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 From Collaboration to Criticism C H A P T E R S I X The Zen leaders who responded to Ina Buitendijk’s letters and participated in the Road to Peace Symposium complemented their apologies with remarks about how Zencouldpromotepeaceandavoidmistakesinthefuture.InhislettertoBuitendijk, Hirata Seikō calls on Zen Buddhists to follow the example of Pope John Paul II’s apology to Jews and begin “sincerely acknowledging the errors resulting from our sword-of-death leanings in the past, reaffirming our commitment to training and awakening, and standing firm in the true spirit of Zen Buddhism as we work to attain world peace and genuine compassion toward all beings.”1 He looks in particular to ongoing “spiritual exchange” between Buddhist and Christian monastics as providing “fruitful new directions toward the realization of peace and harmony in the world,”2 though he does not indicate how, exactly, spiritual exchange would make a significant contribution to preventing war. Kubota Jiun, in his response to Buitendijk, offers a focus for Zen ethical analysis: “The ultimate roots of these wars lie in the ego-consciousness of human beings.”3 He does not, however, probe the “ultimate roots” of Zen masters’ collaboration with those wars: presumably their own “ego-consciousness,” a fact that collides head-on with pious claims about the degree to which Zen masters or the founders of Zen movements have transcended such consciousness. But he does offer a comment about Yasutani Haku’un, the founder of Sanbō Kyōdan, the Zen movement Kubota heads: “After all, it was his Dharma that we wished him to transmit to us; never have I aspired, therefore, to learn his ideological standpoint.”4 This statement prompts the question of the degree to which one’s Dharma can be divorced from one’s ideological standpoint. If we assume that Yasutani’s—or any Zen master’s—teaching can operate independent of his ideology, which his FROM C OL L A B ORAT ION T O C RIT IC IS M  disciple Kubota characterizes as “right-wing and anti-Semitic,” then that Dharma, while perhaps having existential and religious import, has little or no bearing on his ethics, at least in relation to social and political issues. But is this the kind of Dharma that the Buddha realized? And does Sanbō Kyōdan, insofar as it is centered on Yasutani’s Dharma, offer any method for avoiding future co-optation and formulating a critical social ethic? Kubota writes, “It is time for us to learn seriously from the experience of the past one hundred years and to take actions based on new wisdom for the twenty-first century.”5 Unfortunately, while issuing this call to action, he offers no specifics about this “new wisdom” and the “actions” that might be based on it. Similarly, the September 2001 Myōshinji declaration of war responsibility includes the line, “It will take time and effort to investigate the root causes of these errors and implement the reforms necessary to insure that they never happen again,”6 but it offers no concrete specifics about those root causes or reforms. In his “Resolution” about that declaration, Hosokawa Kei’itsu does get more specific. He writes, “War inevitably involves the indiscriminate taking of human life, whereas all who call themselves Buddhists must equally respect every form of life, human or otherwise. Ethical behavior for Buddhists, whether lay or ordained, is based upon the precept against the taking of life. We therefore cannot tolerate any approval of wartime killing, much less of the abhorrent crime of terrorism.”7 Hosokawa continues, “We monks of the Zen tradition must remain deeply conscious of the fact that we live only because of the sacrifice of the lives of many other beings. We must therefore do our best, in a spirit of compunction and gratitude, to practice ‘life-liberating compassion’ [hōjō jihi, the act of releasing birds, fish, and animals].”8 But how far does this standpoint get us in the direction of ethics and decision making? What practical mileage can one get out of claims that we “must equally respect every form of life, human or otherwise”? Does that mean that a mosquito carrying eastern equine encephalitis has moral standing equal to that of the person to whom this insect might transmit the deadly disease? And if we “cannot tolerate any approval of wartime killing,” is Hosokawa advocating radical pacifism, with all the problems that just-war theorists have pointed out about that stance? Hosokawa does, however, offer suggestions for...

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