Rape of Nanking: Green Dragon Zen +^

[Disbasing Zen Stories]

Toxic Zen Story #11: Green Dragon Zen: Bodhidharma, Dogen, Bushido, Suzuki and the Rape of Nanking.

. "In teaching new Japanese soldiers how to behead
. Chinese civilians, Tominaga Shozo recalled how
. Second Lieutenant Tanaka instructed his group.
. "Heads should be cut off like this," he said,
. unsheathing his army sword. He scooped water from
. a bucket with a dipper, then poured it over both
. sides of the blade. Swishing off the water, he
. raised his sword in a long arc. Standing behind
. the prisoner, Tanaka steadied himself, legs
. spread apart and cut off the man's head with a
. shout, 'Yo!' The head flew more than a meter
. away. Blood spurted up in two fountains from the
. body and sprayed into the hole. The scene was so
. appalling that I felt I couldn't breathe. " -
. "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of
. World War II" by Iris Chang

____ Background for Toxic Zen Stories ____________________

https://groups.google.com/group/alt.zen/msg/b4ad0ce368728934?hl=en

____ Introduction ________________________________________

From the Soka Gakkai Dictionary of Buddhism:

. Dogen (1200-1253): The founder of the Japanese
. Soto school of Zen. His father was Kuga
. Michichika, a minister of the imperial court in
. Kyoto. Having lost both parents at an early age,
. Dogen entered the priesthood in 1213 at Enryaku-
. ji, the head temple of the Tendai school on Mount
. Hiei. Doubtful of the Tendai view of inherent
. enlightenment, however, and of the undisciplined
. atmosphere at Hiei, in 1217 he went to Kennin-ji
. temple in Kyoto where he studied the Zen
. teachings under Myozen, a disciple of Eisai In
. 1223 Dogen went to China with Myozen to further
. his studies. After journeying from one temple to
. another in search of a worthy teacher, he studied
. Zen (Ch'an) under Ju-ching at Mount T'ien-t'ung
. and is said to have attained enlightenment. In
. 1227 he returned to Japan and stayed at Kennin-
. ji.
.
. Dogen strongly asserted that the Zen teaching of
. sole reliance on seated meditation (zazen) was
. absolute and constituted the essence of the
. Buddha's teachings. This incurred the hostility
. of the Tendai priests on Mount Hiei and at
. Kennin-ji, and around 1230 he was banished from
. Kennin-ji. He moved to Fukakusa in Kyoto and
. there around 1233 built Kosho-ji temple, where he
. lived for more than ten years, devoting himself
. to teaching and writing. As his disciples
. increased in number, oppression by the Tendai
. priests arose again, and in 1243 he went to
. Echizen Province to the fief of Hatano
. Yoshishige, a shogunate official, at Yoshishige's
. invitation and at the urging of followers there.
. In Hatano's domain, he founded Daibutsu-ji
. temple, which was renamed Eihei-ji in 1246 and
. became a major center of Soto Zen. There he
. devoted himself to training disciples and
. completing his chief work The Treasury of
. Knowledge of the True Law.
.
. In 1247 Dogen went to Kamakura at the request of
. Hojo Tokiyori, the regent of the Kamakura
. shogunate, and instructed him in the Zen
. teachings. In 1250 the Retired Emperor Gosaga
. sent a messenger to Dogen at Elhei-ji to bestow
. on him a purple robe. In 1253 Dogen returned to
. Kyoto, where he died of illness. He wrote The
. General Teaching for the Promotion of Seated
. Meditation and other works.

Dogen would quote the Lotus Sutra, but did not consider it any differently from other sutras of the Buddha, this in spite of the Buddha's own admonition to consider it higher than the previous (Sutra of Immeasurable Meanings and before) and following sutras (Nirvana Sutra and later). Hence, only provisional truth and partial enlightenment could be had from it by him. The kind of enlightenment that leads to compassionless domination of others ... as mere, empty extensions of one's own Solipsistic body.

Dogen was popular with the government, because his teachings removed the compassion from Samurai and Daimyo, rendering them fierce and merciless warriors, who would shun no tactic to win, no matter how vile.

Colonel Sugimoto, the ideal warrior of Imperial Zen in WWII would often quote Dogen in his writings:

| 'Zen Master Dogen said, "To study the Buddha
| Dharma is to study the self. To study the self is
| to forget the self." To forget the self means to
| discard both body and mind. To discard beyond
| discarding, to discard until there is nothing
| left to discard.... This is called reaching the
| Great Way in which there is no doubt. This is the
| Great Law of the universe. In this way the great
| spirit of the highest righteousness and the
| purest purity manifests itself in the individual.
| This is the unity of the sovereign and his
| subjects, the origin of faith in the emperor.'

