The Buddhist Tradition15

Siddhartha Gautama (c. 563–483 BC) turned unequivocally against war after witnessing it. The first precept of Buddhism, the religion he founded, is ahimsa (non-harming). Buddhism is clearly pacifist in its teaching: nowhere is there justification for war.

Buddhism assumes that dependence on war to preserve security leads inexorably to more violence and is bound to fail eventually. Violence is a sign of the disintegration of social order. The only way to break the cycle is by not responding in kind. Buddha, like Marx later, looked forward to the state becoming counterproductive and even unnecessary. Faced with the reality of kings and armies, the Buddhists defined an ideal monarch as one who conquers and rules by righteousness rather than force and does not justify violence to achieve order. The noble duties are to provide protection, shelter, and security for all.

Problems began with the conversion of rulers to Buddhism, bringing it under the protection of states that never surrendered the right to make war. Buddhism, somewhat like Greek Orthodoxy, attempts to resolve the difficulty by holding priests, monks, and ascetics to a higher standard than laymen, and recognizing that the duties of the latter may require violence while restricting it to defense using minimum necessary force. In some forms, Buddhism asserts that aggression is, but self-defense is not, violence. This led some Buddhist monks to develop means of self-defense that prohibited attack escalating beyond the minimum necessary in each instance.