The Hitler Lega­cy by Peter Lev­en­da; IBIS Press [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–210‑9; pp. 244–245.

. . . . Both Hitler and the Dalai Lama were sec­u­lar rulers of their respec­tive coun­tries. Both had been the spir­i­tu­al rulers of their respec­tive coun­tries. Both had been the spir­i­tu­al rulers of their peo­ples, as well. Both revered the swasti­ka as a sym­bol of their iden­ti­ty. And both were fight­ing Com­mu­nism: Hitler against Rus­sia, and the Dalai Lama against Chi­na. And just as Nazi offi­cers were incor­po­rat­ed into the US and British intel­li­gence oper­a­tions against Rus­sia, so were Tibetan polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary lead­ers incor­po­rat­ed into Amer­i­can intel­li­gence and para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions against Chi­na. The fol­low­ers of both Hitler and the Dalai Lama were (and are) moved by ecsta­t­ic wor­ship of their lead­ers and dreams of a par­a­disi­a­cal future. . . .

. . . . This might have been con­so­nant with an eso­teric tra­di­tion in Tibet, enshrined in the sem­i­nal work of Tibetan Bud­dhism, the Kalachakra Tantra. In this work, men­tion is made of the Kal­ki: a kind of God-King that will storm out of Shamb­ha­la (the secret, hid­den king­dom in the Himalayas made famous in the film Shangri-La) and put to waste all non-Bud­dhists, in a jihad wor­thy the most insane fan­tasies of frus­trat­ed ter­ror­ists every­where. The Dalai Lama is known to be fas­ci­nat­ed with the machin­ery of war, as he him­self men­tioned dur­ing the New York Times inter­view above-ref­er­enced.

It would be a stretch to accuse the Tibetans of the same type of war crimes of which the Nazis have been charged. There is no indi­ca­tion of geno­cide or “eth­nic cleans­ing” as a result of Tibetan poli­cies, for instance. How­ev­er, if we sub­tract geno­cide from the polit­i­cal incli­na­tions of both the Nazis and Tibetans as rep­re­sent­ed by the Dalai Lama, we are left with the uneasy feel­ing that there was much they had in common.Both the Nazis and the Tibetan Bud­dhists rep­re­sent reli­gions that are non-Abra­ham­ic in nature. The Nazis embraced a kind of neo-pagan­ism as their spir­i­tu­al resource, and with it a rejec­tion of the eth­i­cal and moral ideals of Judaism, Chris­tian­i­ty and Islam.

It should be not­ed, how­ev­er, that the Kalachakra Tantra–which forms the back­bone of the type of Bud­dhism pro­mul­gat­ed by the Dalai Lama–includes sim­i­lar ideas. there is a patent rejec­tion of non-Bud­dhist reli­gions and the promise of the appear­ance of the Kal­ki: an avatar of Vish­nu and the last ruler of the Kali Yuga (the dark age in which we present­ly live). Kal­ki was asso­ci­at­ed with Hitler by Miguel Ser­ra­no, and by the Indi­an nation­al­ist leader Sub­has Chan­dra Bose, among oth­ers. The Kal­ki would come out of his myth­i­cal king­dom of Shamb­ha­la at some point in the future and cleanse the world of non-Bud­dhists in a major, apoc­a­lyp­tic-style con­fla­gra­tion. This seems a tri­fle incon­sis­tent with the con­cept of “mer­cy.” The Dalai Lama is con­sid­ered to be an incar­na­tion of Akalovites­vara, the Indi­an God of Mer­cy and Com­pas­sion; per­haps some­thing is lost in the trans­la­tion.

We do not see the Dalai Lama sit­ting down and smil­ing benign­ly with Com­mu­nists. We do see him embrac­ing Nazis. One can imag­ine that the Sea of Com­pas­sion that is the Dalai Lama has man­aged to bestow mer­cy on even these unre­pen­tant war crim­i­nals and fear-mon­gers, and per­haps that is the les­son he wish­es to teach us; but that is not a les­son he has the moral right to teach. . . .

2. Advanc­ing analy­sis of the “weaponiza­tion of reli­gion” and ele­ments of Bud­dhism, in par­tic­u­lar, Peter high­lights the lit­tle-known but pro­found fas­cist influ­ence on, and sup­port from, the Zen Bud­dhist com­mu­ni­ty.

We note:

• Zen lumi­nary D.T. Suzuk­i’s enor­mous post­war influ­ence on the Zen prac­ti­tion­er com­mu­ni­ty.
• Karl­fried Dur­ck­hiem’s influ­ence on the same community–both, f0r exam­ple, influ­enced Alan Watts. (One should NOT make the mis­take of infer­ring that Watts was a fas­cist or Nazi in any way.)
• Suzuk­i’s belief that the Japan­ese philosophy/discipline of Bushi­do (“the way of the war­rior”) dove­tailed effec­tive­ly with Zen Bud­dhist prac­tice and out­look.
• The “weaponiza­tion of reli­gion” as a form of mass mind con­trol.

The Hitler Lega­cy by Peter Lev­en­da; IBIS Press [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–210‑9; pp. 250–252.

. . . . This is a rel­a­tive­ly new branch of reli­gious stud­ies, one that is con­tro­ver­sial. It is  sure to be upset­ting to many peo­ple as they real­ize that one of the most revered authors on Zen Buddhism–D.T. Suzu­ki (1870–1966)–was, in fact, a devot­ed fas­cist who glo­ri­fied  the role of the Japan­ese war­rior in the con­quest of Chi­na.

