Causes for violent Buddhist encounters in communities

Abstract

This study is about violent Buddhist encounters in communities. The purpose of this study is to identify causes of Buddhist violence in different communities mainly focussing on Myanmar and Sri Lanka communities. This study compares causes of violence in these communities to find the common cause of Buddhist violence. Buddhism as a religion is not violent due to its teachings of Ahimsa. Thus, this paper follows the life and teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of the religion, particularly his teaching about violence, what do schools of Buddhism which developed after his death teach about violence and how do they justify the use of it. All the three major schools of Buddhism forbid violence; however, they have exceptions for the use of it. Therefore, these exceptions contributed to the involvement of Buddhists in violence. The methods used to answer questions in this paper are qualitative and interpretative approach. The main cause of Buddhist violence highlighted in this paper is ethnicity for Buddhism, and politics for the minority. Buddhist in this regard were protecting the unity of their religion and the minority were fighting for their human rights. All these incidents of violence demonstrates that Buddhists like any other religions are capable of violence despite their reputation of peace.