Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Buddhism and the Military
I myself am thinking of joining the Royal Navy as a weapons engineer, does this not conflict with Buddhist ideals? Can I not be a Buddhist if this is the career path I've chosen?
Thank you!
Thank you!
0
Comments
Weapons engineer does sound like a major conflict with "Right Livelihood", though...
I was A Buddhist before joining the US Army, but coming from an all
male-military family, the need for their approval trumped all other
thoughts I had at 17. Alot of people assured me It could be done.
My experience? Every damn moment was a learning one, thats for sure!
I do not regret a single day. It made me a better me at the time.
Anyways, after 2 years, I just could'nt re-sign.
For alot of reasons. My Buddhist views and studies had alot
to do with it. I now face the reflection of all my past deeds.
I am eager to read the responses of others
At worst you might be in disharmony with life on some level (if you create weapons and such, though sometimes even this is for protection of life), but that doesn't mean you can't still be a Buddhist and benefit from Buddhist practices. Not everyone can follow all of the precepts (training rules) all the time, but as they say don't throw out the baby with the bath water. Whatever you do, if you choose to follow Buddhist practice as best you can, it should be beneficial.
Perhaps later you'll even change your mind on what you wish to do for a career, if it turns out that it conflicts with what you learn through your practice.
Now, there might be certain jobs in the military that conflict with your moral values as a Buddhist, and that holds true for anyone no matter their religion. If handed a gun and ordered to go out and shoot at people, I might have respectfully declined and taken my punishment. Or if I was protecting innocent people I might have done so. The decision never came up.
The argument is made that the military kills people in a war, and you're supporting the people who do this. That's a valid argument. A large chunk of your taxes goes to supporting the people who do this. Aren't you being a hypocrite if you pay your taxes but shake your finger at the lowly cook in the military for supporting war?
Just another view on the subject. In the end, you have to make your own moral decisions.
Beyond that, even living in society means that, impliedly, the spoils of war are made available - I try to limit those benefits as well though in some cases it is impossible.
Either way, the most important opinion is yours - you will have to live with the consequences of your actions - hope you find a comfortable balance for yourself.
But I have served in both Bosnia during their civil war and also Kosovo; and I felt that being there was definitely the right and correct thing to do. In Bosnia we often provided protection for aid convoys going through dangerous places in order to bring refugees basic essentials. Many aid workers were killed there; we had five killed in our area in one go.
And Kosovo was the same; it was right that we intervened militarily to protect the local population.
I also served in Gulf War 1 and spent quite a few years in Northern Ireland (hiding behind garden walls mostly
At a personal level, I was in a position to do many acts of kindness - as a soldier - to people who needed help.
All soldiers come under the Law of Armed Conflict as set out by the various Geneva Conventions; soldiers are not required to eat babies these days, however there are some jobs I could not do. I could never drop bombs on civilians, as they did in WW2, for example.
And anyway, Buddhism, as far as I am aware is not a pacifist religion; I believe the precept is 'refrain from killing' which means not to kill 'willy nilly' and infers there are occasions where killing - as an only and last resort - is the correct and proper way to deal with a situation.
If someone broke into my house and I suspected they had an intention to harm my family; I would kill them without hesitation - if I were able to.
I think you can be in the military and be a Buddhist. War isn't so much about invasion for the sake of land anymore, and when the Western countries are involved it tends to be more about protection and defense than attack.
Just an opinion, but to me, if life is sacred then it's worth protecting. If someone decides to start a war and you have to protect your country and it's people, or the country and people of an ally... I don't think it's bad to protect life, and war is war. It seems to come naturally to people. I think it's just one of those things and it would be nice if we didn't have war, but we do and we have to deal with it.
And the people you're fighting knew what they were getting into when they joined their military. Everyone has signed the contract and has acknowledged that they could lose their lives if they end up in war. The game of war is made up of consensual players (to use a horrible analogy of war being a game).
It's tricky, and you have to do what you think is right, but I think that with the right intention there isn't really a wrong choice here.
Also, just as an aside, I wanted to join the RAF as a medic but they wouldn't take me because I have a tattoo that can't be hidden by uniform! So silly. I'm telling you so that you know my opinion is biased towards joining the military being a positive thing, which I personally think it can be.
I guess you *could* say that they were born into that country because of karma so they decided to join before they were actually born
Rationalization is death for the path imho. Its the equivalent of closing your eyes when seeing there is an obstacle in the way.