Sugimoto died standing propped up by his sword after a grenade wounded his other shoulder. The Zen-Samurai ideal.

____ Toxic Zen Story ______________________________

The connection between Zen and Bushido is made clear by D.T. Suzuki in his 1906 essay "The Zen Sect of Buddhism" which fairly slavered over the ideal as expressed in military terms during the Russo-Japanese War:

| 'The Lebensanschauung of Bushido is no more
| nor less than that of Zen. The calmness and even
| joyfulness of heart at the moment of death which
| is conspicuously observable in the Japanese, the
| intrepidity which is generally shown by the
| Japanese soldiers in the face of an overwhelming
| enemy, and the fairness of play to an opponent,
| so strongly taught by Bushido -- all these come
| from the spirit of Zen training, and not from any
| such blind fatalistic conception as is sometimes
| thought to be a trait peculiar to Orientals.'

Suzuki also wrote:

| '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, and other cognate
| isms - Zen asserts itself and proves to be a
| destructive force.'

Suzuki's quote which is most astonishingly disconnected from reality, was about Zen, Bushido and the Chinese campaign, which resulted in the Rape of Nanking.

| 'There is a document that was very much talked
| about in connection with the Japanese military
| operations in China in the 1930s. It is known as
| the Hagakure, which literally means "Hidden under
| the Leaves," for it is one of the virtues of the
| samurai not to display himself, not to blow his
| horn, but to keep himself away from the public
| eye and be doing good for his fellow beings. To
| the compilation of this book, which consists of
| various notes, anecdotes, moral sayings, etc., a
| Zen monk had his part to contribute. The work
| started in the middle part of the seventeenth
| century under Nabeshima Naoshige, the feudal lord
| of Saga in the island of Kyushu.. The book
| emphasizes very much the samurai's readiness to
| give his life away at any moment, for it states
| that no great work has ever been accomplished
| without going mad - that is, when expressed in
| modern terms, without breaking through the
| ordinary level of consciousness and letting loose
| the hidden powers lying further below. These
| powers may be devilish sometimes, but there is no
| doubt that they are superhuman and work wonders.
| When the unconscious is tapped, it rises above
| individual limitations. Death now loses its sting
| altogether, and this is where the samurai
| training joins hands with Zen.'

Hence, cleaving heads of innocent and bound non-combatants was an example of virtuous Buddhist action "to keep himself away from the public eye and be doing good for his fellow beings". Unfortunately, Suzuki's distorted view of the China campaign would not predominate, since there were copious souvenir pictures taken by the tourist cameras in Nanking, which are preserved in the photo volume "The Rape of Nanking : an undeniable history in photographs"by James Yin and Shi Young. This is a hard book to look at, with many pictures of beheadings in action, and horribly murdered children and women. You can find it in many libraries.

If you truly believe in Zen, then you should look at what happened in the historic place where Bodhidharma's path branched towards the Shaolin monastery. Nanking is the home of the moment that Zen embraced China. Don't just walk away from this, in typical "off to new possibilities" Zen fashion. Does a Zen believer ever take responsibility for the results of his beliefs?

Suzuki's ultimate statement describing the utter irresponsibility of Zen warriors for their carnage is this:

| 'The sword is generally associated with
| killing, and most of us wonder how it can come
| into connection with Zen, which is a school of
| Buddhism teaching the gospel of love and mercy.
| The fact is that the art of swordsmanship
| distinguishes between the sword that kills and
| the sword that gives life. The one that is used
| by a technician cannot go any further than
| killing, for he never appeals to the sword unless
| he intends to kill. The case is altogether
| different with the one who is compelled to lift
| the sword. For it is really not he but the sword
| itself that does the killing. He had no desire to
| do harm to anybody, but the enemy appears and
| makes himself a victim. It is as though the sword
| performs automatically its function of justice,
| which is the function of mercy... When the sword
| is expected to play this sort of role in human
| life, it is no more a weapon of self-defense or
| an instrument of killing, and the swordsman turns
| into an artist of the first grade, engaged in
| producing a work of genuine originality.'
_______________________________________________

In a book review by Josh Baran, on "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II" by Iris Chang, he writes:

