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Breivik used meditation to kill
Dharmakara
Veteran
Meditation makes you calmer and clearer and encourages empathy and kindness … right? Not if you are Anders Behring Breivik who has told psychiatrists that he used meditation to "numb the full spectrum of human emotion – happiness to sorrow, despair, hopelessness, and fear". He still practises it behind bars to deaden the impact of his actions.
Breivik uses meditation as a form of mind control – a way to focus the mind and exclude responses that get in his way. You could argue that he is meditating wrongly, but I think his testimony shows that the effect of any practice, meditation included, depends on the ends to which it is recruited. Breivik's aims were determined by his racist beliefs and meditation didn't challenge them.
>> read more
Anders Behring Breivik used meditation to kill – he's not the first
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/may/22/anders-behring-breivik-meditation?newsfeed=true
Breivik uses meditation as a form of mind control – a way to focus the mind and exclude responses that get in his way. You could argue that he is meditating wrongly, but I think his testimony shows that the effect of any practice, meditation included, depends on the ends to which it is recruited. Breivik's aims were determined by his racist beliefs and meditation didn't challenge them.
>> read more
Anders Behring Breivik used meditation to kill – he's not the first
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/may/22/anders-behring-breivik-meditation?newsfeed=true
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Comments
What one uses it for it up to them.
Buddhism is not Buddhism until one vows to abstain from harm.
Sigh, may these beings awaken to their true nature.
Wrong!
But as I say, this is just hearsay; I don't know how true or how far reaching this view was held.
APOLOGY FOR MILITARISTIC VIEWS OF WWII
He is beyond relative morality, he "dwells in the absolute", etc.
There is a risk in practice of negating all conventional moral compass points, and no longer knowing right from wrong. It can even wipe out empathy. It is very scary.
Meditation is not buddhism, and buddhism is not meditation. Meditation is only a part of buddhism.
This is why Buddhism is important IMO.
And the Japanese people who actually fought in the war were not emotionless and detached, no matter what the Priests tried to claim. They were terrified, angry, furious, and human nature tells me not a one of them was in a zen meditative, calm, detached mind when they ran screaming at the enemy. The entire zen samorai myth turns out to be exactly that: a myth that is as accurate as our American cowboy gunslinger shooting it out at high noon.
Also there is way more than one type of meditation. What most people think of when they hear the word is samatha meditation, or calm abiding. Meditation is a just tool that Buddhism uses to help shape or clear the mind into a more skillful state.
If any one doubts the ability of certain forms of meditation to do this, they might wish to consider the recent episodes of self-immolation that have occured in Tibet --- it's a horrorfying way to spend your last few minutes and those who do survive such things, well I wouldn't wish it on any one, even a loved one who I thought I couldn't survive without.
We're talking about the "tool", not Buddhism per se.
Zen's non-duality did not and does not obscure Buddhism's ethical teachings; however, people's mistaken view of non-duality may.
In the suttas right concentration is often defined in terms of the four jhanas, but there's probably other ways to think about it?
@porpoise quote
I'm trying to work out now how right concentration is different from wrong concentration.;)
In the suttas right concentration is often defined in terms of the four jhanas, but there's probably other ways to think about it?
From my zafu, the right or wrong of any of those 8 steps is most easily defined as does it lead towards the cessation of suffering or not. Watching if the process softens or solidifies my identity or ego simplifies the right/wrong question.
You'd have to prove that of the Earth's human beings, Zen or Mahayana practitioners are somehow involved in more scandals (whatever those are--I can issue a false statement tomorrow and start a baseless "scandal") than people who are not practicing Zen or Mahayana, in order to even begin to show a causal relationship.
I'll tell you: VERY FEW
oh, worry me... the sky is falling... someone is criticising zen... can't have that...
And you certainly don't need to start a baseless scandal, there's teachers out there in all traditions that create the real thing with no help.
It's okay to pen a sensational article akin to "exercise may kill" but I do question what the intent is. It's fun to make a splash, as an author, but inevitably you end up convincing some people to stop exercising if, as I feel the other in the OP did, you don't do the work of showing that this sensationalist headline really comes from a rare exception as compared to a "norm."
Drinking water can kill. Without question. But what does that mean?
In hindsight, it's also hard to ignore the fact that Zen flourishes in the West, but is dying in its land of origin.
This is off topic, but here we go:
According to a study in the March 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers discovered that people who sat for 11 hours a day or more were 40 percent more likely to die - from any cause. The researchers also found the odds of dying were 15 percent higher for those who sit between eight to 11 hours a day compared to those who sit less than four hours a day.
Researchers relied on self-reported data from 22,497 individuals 45 years or older from the 45 and Up study, the largest look at aging in the Southern Hemisphere. The study has interviewed over 265,000 men and women across New South Wales and Australia, focusing on about 10 percent of that group for additional data over the coming decades. The researchers determined sitting was associated with a higher death risk after ruling out other factors including gender, age, education, urban/rural residence, physical activity, body mass index, smoking status, self-rated health and disability.
"The evidence on the detrimental health effects of prolonged sitting has been building over the last few years," study author Hidde van der Ploeg, a senior research fellow at the University of Sydney, told HealthDay. "The study stands out because of its large number of participants and the fact that it was one of the first that was able to look at total sitting time. Most of the evidence to date had been on the health risks of prolonged television viewing."