Making war is just something that people do. It's the only way to explain why we've been at war 95% of the time we've even existed.
So you can either sit back as people make war with us and destroy us, or you can do your part to fight back and stop it, because you care about your life and you care about the lives of others. It's not about rationalizing anything, and joining the military isn't for everyone, but if you're so inclined I can't personally think of a reason not to.
Well, I can think of a few, mostly along the lines of what I think you're trying to say, but it seems to me that it boils down to intention. Feel like murderous rampages would be fun? Maybe the military will give you an excuse to do just that. Want to protect your country and it's population from threats that clearly exist? Then maybe the military is a good option for you. People join the military for loads of different reasons, some are good and some are not so good. If you feel your reasons for joining are good then I see no real reason not to.
I think it's why you want to join that really matters.
I think it's worse to stick your head in the sand and wish that all the people were nice all the time and didn't make the war than to recognize the problem and do your part to stop it. For some people that's fighting the war and ending it as quickly as possible, for others, it's being a conscientious objector.
One size doesn't fit all.
Joining the Navy, is as was stated, not the branch or job; but why are you doing this? What will it come to? This only you can answer. :om:
How anyone else might face up to this responsibility (assuming they want to), I wouldn't presume to say. I simply think it is a question worth considering.
Vanijja Sutta This is called diffusion of responsibility, and the effect doesn't make the victim hurt any less. As has been mentioned, Buddhism is a set of tools and as such, everyone may benefit from it. Whether you consider yourself Buddhist or not will probably not have any major effect on how happy your life will be, so you may do so or not; there will not be much difference.
I get the impression that to you weapons = harming beings; at least to some extent. This is, i imagine, your reason for posting your question here in the first place (correct me if i'm wrong).
In this case, regardless of what we say, this association will be in the back of your mind when you go to work. And the reason not to do it then is simply because it sucks to work on something that you don't really believe in.
One reason not to do it would be the feelings that go with such a conflict. If you are unfamiliar with what i'm talking about you may try to do this experiment: if you ever have guests, serve them something (food, entertainment) that you know sucks. You will not even be harming them, and they might even not notice, but because of knowing that what you provided was bad, you will be in hell, that is pretty sure.
Now imagine you are working on something that not only has a slight potential to cause a slight dislike - but on something that may harm one, two, many people; and all the people that that person was a son, teacher, parent, etc of. It sucks.
That is not to say that there may be positive sides to joining as well - learning a lot, having opportunities to help people may be some.
I'm not saying it isn't troubling, and it should be for everybody, not just Buddhists. Given the famous mistake of Japanese Zen Priests telling their people it's OK to kill for the Emperor if they keep an empty mind about it, I don't like making excuses for people to kill at all. But, pacifism is not the same thing as Buddhism, although they can go hand in hand.
There is a fair amount of commentary out there about what may happen to soldiers engaged in war (after their death), who the 5 precepts apply to, definitions of intent and self-defence - it is not a topic that lends itself well to firm and fast conclusions.
On one hand it is accepted that war is a natural part of life - on the other hand it is acknowledged that this is not an ideal - it is a pragmatic statement - the issue is how an ideal becomes reality.
Seems to me that the battleground is within ourselves - the true war is with our nature - this war spills out to the sum of our being (society) - I can only think of one way to deal with it - each and every one of us must look inward and at ourselves and our actions and see if it is possible to align day to day living with a state of "non-conflict", first within and as a result to society as a whole.
People not joining the military is a good start - how could we save lives if we had no military power? what other options are there if war is off the table? How can we progress towards an ideal when we make little progress in setting the conditions for the ideal to materialise?
I don't really think in terms of victim/perpetrator anymore. And it's the opposite of diffusion of responsibility, it's about taking 100% responsibility for all your actions and choices. Whether other people decide to take responsibility for their choices is entirely up to them, but their responsibility is theirs whether they accept it or not. Aside from anything, weapons engineer is a totally badass job, and if you decide to leave the service after a few years your engineering skills will be really useful in finding yourself a civvy job. To add to that, you'll learn discipline, how to accept a higher authority, the correct way to make a bed (trust me, when you're married this will be like gold
I can see why people say its against Buddhism, and I respect the view that they wouldn't join because they could be either directly or indirectly harming people. But I also see that there are people in the world quite prepared to harm us, and that someone has to be out there protecting us. If it could have been me it would have been, but like I said, they wouldn't take me. The only reason we are free to say no to joining the military is because there are people out there doing it, protecting our freedoms. If it weren't for them, we may not have the freedom to choose. In the kind of world we live in, where people make war, there has to be someone out there protecting our rights, freedoms and people, or we could lose them.