. Iris Chang, whose grandparents escaped the city
. just before it fell, has written a brilliant and
. chilling account of this terrible war chapter.
. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of
. World War II finally chronicles a catastrophe
. that many Japanese still deny ever happened. The
. Japanese invaders took full control of the city
. on December 13. In seven short weeks, they
. engaged in "an orgy of cruelty seldom if ever
. matched in world history." They brutally
. murdered, raped and tortured as many as 350,000
. Chinese civilians. In this bloodbath, more people
. died than at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. For
. months, the city was filled with piles of rotting
. corpses.
.
. Nearly 80,000 women were raped and mutilated,
. many gang-raped. Soldiers disemboweled women.
. Fathers were forced to rape their daughters, sons
. their mothers. All kinds of inhuman torture were
. practiced without remorse. Children and the
. elderly were not spared. Thousands of young men
. were beheaded, burned alive or used for bayonet
. practice.
.
. Japanese leaders had been demonizing the Chinese
. for decades as the "unruly heathens" that Soen
. and Suzuki spoke of. As one commander preached to
. his unit, "you must not consider the Chinese as
. human beings, but only as something of rather
. less value than a dog or a cat." The Chinese were
. also referred to as "pigs", "raw materials" and
. even lumber.
.
. The barbarism was so intense that the Nazis in
. the city were horrified, one declaring the
. slaughter to be the product of a "bestial
. machinery." Chang recounts the following
. incident:
.
. "In teaching new Japanese soldiers how to behead
. Chinese civilians, Tominaga Shozo recalled how
. Second Lieutenant Tanaka instructed his group.
. "Heads should be cut off like this," he said,
. unsheathing his army sword. He scooped water from
. a bucket with a dipper, then poured it over both
. sides of the blade. Swishing off the water, he
. raised his sword in a long arc. Standing behind
. the prisoner, Tanaka steadied himself, legs
. spread apart and cut off the man's head with a
. shout, 'Yo!' The head flew more than a meter
. away. Blood spurted up in two fountains from the
. body and sprayed into the hole. The scene was so
. appalling that I felt I couldn't breathe. "
.
. This is Zen bushido in action: Killing as high
. art. The soldiers are being taught the perfect
. etiquette in beheading -- the exact way to
. cleanse the sword, the proper way to swing the
. weapon, the strong virile shout.
.
. .........
.
. As Chang relates: "Some Japanese soldiers
. admitted it was easy for them to kill because
. they had been taught that next to the emperor,
. all individual life even their own -- was
. valueless." Japanese soldier Azuma Shiro reported
. that during his two years of military training,
. "... he was taught that 'loyalty is heavier than
. a mountain, and our life is like a feather.' ...
. to die for the emperor was the greatest glory, to
. be caught alive by the enemy the greatest shame.
. 'If my life was not important, an enemy's life
. became inevitably much less important.... This
. philosophy led us to look down on the enemy and
. eventually to the mass murder and ill treatment
. of captives."'
.
. Chang's gripping investigation provides us with
. the actual consequences of the twisted religious
. philosophy that supported and fueled the Japanese
. military machine.
.
. .........
.
. This total betrayal of compassion did not just
. take place during World War II. For six hundred
. years, one Zen Master bragged, the Rinzai school
. had been engaged in "enhancing military power."
. For centuries, Zen was intimately involved in the
. way of killing. This is the simple truth. Of
. course, only some temples and some teachers, were
. involved, but this aspect of Zen was a
. significant part of Japanese culture and became
. dominant for nearly one hundred years. In fact,
. the extremes of the war were the full flower of
. this heartless Zen that had been evolving in
. Japan. The sword was real and millions died. The
. most excessive situations show us the inherent
. distortions that exist from the beginning.

===================================================

The Rape of Nanking was a Major Zen Historical Event (MZHE). It was not to be the last for the Japanese in World War II.

____ Epilog _______________________________________

The Buddha's highest teachings were the purpose of the Buddha's advent on this earth.

The Buddha did not appear on this earth to drain people's compassion with discussions of the emptiness and meaninglessness of life which is just a void.

The Buddha did not appear on this earth to teach people to live in such a narrow and momentary way, that there would be no context for self-examination and conscience.

The Buddha did not appear on this earth to possess people's minds with such illogic as to befuddle their ability to choose correctly between what is good and what is evil.

The Buddha did not appear on this earth to teach people how to commit atrocities and genocide, in the exploration of their "infinite possibilities", or "new states of being".

The Buddha did not appear on this earth to teach people how to maim and kill with their hands efficiently, quietly, loudly, with increased terror inflicted, or to maximize their subjugation to control the public sentiments for political ends.

These are all profoundly evil distortions of the Buddha's true teachings, which introduce infinities in the variables holding good and evil, removing all shades of gray in the propositional calculus of value.

