Genocide in Myanmar.  Rape as a weapon of oppression in Sri Lanka.  It almost passed without our comment, but an article in last week's New York Times documented a disturbing increase in violent nationalism in Buddhist countries.

It's an extensive and well-written article that explores the question of how societies based on a teaching of pacifism, tolerance, and acceptance can turn around and embrace violent ideologies of  intolerance and xenophobia. 

According to the article, tensions in parts of Southeast Asia are arising as Buddhist majorities are feeling that they are under an existential threat, particularly from Islamic minorities that are struggling with their own violent fringe.  Buddhists mobs are abandoning the peaceful tenets of their religion and waging deadly attacks against minority Muslim populations, while nationalists in those counties  use the spiritual authority of extremist monks to bolster their support.

We sense a certain cultural bias here.  It seems that all across the globe, in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, nationalism is on the rise, and racist notions of intolerance and hatred are escalating into ugly rhetoric and violent confrontations everywhere.  This is happening in secular nations, in Christian nations both Protestant and Catholic, in the Islamic world, and in the lone Jewish state. Why wouldn't it also happen in Buddhist countries?

The underlying assumption seems to be that in Buddhist nations such as Thailand, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, all the people are active, practicing, fully realized Buddhist practioners.  Everyone, it's assumed, is equally committed to practicing the Buddhist ideals of non-violence and acceptance. However, that grossly oversimplifies a true understanding of the actual population, any population really.  

Assuming that a Buddhist society, when stressed, wouldn't engage in the same nationalism and xenophobia is as ridiculous as assuming that the United States, a dominantly Christian society, would create concentration camps for children of immigrants and cut programs that aid the poor while giving tax cuts to millionaires.  Oh, wait a minute . . . 

Christians, when made to feel persecuted and under attack and then have an "enemy" pointed out to them, will react just as violently and viciously as anyone else.  Same thing with Buddhists, too.  But to assume that every person living in a Buddhist majority country is an active, practicing Buddhist, following the Eightfold Path and the Four Nobel Truths, is as delusional as assuming that every American is a Christ-like paragon of tolerance and love.

What is disturbing about the article is that there are apparently radical monks in these Buddhist countries preaching messages of "self-defense" and preservation of "traditional Buddhist values."  Some of these monks have gone so far as to incite violence and promote bigotry and racism.  

That's unacceptable.  A monk who has taken their vows and are ostensibly practicing the dharma should know better than to become a demagogue, just as priests, rabbis and imams should also know better.  But these are times and these are the symptoms of the times. 

There is no Shangri-La and there is no Eden.  There is no place on Earth that couldn't be made better but it's up to us all to try and improve the situation, anyway.