on 70 million people. And Suzuki himself appeared to
have no objections to fascism and militarism as they developed in Japan --
recently examined by Brian Victoria in his Zen at War [Weatherhill,
1997]. Morally this leaves us with Zen as completely undiscriminating --
morally blind -- which is not what Taoism, or many Zen masters, would have
expected. We might call this the "Dark Side of the Tao," on analogy with the
"Dark Side" of the Tao-like "Force" in the
Star Wars movies. As it
happened, the "silence," or the "dark side," allowed for the practice of
great wrongs and the perpetration of great evils.
What happened to Taoism, morally, back in China? Well,
nature abhores a vacuum. If the Taoists didn't want to talk about morality,
the Confucians were more than happy to do so. The void of moral discourse
left by Taoism was easily filled by the moral discourse of Confucianism; and
Taoists were largely expected to obey Confucian morality in their public and
private life, enforced by Confucian officials, which is why Taoist sages
often took to the hills as hermits. In Japan something rather different
happened. The samurai would pay little attention to
Confucius, who, after all,
had said, "Your job is to govern, not to kill" [Analects, XII:19]. It
was indeed the job of the samurai to kill. Nor was there a class of
Confucian bureaucrats to dominate the government, as in China during the
Ming Dynasty. Japan
had gone the opposite way of China, with the military coming to dominate the
country in the
Kamakura Period. What moved to fill the Taoist void of Zen was then the
ethos of the military, of the samurai, namely bushidô, the
"Way of the Warrior." In the feudal system that came to dominate Japan,
one's duty was to one's lord. If he said, "Go kill those fellows," you go
kill them. If he said, "Go kill your family," you go kill them. And if he
said, "Go kill yourself," then you go kill yourself (seppuku, ritual
suicide).
While it is not uncommon to see statements, in martial
arts books or even in samurai movies, that a samurai only draws his sword in
the interest of justice, or only returns an attack that has been made on him
(the "submissive way," judô,
, ideology derived from Taoism),
the only samurai who had the luxury of acting this way were the rônin,
the "wave men," who were unemployed and so without a master. They
could defend the innocent or do whatever else they liked, as we see in the
classic Kurosawa Akira movies The Seven Samurai (Shichi-nin no
Samurai, 1954 -- remade as a Western, the Magnificent Seven,
1960) and Yojimbo (1961 -- remade as a Western, A Fistful of
Dollars, 1964 -- though the original story seems to have been Dashiell
Hammett's "Continental Op" novel, Red Harvest). There are even
stories about a samurai who was the "master of no sword." In one of those,
he was recognized and challenged by another samurai while they were taking a
ferry across a river. He suggested that they be put off and fight on an
island that was coming up. After they got off the ferry, the "master of no
sword" pushed the boat off but then jumped on himself, calling back, "That
is my technique of 'no sword'," as the challenger was left behind on the
island.
But no samurai wanted to be unemployed. This meant
poverty, and the samurai as much as anyone wanted a family and a position in
life. How unpleasant it could be to be a rônin we see in Masaki
Kobayashi's movie Harakiri (1962), where we find that many unemployed
samurai are really reduced to begging. Toshiro Mifune's character in
Yojimbo, like John Belushi in his Saturday Night Live samurai
skits of the 1970's, is dressed very nearly in rags and seems to scratch
himself a lot, from lice or just lack of bathing. Indeed, that is what
poverty is like. With a job and a master, however, a samurai no longer was
free to make his own judgments -- he was expected to do what he was told.
What bushidô was originally all about is now open
to debate. G. Cameron Hurst III argued in "Death, honor, and loyalty: the
bushido ideal" [Philosophy East and West, Volume XL, No. 4, October
1990, pp.511-527] that 20th century notions about bushidô mostly have
nothing to do with the samurai but are based on an 1899 book by Nitobe Inazô
(1862-1933), Bushidô: The Soul of Japan. Nitobe was Western educated,
knew relatively little about Japanese history, and even thought that he had
coined the word bushidô himself. His ability to faithfully represent
Japanese history, culture, and values is thus sorely in question. Hurst, on
the occasion of the death of Emperor
Hirohito in 1989,
noted the hostility to the Emperor, as a possible war criminal, at the time.