Simply stated, the Buddha made his advent on this earth with the purpose of teaching the compassionate way of the bodhisattva, which is at the heart of the true entity of all phenomena, which is the eternal Buddha at one with the eternal Law. Which is how to navigate the sea of sufferings of birth, aging, sickness and death. He originally set out on his path, because of his observation of the sufferings of common people and wanting to understand the source of those sufferings (enlightened wisdom) and how to transform those sufferings into unshakable happiness (enlightened action).

When you embrace the void, your initial intent to bring prosperity and security to your country doesn't matter ... the result is always the same: chaos and misery. And when you kill a Zen-corrupted despot (read this as Saddam Hussein) be prepared to receive his demons and become the despot (read this as George W. Bush).

But things don't have to be that way ...
___________________________________________________

Nichiren Daishonin writes (Encouragement to a Sick Person, WND p. 78):

. "During the Former and Middle Days of the Law, the
. five impurities began to appear, and in the Latter
. Day, they are rampant. They give rise to the great
. waves of a gale, which not only beat against the
. shore, but strike each other. The impurity of
. thought has been such that, as the Former and
. Middle Days of the Law gradually passed, people
. transmitted insignificant erroneous teachings
. while destroying the unfathomable correct
. teaching. It therefore appears that more people
. have fallen into the evil paths because of errors
. with respect to Buddhism than because of secular
. misdeeds."

Because Bodhidharma discarded the Buddha's highest teaching (the Lotus Sutra), and due to his lazy nature turned to shortcuts to enlightenment, he came to the distorted view that life is acausal and empty, that the true entity is the void.

This erroneous view really comes from a misunderstanding of the Sutra of Immeasurable Meanings, where the True Entity is described by negation (the only way it can be): "... neither square, nor round, neither short, nor long, ..."

The description of the True Entity is logically voidal, but the True Entity itself is not. Bodhidharma was simply confused, due to the slander of negligence (laziness), and false confidence. The truth of life is that at the heart of the True Entity is the compassion of a bodhisattva for others.

Non-substantiality does not mean empty. Life has value. Humans are respectworthy. There is a purpose to everything. And every cause has an effect, so we are responsible for our thoughts, words and deeds. Zen is acausal. Zen is the greatest poison, which compares to the even greater medicine of the Lotus Sutra.

Suffice it to say: the purpose of Zen in the world is to corrupt and undermine everything that is not based upon the truth and the true teaching. All religions, disciplines, institutions and organizations which are undermined by Zen will eventually fall after glaring revelation of their worst defects, sooner rather than later.

If there is some good in your family, locality, society and culture, or country that you would like to retain, then cease the Zen, and begin to apply the medicine of the Lotus Sutra to heal the Zen wound in your life.

"Zen is the work of devilish minds." - Nichiren

-Chas.

. a prescription for the poisoned ones:
.
. The only antidote for the toxic effects of Zen in your life ...
.
. be that from Zen meditation, or the variant forms: physical
. Zen in the martial arts, Qigong, Acupuncture, Falun Gong,
. Copenhagen Convention of Quantum Mechanics, EST,
. Landmark Education, Nazism, Bushido, the Jesuits,
. Al Qaeda, or merely from having the distorted view that life
. is acausal, and that the true entity of all phenomena
. is the void ...
.
. with the effects of the loss of loved ones, detachment,
. isolation or various forms of emptiness in your life ...
.
. is the Lotus Sutra: chant Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo
. at least 3 times, twice a day, for the rest of your life,
. in at least a whisper ...
.
. and if you can, chant abundantly in a resonant voice !!!
.
. The full 28 Chapters of the Lotus Sutra,
. Nichiren Daishonin's Gosho volumes I and II,
. the Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings
. (Gosho Zenshu, including the Ongi Kuden) and the
. SGI Dictionary of Buddhism are located at:
.
http://www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/
.
. To find an SGI Community Center:
.
http://www.sgi-usa.org/sgilocations/
__________________________________

LS Chap. 16 .....

All harbor thoughts of yearning
and in their minds thirst to gaze at me.
When living beings have become truly faithful,
honest and upright, gentle in intent,
single-mindedly desiring to see the Buddha
not hesitating even if it costs them their lives,
then I and the assembly of monks
appear together on Holy Eagle Peak.
At that time I tell the living beings
that I am always here, never entering extinction,
but that because of the power of an expedient means
at times I appear to be extinct, at other times not,
and that if there are living beings in other lands
who are reverent and sincere in their wish to believe,
then among them too
I will preach the unsurpassed Law.