What may come as a sur­prise to many oth­ers is the fact–amply sup­port­ed by documentation–that one of the West­ern world’s most respect­ed inter­preters of Zen Bud­dhism, Karl­fried Graf Dur­ck­heim, was a Nazi par­ty mem­ber, SA man since 1933, and the head of Nazi pro­pa­gan­da in Japan, report­ing direct­ly to Reich For­eign Min­is­ter Ribben­trop. A com­mit­ted Nazi, Dur­ck­heim was even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed by Allied forces after the fall of Japan and sen­tenced to six­teen months in prison.

These two men–Suzuki and Durckheim–became fast friends for the dura­tion of the war. they had a great deal in com­mon, and Zen was the glue that found them togeth­er. Bushido–the “way of the warrior”–had res­o­nance for both the Nazis and the Japan­ese nation­al­ists. The lat­ter were slaugh­ter­ing their way across the length and breadth of Asia. Zen Bud­dhism, like Islam, had become weaponized.

The crit­i­cal point to take away from this dis­cus­sion is the fact that religion–religious orga­ni­za­tions, influ­en­tial cler­gy, even reli­gious sen­ti­ments could become the ser­vant of the state. Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, often con­sid­ered the high­est form of human expe­ri­ence, becomes rel­e­gat­ed to being anoth­er tool in a gov­ern­ment arse­nal designed for  caus­ing the vio­lent end of anoth­er human being and the vic­to­ry of the state over anoth­er nation, eth­nic group, or reli­gious enti­ty. This is, after all, what a “holy war” is: men and women unit­ed under one reli­gion, sect, or denom­i­na­tion slaugh­ter­ing men and women unit­ed under anoth­er. It becomes dif­fi­cult to dif­fer­en­ti­ate whether reli­gion is the cause or the medi­um for vio­lent con­flict; from the point of view of both the vic­tims and the per­pe­tra­tors, it prob­a­bly does­n’t mat­ter.

In the case of Bud­dhism, it seems counter-intu­itive that a phi­los­o­phy whose most exalt­ed prac­ti­tion­ers refuse to ear meat or to harm any liv­ing thing could be recruit­ed to con­vince a lay pop­u­la­tion to take up arms and invade anoth­er coun­try, mur­der­ing its inhab­i­tants, and claim­ing that this is to con­sis­tent with what the Bud­dha taught. Yet this weaponiza­tion of reli­gion is pre­cise­ly what took place in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry under the influ­ence of extreme nation­al­ism in Europe, the Mid­dle East, and Asia. Japan­ese nation­al­ism was seen as anal­o­gous to–if not iden­ti­cal with–the nation­al­ist move­ment in Ger­many, and observers and com­men­ta­tors not­ed this sim­i­lar­i­ty favor­ably.

Bri­an Daizen Vic­to­ria has been writ­ing about this phe­nom­e­non in a num­ber of peer-reviewed journals–notably The Asia-Pacif­ic Jour­nal–and has pub­lished a num­ber of books on the sub­ject. Speak­ing Japan­ese and hav­ing access to the previously–unknown war writ­ings of D.T. Suzu­ki and many oth­er Zen mas­ters, he has recorded–not with­out controversy–the under­stand­ing of Zen ini­ti­ates that Bushi­do (the “way of the war­rior”) and Zen Bud­dhism are inex­tri­ca­bly linked. Fur­ther, that mind­less devo­tion to the state and fol­low its orders–no mat­ter what they are–constitute the high­est form of Bud­dhist self­less­ness. The writ­ings of these Japan­ese monks and schol­ars on the sub­ject of sui­cide of sui­cide, and the will­ing­ness to face death and lose one’s life in the ser­vice of the Empire can be com­pared to those of Islamist sui­cide bombers and ter­ror­ists, with lit­tle dis­tor­tion between the two. What dif­fer­ence, after all, is there between a Pales­tin­ian in a sui­cide vest and the Kamikaze pilots of Japan?. . . . They are both los­ing their lives for a high­er cause, and caus­ing as much human-dev­as­ta­tion as pos­si­ble in the process.

. . . . The manip­u­la­tion of spir­i­tu­al beliefs and sen­ti­ments by state and non-state actors alike is noth­ing less than what they used to call “mind con­trol” back in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The weaponiza­tion of reli­gion is a means of con­trol­ling (and weaponiz­ing) the human psy­che on a mas­sive scale, using ter­mi­nol­o­gy and sym­bol­ism that are wide­ly rec­og­nized by the mass­es and not spe­cif­ic  to any indi­vid­ual. Reli­gious feel­ings are strong, but they are also ambigu­ous and large­ly resis­tant to log­ic and ver­bal­iza­tion, and thus sub­ject to re-inter­pre­ta­tion and redi­rec­tion by a com­pe­tent leader. It is the reli­gious pas­sion itself that is the food of the polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary com­man­der; it mat­ters whether the out­ward man­i­fes­ta­tion of that pas­sion is devo­tion to Jesus or Marx, Bud­dha or the Emper­or. . . .

3. Suzu­ki may have influ­enced the “mar­tial spir­it” of Nazi Ger­many. Suzuk­i’s views on Jews dove­tailed with those of the Third Reich.

The Hitler Lega­cy by Peter Lev­en­da; IBIS Press [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–210‑9; p. 256.

‘. . . . The fact that they have no coun­try is karmic ret­ri­bu­tion on the Jews. Because they have no attach­ment to the land and are wan­der­ers, it is their fate to intrude into state struc­tures cre­at­ed by oth­ers. . . .  In the case of today’s Ger­man peo­ple, they find it extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to accept their coun­try  being dis­turbed by a for­eign race. . . .’