The emotional reaction to the emperor's death and
funeral protocol, as well as discussions with many who are not Japan
specialists, impressed upon me once again the widespread belief that the
behavior of Japanese forces in World War II was conditioned by adherence
to the old samurai code of ethics called bushidô, which
emphasized unflinching loyalty to the emperor, even to the point of
willingly sacrificing one's life, by suicide if necessary. Bushidô in
many Western minds, as represented, for example, in Baron Russell's
The Knights of Bushido, is intimately linked to the rise of Japanese
imperialism, kamikaze attacks, suicide charges, and
prisoner-of-war atrocities. That this is a historical perversion -- that
even if there was a modern bushidô that functioned as a normative
ethical code for Japanese troops, it might in fact be a modern creation,
with no real link to any Japanese traditional set of ethics, real or
imagined -- is seldom considered. [p.512]
While Hurst seems correct that the 20th century idea of
bushidô in both Japan and the West is a modern,
Meiji period,
creation, and while even traditional Japanese discussions of the duties of
the samurai were largely the creation of the
Edo Period, when more
samurai were bureaucrats than warriors, fighting more duels than battles,
nevertheless, I think he is wrong about it being a "historical
perversion" to trace the crimes of the modern Japanese military back to the
samurai. If Hurst merely wants to say that there was never a unified,
recognized, official ideology called "bushidô" in traditional Japan, then he
is certainly right. If he wants to say that the values and practices that
led to the characteristics of later Japanese militarism were hotly disputed
by many Japanese themselves at the time, he is certainly right. But if he
wants to say that the modern, militaristic versions of bushidô have
"no real link to any Japanese traditional set of ethics," then I think he is
quite wrong. However much a modern creation, the ideology of bushidô
is very much based on real values and tendencies in Japanese history. Not
everyone had to agree about these values and tendencies for them to
exist, any more than all the samurai had to practice Zen rather than Jôdo,
for them to be real antecedents and so real precedents and
sources for the Japanese militarism and war crimes of the 20th century.
A key point is about the meaning of "loyalty."
The
Confucian term is
chung (zhong in Pinyin). The word, although not well defined
in the Analects, nevertheless appears to mean "conscientiousness,"
and is applied to those who "do their best, to do their duty," where their
duty is always, in Confucianism, to do what is right. That is the Chinese
ideal. In Japan, however, most certainly by the modern period (Meiji through
World War II), chung, or chû in Japanese, had come to
mean blind obedience, that "loyal" persons are supposed to do what
they are told, whether it is even right or wrong. Where in China a truly
"loyal" minister might refuse to carry out the wrongful orders of an
Emperor, and gladly pay with his life for refusing, a martyr to
righteousness, in Japan this kind of individual dissent became intolerable.
The question, then, must be, how far back does this
Japanese interpretation go? When did the ideal of "blind obedience" become
current? Indeed, it became established quite early. A good clue about this
is that we can step right into the middle of the debate already raging in
the 13th century, when the Buddhist monk
Nichiren (1222-1282),
founder of a sect now usually known by his name (though previously as the
Hokke or "Lotus" sect), argued vehemently against the "blind obedience"
interpretation of chû, citing the Chinese Classics:
In the same letter you say: "To obey one's lord or
parents, whether they are right or wrong, is exemplary behavior,
approved by the Buddhas and kami and according with worldly
virtue." Because this is the most important of important matters, I will
not venture to give my own view but will cite original texts. The
Classic of Filial Piety says, "A son must reprove his father, and a
minister must reprove his sovereign." Cheng Hsüan comments, "When a
sovereign or father behaves unjustly and his minister or son does not
admonish him, that will lead to the country's ruin or the family's
destruction." The Hsin-hsü says, "One who does not admonish a
ruler's tyranny is not a loyal retainer. One who does not speak from
fear of death is not a man of courage." ...I can only grieve to see my
lord, to whom I am so deeply indebted, deceived by teachers of an evil
Dharma and about to fall into the evil paths. ["Yorimoto chinjô,"
Shôwa teihon Nichiren Shônin ibun 2:1356]
Nichiren himself preached adherence to the Lotus Sutra
above all else, and rebuked the authorities for their adherence to false
doctrines, like Zen, which he called the "work of devils." He and his
successors found themselves at odds with the authorities over this then and
ever since, often exiled or tortured. Nichiren himself was almost executed.
