The War on Error: Holy War in Buddhism

After the attack on the Twin Towers in 2001, US President George W. Bush launched “The War on Terror.” Ten years later, in 2011, there was no sign of any end to fighting, and twenty years later, in 2021, after foreign troops left Afghanistan, the suffering continues. The concept of a “Holy War” in Buddhism is the spiritual battle with the mental defilements of greed, ill-will, and delusion. The proximate cause of suffering, according to the teaching of the Buddha, is craving, and the root cause is ignorance. Due to not understanding things as they truly are, we crave for and lust for pleasurable objects, and reject and recoil from unpleasant objects. The only way to reach peace is to fight “The War on Error,” to remove delusion. If one rightly understands the three characteristics of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and not-self, one will become equanimous regarding pleasant and unpleasant objects of the senses. Neither will one cling to views and opinions. If the root cause of ignorance is destroyed, all other mental defilementswill also cease. This book offers some advice on cultivating tolerance, compassion, and wisdom, to live a peaceful life by avoiding conflict, and withdrawing the mind from the inner and outer turmoil caused by wrong-views and wrong-thoughts.

About the Author:

BHIKKHU PESALA received higher ordination in 1979, at the Oakenholt Buddhist Centre, near Oxford, UK, with the late Venerable MahŒsi SayŒdaw as his preceptor. Since then, he has devoted his life to studying and teaching the Dhamma-Vinaya, and the practice of insight meditation, in monasteries in Burma, Thailand, and England, UK. He has endeavoured to share his understanding of the Dhamma through writing, editing, and translating many Dhamma books, chiefly by famous meditation masters of the Burmese Insight tradition. On its website, “The Association for Insight meditation” hosts these publications and links to other useful resources on Buddhism. Bhikkhu Pesala’s first publication was “The Debate of King Milinda,” which was first published in 1990, and reprinted by Motilal Banarsidass in 1991, 1998, and 2022.