Why We Need the Precepts

In a book entitled Zen at War, and in an article entitled Zen Holy War (from which I draw in this essay), Brian Victoria and Josh Baran recount how military victories in Korea, Russia, and China inflated Japan’s national pride and how, during that era, many Zen leaders perverted the Dharma to support blind nationalism and war. Japan's military campaigns were catastrophic, including the massacre of Nanking where Japanese soldiers brutally raped, mutilated, tortured, and murdered "as many as 350,000 Chinese civilians" (Baran). 

Victoria and Baran share numerous accounts of Japanese Zen teachers encouraging Bushido, ostensibly a "Zen" approach to battle that was most famously exemplified by Samurai and Kamikaze pilots. Shaku Soen (1859-1919), who is still venerated in Japan as a great Zen Master, argued that since everything was emptiness, war and peace were identical. This “pernicious oneness” denies moral responsibility. Soen considered any opposition to war “a product of egotism” but was blind to the egotistical, nationalistic distinctions between "us" and "them" that he used to justify war. 

Unfortunately, Soen was not alone in his perversion of the Dharma for nationalistic purposes. Daiun Sogaku Harada (1870-1961), one of Living Vow Zen's ancestral teachers, equated meditation in battle with the "highest wisdom of enlightenment." Sawaki Kodo (1880-1965), another influential Soto Zen teacher, bragged about how he and his comrades had "gorged ourselves on killing people." Later, he wrote, “Whether one kills or does not kill, the precept forbidding killing is preserved.” When Colonel Aizawa Saburo was being tried for murdering another general in 1935, he borrowed Zen language and testified, “I was in an absolute sphere, so there was neither affirmation nor negation, neither good nor evil” (Baran).

How could Zen teachers who are bound by the precepts (ethical vows) espouse violence and the abdication of conscience? They may have feared to speak against war, but their vocal support suggests that they were actually swept up in a nationalistic wave. They thus shared distorted Dharma to deny the ethical concerns of war. They argued that “if killing is done without thinking and without discriminating right from wrong, in an empty state that they call no-mind or no-self, then the act is an expression of enlightenment” (Baran). These nihilistic descriptions of enlightenment may have served nationalistic purposes, but they completely missed the mark.

If we conceptualize enlightenment as the eradication of ethical thought or as a separate realm of absolute equality that erases distinctions, we get lost in a hell realm that we imagine is heaven. We can easily get lost in ideas, especially ideas about enlightenment, emptiness, and the absolute. For example, we might attach to the phrase “no thought” in the Heart Sutra and try to stop thinking. We might even come to interpret the Heart Sutra’s “no” to mean that nothing actually exists, and our actions are thus without consequences. Should we identify emptiness with such nihilistic views, killing would indeed become meaningless.

But emptiness is not nonexistence. The most important line in the Heart Sutra states that emptiness is exactly form. From the perspective of time, this means that everything is changing, not nonexistent. Forms are just empty of fixed, intrinsic essences.

When it comes to suffering, this is a relief. We need not project permanence into pain. Sometimes, healing just means loosening our subtle identification with suffering. We can notice the sense of self that arises with the thought, “I am suffering,” and we can “open the hand of thought.” Avoid projecting thinghood into pain, and see through the notion that an abiding self is solely responsible, and our burden is lightened.

Still, in noticing that suffering has no fixed essence, we do not mean that it does not exist. Sometimes our practice is to remove the causes of suffering, and we can only do this when we diagnose its causes. When Buddha stepped on a thorn, he cried out in pain. A compassionate response would be to remove the thorn and offer him sandals. 

Awakening also does not mean acting without thinking. Thinking allows us to distinguish war from peace so we can cultivate peace. We do, however, sometimes mistake our thoughts for reality and get lost in conceptions, cutting ourselves off from the vivid intimacy of life like a driver who looks only at a map and never sees the open road. But we don’t need to throw out the map. Our practice is not to repress thoughts but to recognize thinking as thinking. “On each flash of thought, a lotus flower blooms.”

Neither should we believe that emptiness means nonexistence. Emptiness points to the way that all forms are dependent arisings born out of changing causes and conditions. When we chant “no ear” in the Heart Sutra, it means there can be no hearing without the sound we hear, and those sounds are always changing.

Similarly, we say there is no self, but it would be clearer to say there is no separate, unchanging self. This is medicine to treat burdensome identifications with fleeting senses of self and to acknowledge that there are infinite causes and conditions that enable every aspect of life. The self is made of nonself elements and is not the first or only cause of anything. Even to take a single step requires the existence of the air we breathe and the entire earth beneath our feet. We must go beyond the teaching of no self to see that our lives are dependent arisings. We are the air we breathe. Poison the air and earth, and we poison ourselves. Harm anyone, and we harm ourselves. Care for all beings, and we care for ourselves. Therefore, do not kill. Appreciate this life before you as your own.

Our interwovenness is the root of compassion. The Heart Sutra is recited by Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, who weeps for all beings who suffer in this world. True insight into emptiness deepens our compassion for all beings as we realize just how interwoven, vulnerable, and mutually responsible we are. Genuine insight into the emptiness of phenomena does not undermine the precepts but deepens our commitment to them. 

And, full disclosure: the teachings of dependent origination are essentially medicine to liberate us from the positivism and nihilism which feed harmful, dualistic thought formations. If we hold too tightly to the teachings of dependent origination, we can get lost in a finger pointing to the moon when the great matter is illumination. We are invited to open beyond all the teachings and enter into the living mystery. This does not mean discarding the precepts. We can let them also point the way to liberation from greed, anger, and ignorance but without attaching to them in a fundamentalist way. Practice includes and opens us beyond all ideas.

Most fundamentally, Buddhist practice is about alleviating suffering, and the precepts are guardrails to wake us when we contribute to suffering. The precepts give voice to our conscience. The precepts reconnect us with compassionate awareness. They may be the deepest expression of enlightened behavior.

For me, one of the key lessons from studying Zen teachers in this period in Japan’s history is that none of us are above making terrible mistakes, even those who have practiced deeply. We've seen American Zen teachers misuse sex and cause grave harm in their sanghas. Anyone can get swept up in desires and the currents of our times. Sometimes we need the precepts to help us swim upstream.