He was arguing against the attitude, certainly of the authorities
themselves, who happened to be the samurai Hôjô Regents of the Kamakura
Shôguns, who expected obedience. So the tension between Chinese (Confucian)
loyalty and Japanese (samurai) loyalty already existed soon after the
samurai had themselves taken over Japanese history -- the effect of the
battle of Dan-no-ura and the establishment of the Shôgunate.
It is noteworthy in this that the attitude of the
authorities, in prefering blind obedience, was nothing peculiarly Japanese.
We don't need a theory of the "Japanese mind" to explain it. Authority loves
obedience, and there are still few politicians, judges, or policemen even in
the United States who would allow, as Martin Luther King said, that "an
unjust law is no law at all." In the German Army, the saying was, "An order
is an order is an order." We find the ability of authorities to command
obedience compromised only through some kind of institutional check. In
China, even after the triumph of the scholar bureaucrats, there was still an
institutional tension between the mandarins and the Throne itself; and in
Mediaeval Europe, all know of the institutional independence of the Church
and of the epic contests for authority between the Popes and the German
Emperors, Kings of England, France, Aragon, etc., etc. But with only
figurehead Emperors, and de facto rulers who were samurai themselves,
Japan no longer possessed, and later would ruthlessly crush, any
institutions or movements that might oppose the absolute authority of the
(now military) government. This circumstance may be obscured by undoubted
examples in Japanese history of betrayal and disobedience, even revolt and
insurrection, but these examples are presented in Japanese history itself as
redeemed by the willingness of the disobedient to die. This makes it
all the easier for the government to crush real dissent and to create,
whether in the 17th century or the 1930's, a totalitarian state.
Later in Japanese history, we get actual manuals of
bushidô, most famously the Hagakure ("Hidden [kakure]
[by?] Leaves [ha]," 1716) by Yamamoto Tsunetomo [a book cited and
illustrated in a curious 1999 movie, starring Forest Whitaker, Ghost Dog,
which is about an unusual gangster, a hit man, who lives by Yamamoto's code
of the samurai -- the movie is even subtitled The Way of the Samurai].
Cameron Hurst is concerned to emphasize that many scholars disagreed with
Tsunetomo in his day. Fair enough. But, again, the point is not that
everyone agreed with him, but that we only have to produce some
counterexample to Hurst's statement that there is "no real link to any
Japanese traditional set of ethics" from 20th century bushidô.
Tsunetomo is a "link" and does represent a "Japanese traditional set of
ethics." Tsunetomo also, as it happened, became, on the death of his lord in
1700, a Zen monk.
Confucius says, "The superior man [or gentleman]
understands righteousness; the small [or mean] man understands profit" [Analects,
IV:16]. Tsunetomo rejects both.
To hate injustice and stand on righeousness is a
difficult thing. Furthermore, to think that being righteous is the best
one can do and to do one's utmost to be righteous will, on the contrary,
bring many mistakes. The Way is in a higher place than righteousness.
This is very difficult to discover, but it is the highest wisdom. When
seen from this standpoint, things like righteousness are rather shallow.