When the bad guys (and there are bad guys) decide to stop making war, and the military no longer has a place in the world we'll all be better of. But until then, I feel that we have a duty to do what we can to protect people and protect the freedoms we have. There are countries in the world where you can not choose to practice religion freely. We're lucky out here in our Western countries, we can be Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, atheist, can practice a different religion every day of the week if we feel like it.
But we only have that freedom because someone decided to go out there and fight for it.
Why would someone choose that?
Well, on this website most people say Buddhism is all about intent. So what is the intent that people have when they join the military? For different people, the intent is different.
I see a lot of talk about the precepts on this board, but not much about the eightfold path. To be a Buddhist, you basically must accept the 4 truths, and the last truth being that the eightfold path is the answer to the suffering.
I was reading this from an article on accesstoinsight by Bhikku Bodhi, and this is what it said:
Obviously any occupation that requires violation of right speech and right action is a wrong form of livelihood, but other occupations, such as selling weapons or intoxicants, may not violate those factors and yet be wrong because of their consequences for others.
So my concern in working with things such as weapons ships, would be the consequences to others. You might not be pulling any trigger yourself, but you are providing support to a ship that is intended to deploy weapons, causing consequences to others, and most certainly not always the bad guys, but innocents that the military considers collateral damage. That is something I personally would have a hard time getting around by arguing that you can do good things in the military, too. You can, for sure, but the military cannot fulfill it's mission without hurting and killing many completely innocent people. Obviously in certain circumstances you have no choice and you do the best you can. But when you do have the choice, that is different. And there are similar types of things you can do that minimize harm much more. Such as in the US, you can join the Coast Guard which has many more options for minimizing harm against innocent people, or you can join various state/county search and rescue operations that can still allow you to work on such equipment without the consequence of harming innocent people.
It was the military who fought for those rights and freedoms against oppressors and those who would take them away from us.
I value freedom, and so I value the military, and I benefit from them always.
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
:thumbsup:
I don't not have as good of an understanding of the Royal Navy, and I think the OP will come to the right conclusion for himself, whatever it might be. I certainly do not condemn people who opt for military service. It just wasn't for me.
'You' as a singular concept is too narrow a consideration - it ignores constant interactions between the human population as a whole and also the concept of humanity a single organism (and the effect of individual action in that).
It is easy to say, look, your lights are on - its because the military stops bad people from turning them off - if you like lights, you must see some benefit/merit in the military.
The position however is more complex - what of the effect on humanity as a collective? So, my lights are on but at what cost? For my lights to be on, an entire population somewhere is kept in poverty so oil prices are just right, people are killed for endlessly creative reasons, others have no light, no food even.
What about 'net' benefit - sure I can say that I see in the dark - but at what cost? Have I really benefitted? Has humanity or the natural world benefitted and how does that interact with me as an individual? How do my actions impact on that and what is the overall 'net' situation? Where is humanity as a collective going with our actions?
If humans are able to contemplate these issues then surely they should be explored - a seemingly impossible ideal to a human may be so due to human nature - if we accept that our intellect has the ability to mould our actions (i.e that we are able to act other than on impulse) then human nature can be what we make it - seems to me that the responsibility falls to each of us individually.
After all this time, all this advancement and knowledge, this human society that we venerate and protect - at its foundation, life is just another commodity.
We've always done it. Because we're animals. Animals love fighting. I have 3 cats and they fight all the time, for territory (they're fighting over a chair right now) and just for the sheer hell of it. It's human/animal nature. It sucks, and we can overcome it, but most people don't. You just need to read the newspaper or check crime statistics to know that that's true. :thumbup:
There is a need for the military to protect our rights - rights that were fought hard to get. It may not be ideal for a buddhist to enter into military service, but a buddhist soldier is still (or should be) better than a non-buddhist soldier..
The same applies to engineers in the navy. Ideally we didn't need a navy, and ideally buddhists would avoid contributing to the navy. Since we need a navy and the navy needs employees and the world needs buddhists, well I think buddhist engineers in the navy isn't the worst combination. Not ideal, but not the worst either, all considered..
What would be completely inadvisable is contributing to crime against humanity such as the Syrian military is doing at the moment - I cannot see any excuse for a buddhist to do that.. Protecting is different.. Still sad, but different..