Other Buddhists, equally earnest, reached different conclusions. Bodhin Kjolhede, abbot of the Rochester Zen Center, argued that nonviolent means had failed to halt Serbian atrocities. He insisted:

We have a responsibility to respond. That's what responsibility means in Zen: responsiveness. If there is such a thing as a justifiable war, then this would appear to be it. What else could NATO have done under these circumstances, when Milosevic would not cease and desist from his ethnic atrocities, in spite of what many would argue were extraordinarily patient efforts to find a nonviolent resolution? I am willing to come out and say that we needed to intervene militarily.(22)

Such divergent positions suggest that Buddhist resistance to war merits closer examination. Does sustained Buddhist practice engender special insight into complex worldly issues? Not necessarily. Does a commitment to engaged Buddhism yield ready-made answers in times of crisis? Apparently not.

In the West, strategists and theologians alike have turned to just-war theories, which go back at least as far as Aristotle. Here is one definition: “A just war is a morally justifiable war after justice, human rights, the common good, and all other relevant moral concepts have been consulted and weighed against the facts and against each other.”(23) Just-war thinking is evident in Kjolhede's statement. Helen Tworkov, editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, is similarly explicit:

[Pacifism] is a position for which I have enormous respect, but it's not one that I share. I am drawn to those schools of Buddhism in which “killing” becomes part of a more complex conversation; in the Balkans, the alleviation of suffering emerges as the prime motive for war, and the strategies accommodate paradox and contradiction.(24)

Just-war statecraft not only addresses permissible conditions for beginning a war; it also considers how a war should be fought once it has begun. Yet the principled pragmatism of just-war theory can be a slippery slope, leading to purported justifications that have little or no moral validity. In the long sweep of Buddhist history, it is not hard to find abuses: a twentieth-century example is the fervent embrace of militarism by many Japanese Buddhists during World War II.

If this is an opportune time to undertake a fresh critique of Buddhist pacifism, a pertinent model might be the work of the late Christian theologian John H. Yoder. A forceful advocate of nonviolence, Yoder nonetheless criticized certain varieties of religious pacifism as naive, sentimental, and dependent on utopian views of human nature. “That innocent suffering is powerful is not easy to believe,” Yoder wrote. “Specifically, the bearers of power in our societies do not believe in that view, or they would not oppress as they do.”(25) Can it be that pacifism and just-war reasoning are equally valid options for present-day Buddhists? The question deserves more attention than it has yet received.

Common Issues

Peacemaking is a domain-specific issue (however vast the domain), along with human rights, the environment, and so on. These issues are characteristic of engaged Buddhism. All could be examined in the above manner, but for now we must let one example suffice. There are other engaged Buddhist concerns, no more or less important, that cut across specific domains. For example: What is the relation between wisdom and compassionate action? Let's call this second group common issues. Four are presented below in the form of questions.

What constitutes engagement? This basic question is a central motif of the present volume, eliciting a range of responses. As noted above, Patricia Hunt-Perry and Lyn Fine believe that “all Buddhism is engaged,” and Paula Green asserts that “every moment of life is engagement.” Others seek sharper-edged definitions. Christopher Queen, interviewing Zen teacher Bernard Glassman, asks, “What about a woman who stays home and cares for her family? Does one have to be involved in politics [to be engaged]?” David Chappell asks if Soka Gakkai International-USA is socially engaged, and, citing SGI-USA's demonstrable success in fighting racism, he concludes that it is. Roger Corless considers whether the activities of the Gay Buddhist Fellowship qualify as engagement. He too answers affirmatively, citing as criteria “the healing of homophobia” and “liberation from suffering.” When Robert Aitken was asked, “Would you accept zazen [meditation] as a form of social action?” he gave a deceptively informal reply: “Probably not generally, but it could be.”(26) One can see how meditating in protest alongside the tracks of weapons-bearing trains constitutes social action (a group in