[Hagakure, William Scott Wilson translation, Discus/Avon, 1979,
1981, pp.25-26]
Tsunetomo is not here recommending a Machiavellian
prudence that occasionally must "take the way of evil" for a good end [The
Prince, Daniel Donno translation, Bantam, 1966, 1981, p.63], that
approach would be calculating and Tsunetomo says:
Calculating people are contemptible. The reason for
this is that calculation deals with loss and gain, and the loss and gain
mind never stops. [p.44]
Nor does one go looking for a righteous lord. Instead,
"being a retainer is nothing other than being a supporter of one's lord,
entrusting matters of good and evil to him" [p.20], i.e. suspending one's
own judgment. Indeed:
Nakamo Jin'emon constantly said, "A person who serves
when treated kindly by the master is not a retainer. But one who serves
when the master is being heartless and unreasonable is a retainer. You
should understand this principle well." [p.132]
In other words, whether the lord is kind or heartless,
reasonable or irrational, one is to obey him, and "matters of good and evil"
are left to his judgment. All the retainer does is obey. "For a warrior
there is nothing other than thinking of his master" [p.23].
So if the samurai thinks neither of righteousness nor
profit, what does he "understand"? The answer is the real theme of the
Hagakure, "The Way of the Samurai is found in death" [p.17]. A
samurai understands death.
Victory and defeat are matters of the temporary force
of circumstances. The way of avoiding shame is different. It is simply
death.
Even if it seems certain that you will lose,
retaliate. Neither wisdom nor technique has a place in this. A real man
does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an
irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams.
[p.30]
Thus Tsunetomo condemns the famous "47 Rônin," the
retainers of Lord Asano of Akô, who waited a year to avenge his death (in
1701), not because they defied the Shôgun and killed Lord Kira in revenge,
but just because they waited (see Inagaki Hiroshi's movie
Chushingura, "The Treasury of the Loyal Retainers," 1962). This was
"calculating." What a samurai needs to do is "constantly hardening one's
resolution to die in battle, deliberately becoming as one aleady dead"
[p.33].
The person without previous resolution to inevitable
death makes certain that his death will be in bad form. but if one is
resolved to death beforehand, in what way can he be dispicable? [p.34]
Concerning martial valor, merit lies more in dying
for one's master than in striking down the enemy. [p.55]
This is a real Todesliebe, a "love of death" --
for which we have, interestingly, a suitable term in German. These
sentiments easily explain what Rear Admiral Matome Ugaki wrote in his diary
in 1941, after seeing the submarine I-22 leaving Saeki Bay on the way
to join the Pearl Harbor Strike Force at Hitokappu Bay in the Kuriles:
How much damage they will be able to inflict is not
the point. The firm determination not to return alive on the part of
those young lieutenants and ensigns who smilingly embarked on their
ships cannot be praised too much. The spirit of kesshitai
[self-sacrifice] has not changed at all. We can fully rely upon them.
Gordon W. Prange, who quotes this in At Dawn We Slept
[Penguin Books, 1981], says:
One cannot help wondering, if the amount of damage
they could inflict was "not the point," what indeed was the purpose of
training, arming, equipping them, and sending them forth? [p. 349]
If we answer simply, "the Way of the Samurai is death,"
then Cameron Hurst might say we are being anachronistic; but, indeed,
Admiral Ugaki's statement doesn't make any sense on any consideration
of prudence or righteousness. What makes more sense to us is what George C.
Scott says as General George Patton at the beginning of the 1970 movie
Patton:
The idea is not to die for your country, but to get
the other poor, dumb bastards to die for their country.
So if we want to explain Admiral Ugaki we have to look
for something in Japanese history and culture that exalts death above
prudence or even rationality. But that is certainly there in
Hagakure. Each of the "young lieutenants and ensigns" were at, as
Tsunetomo says, "the point of throwing away one's life for his lord" [p.21],
though the lord in this case had become the Emperor rather than a feudal
daimyô.
But there was a bit more. Admiral Ugaki was really not
indifferent to success, and Tsunetomo sometimes lets some consideration of
prudence slip into his maxims. Thus he says, "If a warrior is not unattached
to life and death, he will be of no use whatsoever" [p.158]. "Use"?! What
kind of heresy is this? A warrior is to be "used" for something besides
getting himself killed? Indeed. We see a different aspect of this in the
following long passage:
In the secret principles of Yagyû Tajima no kami
Munenori [1571-1646, founder of the official school of the sword of the
Tokugawa Shôgunate] there is the saying, "There are no military tactics
for a man of great strength." As proof of this, there was once a certain
vassal of the shogun who came to Master Yagyû and asked to become a
disciple. Master Yagyû said, "You seem to be a man who is very
accomplished in some school of martial art. Let us make the
master-disciple contract after I learn the name of the school."
