Why Are We Surprised When Buddhists Are Violent?
One notion central to this discourse, though, is the idea
that Buddhism is under threat in the contemporary world — an idea that appears not only in Myanmar’s history but also in the Buddhist texts, written in the Indic language of Pali, that are taken as canonical in Myanmar.
In this period, Buddhist religious leaders, often living under colonial rule in the historically Buddhist countries of Asia, together with Western enthusiasts who eagerly sought their teachings, collectively produced a newly ecumenical form of Buddhism — one
that often indifferently drew from the various Buddhist traditions of countries like China, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Japan and Thailand.
The widespread embrace of modern Buddhism is reflected in familiar statements insisting
that Buddhism is not a religion at all but rather (take your pick) a “way of life,” a “philosophy” or (reflecting recent enthusiasm for all things cognitive-scientific) a “mind science.”
Buddhism, in such a view, is not exemplified by practices like Japanese funerary rites, Thai amulet-worship or Tibetan oracular rituals
but by the blandly nonreligious mindfulness meditation now becoming more ubiquitous even than yoga.
While history suggests it is naïve to be surprised
that Buddhists are as capable of inhuman cruelty as anyone else, such astonishment is nevertheless widespread — a fact that partly reflects the distinctive history of modern Buddhism.
By “modern Buddhism,” we mean not simply Buddhism as it happens to exist in the contemporary world
but rather the distinctive new form of Buddhism that emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries.
To be really changed by a belief regarding one’s relationship to all other beings, one must cultivate
that belief — one must come to experience it as vividly real — through the disciplined practices of the Buddhist path
