ABSTRACT
The story of Buddhism and nonviolence is bound up with the Euro-American encounter with Buddhist cultures. The image of Buddhists as nonviolent served colonized cultures to claim the moral high ground from Abrahamic civilizations that had oppressed them, explained away, or blamed the rapacious domination of colonialists as a result of pacifism. The current Dalai Lama, the main focus of this article, became a refugee in India not long after the successful independence movement of Gandhi and has been influenced by its great figures in his own struggle with an impossibly powerful opponent. Contemporary scholars have undermined the general reputation of Buddhist traditions as exemplars of nonviolence. Buddhist ethics offers a profound concern for minimizing harm, both for those who use force and for those on whom it is inflicted, a concern informed by profound sensitivity to situational context and a high tolerance for the fruitful ambiguities generated by competing ethical concerns.