But the man replied, "I have never practiced one of
the martial arts."
Master Yagyû said, "Have you come to make sport of
Tajima no kami? Is my perception amiss in thinking that you are a
teacher to the shogun?" But the man swore to it and Master Yagyû then
asked, "That being so, do you not have some deep conviction?"
The man replied, "When I was a child, I once became
suddenly aware that a warrior is a man who does not hold his life in
regret. Since I have held that in my heart for many years, it has become
a deep conviction, and today I never think about death. Other than that
I have no special conviction."
Master Yagyû was deeply impressed and said, "My
perceptions were not the least bit awry. The deepest principle of my
military tactics is just that one thing. Up until now, among all the
many hundreds of disciples I have had, there is no one who is licensed
in this deepest principle. It is not necessary for you to take up the
wooden sword [i.e. become a student of the sword]. I will initiate you
right now." And it is said that he promptly handed him the certified
scroll. [pp.163-164]
What we see in this passage is the notion that someone
who does not worry about death also has a certain skill that follows
from this. The man is certified in the sword by Maser Yagyû just because of
this state of mind, not because of any actual instruction. There was also a
samurai saying, that "he who leaves his house intending to live will die;
and he who leaves his house intending to die, will live." There is a Taoist
expectation in this that, by the "doing" of life, death will result, but by
the "not-doing" of life (the "doing" of death), life will result. This was
actually the frame of mind of many of the naval pilots who attacked Pearl
Harbor. When they returned successfully to their aircraft carriers, many
pilots were astonished that they had survived. All they had thought about
was dying and had not considered surviving. That they both survived and
succeeded in their mission could then be ascribed to the skill that their
determination to die had given them. Not skill in the sword, to be sure, but
skill in modern "martial arts" like torpedoing and divebombing -- the
divebomber pilots who called themselves "Hell Divers" after an American
movie starring Wallace Beery and Clark Gable (Hell Divers, 1932).
Somewhat miraculous results from not-doing are already expected in the
Tao Te Ching, which says, "Heaven and earth will unite and sweet dew
will fall" [XXXII:72]. So the intention to die can easily to be thought not
to be without its reward.
The Pearl Harbor attack and several months of subsequent
actions were very successful, but eventually many Japanese soldiers,
sailors, and airmen went off intending to die, and did, without even
achieving military success thereby. Actually, this was no more than what was
expected by the architect of the Pearl Harbor strike, Admiral Yamamoto
Isoroku (1884-1943), who did not believe in suicidal attacks and had no
illusions about Japan's ability to win a protracted war with the United
States. He almost seemed to be expecting and welcoming death by the time he
was shot down and killed in 1943. When it became clear that Japan was losing
the war, however, the reponse of the Japanese military seemed to be that
they were losing just because the men were not intending to die with enough
spiritual purity. The introduction of the kamikaze suicide pilots in
1944 would have gladdened the heart of the earlier Yamamoto, Tsunetomo, who,
it seems, would have relished such senseless acts of pointlessly throwing
away lives for the Emperor. Of course, the 20th century military was still
rather hoping for some success from these tactics, and was perfectly willing
to see 100,000 Japanese soldiers, and a similar number of civilians, die in
the defense of Okinawa, long after the war was known to be lost, just to
discourage the invasion of Japan. Discourage it they did; so President
Truman dropped atomic
bombs, killing another couple hundred thousand Japanese, and received the
Japanese surrender on the same terms they could have gotten a year earlier.
The 20th century fruit of blind obedience and the love of
death was thus ugly and sordid almost beyond comprehension. And this is not
even to take into account Japanese atrocities against civilians and
prisoners of war -- incidents like the horrific "Rape of Nanking" -- often
motivated by racism and by contempt for those who ignominiously surrendered
rather than "throwing away" their lives in senseless but virtuous death.
