The Buddha Witnessed Genocide

A Lesson

According to one account, the Buddha sat under a dead tree watching the annihilation of his clan. He watched from a distance. A witness. Without his witnessing the genocide of the Sākya clan would have never been known, like a hundred thousand tragedies before and after.

The story is that the son of Pasenadi, Viḍūḍabha, was humiliated to learn he was the grandchild of an enslaved concubine of the Sākyan king, Mahānāma. In his rage, Viḍūḍabha approached Kapilavastu four times to destroy the Sākyas, but was met by the Buddha on the road three times and turned back. The fourth time, however, the Buddha understood his intervention could not prevent the inevitable attack on his relatives, and he stood aside. After the attack, Viḍūḍabha’s army rested near the banks of the Aciravati river and was swept away in a flash flood during the night. Reflecting later on the incident, the Buddha recounts that this tragedy occurred as a result of the Sākyans poisoning a river and killing its fish.

Genocide is hatred, pure and simple—the wish for the annihilation of a whole culture, its language, customs, and traditions. In human history around the world, genocidal war and “ethnic cleansing” are the rule, rather than the exception, all driven by the three poisons: desire, hatred, and ignorance. The West is a product of systematic genocide. We Western Buddhists are the heirs of the genocidal policies of half a millennium of European imperialism and colonial oppression around the world.

On Substack, I see many Buddhist writers decry what they perceive as the complicit silence of other Buddhist teachers (especially Jewish ones) regarding the Gaza genocide in particular. But it is axiomatic that Buddhists ought to oppose war in all forms. It is something that goes without saying. Have a few people bearing the title “Buddhist teacher” publicly supported the Russians and the Israelis? Yes, but these people have been corrupted by ignorance and nationalism, just as many Japanese Buddhist teachers justified the Japanese invasion of Asia. These people should be called out and publicly shamed. It must also be kept in mind that they are carrying the karmic burden of the army of whose actions they approve. This is quite sad, since these people are headed for lower realms. So we should have compassion for them even as we condemn their actions.

When the Buddha witnessed the annihilation of his clan, he remained silent. The Buddha understood the karma surrounding these tragic events. Silence is not always complicity.

The Buddhist view is that we are all subject to karma created in past lives. Buddhists see the results of karma as unerring, and know that the suffering of lower realms awaits those who die fighting in battles, those who drop bombs on the innocent, those who destroy homes, fields, food, and water supplies—in short, those who prosecute the merciless logic of war and oppression.

We also know that the unerring ripening of karma strikes everyone, from infant to elder. No one escapes karma, not even the Buddha. It is recorded that the Buddha experienced migraines for the rest of his life following the genocide of the Sākya clan.

Buddhists should separate their notions of justice from compassion. When it comes to Gaza, Ukraine, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and so on, in terms of justice, the leaders and followers of Hamas, Israel, Russia, the USA, etc., should answer for their crimes against humanity in The Hague. This is a simple matter of mundane law and decency. However, Buddhists cannot take a side in terms of compassion. Taking sides means turning away from the suffering of one party in preference for another. This is not the limitless compassion the Buddha taught.

Buddhists must cultivate compassion for all sides, recognizing that all this suffering emerges from the wish to be happy, and the ignorance which prevents it. All suffering is a result of negative karma, either directly or indirectly.

Some cry out in rage against suffering, others cry from sorrow. Simply witness suffering. Witnessing is memory. Even when we can do nothing, we can witness suffering and remember it.

We do not need to articulate what we witness in performative, verbose displays of outrage. Karma is unerring. Those who approve of the atrocities in Ukraine, Gaza, and so on, are gathering a very heavy burden of karma. All in all, it is sad. But what else do we expect from samsara?