A study last year by Harvard researchers found watching TV for two hours a day increases type 2 diabetes risk by 20 percent and heart disease risk by 15 percent, HealthPop reported. More than three hours of daily viewing and you're upping your risk of dying from any disease, the study found.
Too much sitting or a lack of physical activity has also been linked to causing up to 43,000 cases of colon cancer and 49,000 cases of breast cancer, HealthPop reported. That report, which was presented at the American Institute for Cancer Research in Washington, D.C. in November 2011, looked at over 200 studies worldwide and concluded that physical inactivity raises risks for cancer. The World Health Organization says physical inactivity is the main cause for approximately 21-25 percent of breast and colon cancers, 27 percent of diabetes and approximately 30 percent of ischaemic heart disease burden.
van der Ploeg told HealthDay that nine out of 10 adults spend relax by sitting down and fewer than half exercise for at least 150 minutes of at least moderate-intensity physical activity each week, a standard set by the WHO .
The researchers say that reducing sitting time, in addition to increasing physical activity levels, may help alleviate sitting's link to all-cause mortality.
Of course, most of us us don't sit in meditation for such long periods, not to mention that that there's other forms of meditation, such as walking, but more than a few times I have come across Buddhist practitioners who view such long periods as a sign of perfection.
Now, let's get back to the topic of this thread:
Meditation makes you calmer and clearer and encourages empathy and kindness … right? Not if you are Anders Behring Breivik who has told psychiatrists that he used meditation to "numb the full spectrum of human emotion – happiness to sorrow, despair, hopelessness, and fear". He still practises it behind bars to deaden the impact of his actions.
Read every word of it and stop fixating on the one part of it that you disagree with --- the above is what's being discussed in the OP
There were a certain number of cases last year where people drank so much water they developed symptoms of water poisoning; but what is that number compared to the number of people who didn't overconsume?
That numerical relationship determines whether a particular hazard justifies, say, nationwide headlines announcing that "water can kill," and school districts subsequently investing money on water-consumption awareness, or whether it's just an unfortunate rarity which actually doesn't have much (if anything) to do with water, but rather a a personal issue (obsessive tendencies, simple youthful boneheadedness, etc.)
I'm curious whether Breivik himself mentioned Zen, or whether the author took a bit of a leap when he said, "We've been here before. Brevik likened himself to a Japanese banzai warrior seeking satori." At first glance, that would seem to indicate Brevik himeself brought up Zen, but it's not completely clear. I would have expected a quote from Brevik on that point if Breivik indeed brought it up (or mentioned it in a journal, etc.)
http://www.rt.com/news/breivik-testimony-meditation-death-584/
I think it could be safely stated Breivik misinterprets satori, given the millions of practitioners who equate striving for satori as synonymous with upholding non-violence tenets.
Nonetheless, here is a charming article positing Zen as basically immoral rubbish, and Ch'an as the only way
http://www.friesian.com/divebomb.htm
Though I suspect the majority of us would disagree with such a person describing their practice as "Zen", the fact remains that they believed it was.
On a humorous note, these days they would be referred to as "wannabe jedi knights"
Truth be told, I would be one of them with such an opinion, not that Zen started that way, but the state of things today.
Here we are getting into the question of whether or not there is ever justifiable violence, but I think some here agree that there is at least, occasionally, justifiable violence, or at least that some violence seems more justifiable than other.
I would argue that the kamikaze pilot was not ultimately using Zen (or Zen inspired practices) to kill, but to defend. The kamikaze pilot--and I believe most WWII pilots--each believed they were engaged in defense of their own nations, their own families. You can certainly say that the kamikaze pilot focused his mind and thought of killing and that was his goal, to kill Allies (or that the Christian pilot was thinking of killing when he prayed, "Let my aim be true,) but his real goal was to defend his nation (or somehow fight in his nation's honor, for the ultimate well-being of his family, children, friends, etc.)
I think that's a key distinction. Meditate (or pray) to kill, yes, but kill to save...we may not agree with any particular warrior's position, but to write it off as "meditating to kill," as if killing were the only goal, is misleading.
Breivik, too, to listen to his explanation, felt his society was somehow under attack from multiculturalism and that he was fighting against that; it's simply that almost no one shares his opinion, or at least does not share his opinion that killing children is an acceptable way to address that issue.
At any rate, while we practitioners know that meditation is mind-training and that the mind can be trained in pretty much any direction, it's true that the general public likely has a sort of blurry feeling that "meditation is for non-violence." They're correct in the sense that people who teach meditation are almost exclusively also teaching non-violence, but the author of the piece is correct in identifying that mind-training can be directed anywhere.
I think the author seems rather gratuitously focused on milking his seemingly-scandalous headline, however, as opposed to shedding real light.
Justifiable violence is splitting hairs.
An English audience, say, upon discovering that an English WWII pilot "used meditation to kill" would not interpret that fact as bad, but good, because they believe WWII violence in defense of England was justified.
That same audience, hearing Breivik used meditation to kill, would not think it was good.
Totally agree with you that children are often the victims of war (though I believe there are plenty of other innocent victims as well). In fact, one of the methods used to help children from conflict zones deal with post-traumatic stress is meditation, so maybe we've come full circle.
True, but did the actions of kamikaze pilots lack any less "shock value"?