One of the aims of this volume is to provide material, based on critical, unbiased research illustrating the fact that, at particular moments in their history and in certain aspects of their doctrines, the traditions of Buddhism, like other religious traditions, have actively or passively promoted - and may continue to promote - violent modes of behaviour or structural violence. The more comprehensive and systematic inquiry can only proceed once this fact is fully achknowledged and has challenged the dominate and obstinate perception of Buddhism as a religion that in its conception and history is categorically divorced from violence.
The articles in this volume cover an extremely broad spectrum of the Buddhist world in term of regions and periods. They deal with aspects of violence starting in India before the Common Era and ranging to the support of Japnese militarism by Buddhist leadersand scholars far into the twentieth century.

Contents:
Francis Brassard: The Path of the Bodhisattva and the Creation of Oppressive Cultures
Martin Delhey: Views on Suicide in Buddhism. Some Remarks
Christoph Kleine: Evil Monks with Good Intentions? Remarks on Buddhist Monastic Violence and its Doctrinal Background
Carmen Meinert: Between the Profane and the Sacred? On the Context of the Rite of „Liberation“
Jens Schlieter: Compassionate Killing or Conflict Resolution? The Murder of King Langdarma according to Tibetan Buddhist Sources
Brian Victoria: D. T. Suzuki and Japanese Militarism: Supporter or Opponent
Klaus Vollmer: Buddhism and the Killing of Animals in Premodern Japan
Michael Zimermann: Only a Fool becomes a King: Buddhist Stances on Punishment