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.
Thus, into the "silence" of the "Dark Side of the Tao"
there rose values and behaviors that would have been appalling in every
imaginable way to Confucius and to the sages of Taoism, let alone to the
saints and ancient teachers of Buddhism. The aestheticization of brutal
violence, which is no less than what we see in any "martial art," is
necessarily offensive to both Confucianism and Buddhism, and would be an
unexpected and unwelcome possibility to Taoism.
A characeristic example of the aestheticization of
violence may be seen in Inagaki Hiroshi's triology of movies, Musashi
Miyamoto (in Japan, 1954), or Samurai (I, II, & III), when
subtitled. Mifune Toshiro plays the famous rônin Musashi Miyamoto
(1584-1645), a real but semi-legendary character, supposedly influenced by
the monk Takuan (1573-1645), who is usually considered a representative of
Zen but was actually ordained in Jôdo. In the movies, Musashi has a friendly
rival, Sasaki Kojiro, whom in the end he must reluctantly face and kill in a
duel -- fighting with only an oar and a short sword. Sasaki, however, is a
worthy and noble samurai, who at one point early in the story is ambushed by
a group of bad guys. Musashi hears of this and rushes to his friend's aid.
By the time he arrives, however, all the bad guys have been killed and
Sasaki has already left. When Musashi sees the scene of the fight, with
bodies strewn around, does he exclaim "What carnage!" or anything of the
sort? No. He says, "What art!" It seems that every attacker had been
killed with just one sword stroke, an elegant economy of effort and
demonstration of artistic perfection. Musashi, it is true, it shown becoming
weary of fighting and hates to kill his worthy rival. But he does
nevertheless.
A very real life moment of both senseless death and
aesthetic violence took place at the Battle of Midway in 1942. The aircraft
carrier Hiryu ("Flying Dragon"), fatally hit by American divebombers,
was burning and sinking. The commander of the carrier division, gifted Rear
Admiral Yamaguchi Tamon, decided to go down with the ship -- a British
tradition, to be sure, but fully conformable with bushidô. Captain
Kaku Tomeo of the Hiryu decided to stay with the Admiral, and
Yamaguchi was overheard, by others leaving to abandon ship, saying to him,
"There is such a beautiful moon tonight. Shall we watch it as we sink?" As
it happens, "moon viewing" is a venerable Japanese custom -- the old castle
at Matsumoto even has a special "moon-viewing-tower." So here we have this
ancient aesthetic diversion calmly anticipated on the burning deck of an
aircraft carrier, with exploding magazines underneath, in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean.
So what went wrong here? Simple enough. Logically, the
"silent teaching" is a poor, indeed an empty, basis for moral judgment.
Confucius, not the Tao Te Ching, was correct about that. Taoism
opened itself to misuse, and so did Ch'an, though many people still have
difficulty believing that the "true religion" or the proper "peace of mind"
can actually accompany wrongful, even cruel and atrocious, actions. But this
is the case. It is not to say, on the other hand, that Taoism and Ch'an are
without value. They are of great interest and value -- Taoism corresponds
quite nicely to modern theories of
spontaneous order; Ch'an
is quite orthodox Buddhism when it comes to the defeat of reason by
enlightenment and Nirvana; and Zen really may help both with archery and
with motorcycle maintenance -- just not as morality. Even real
holiness in religion may be accompanied by moral error. Morality is a matter
for reason, and both religion and aesthetics can be morally judged,
regardless of their own claims, intuitions, or logic. The real lesson is for
the Polynomic Theory of Value,
that morality, aesthetics, and religion are about different things,
logically independent systems of value, but that human existence combines
them all. In Buddhist terms, the dharma as a moral teaching cannot be
replaced with an incomprehensible transmission separate from the
texts; and the blind obedience of the samurai, whether practicing Zen or Jôdo, was neither righteous action nor right livelihood.
Living Zen News
No
7
??? - Ma ci siamo
o no ?... " La Trasmissione della Lampada " ha 'causata' la crudeltà dei
militari giapponesi ?!?
