20Th century ( martial law) literacy period
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MARTIAL ARTS
Modern historians of East Asia have noted the seemingly incongruous presence of martial monks in Buddhist monasteries at various moments in Asian history. This unusual conjunction has appeared ironic to many in the West, given the prominent place the renunciation of violence has had in Buddhist teachings and monastic precepts. On the other hand, to many Westerners who have taken up the practice of the Asian martial arts, this conjunction has been seen not as contradictory, but as essential to the modern rhetoric of spirituality and the martial arts. Zen Buddhism, in particular, has played an important role in this approach to the martial arts. Underlying these contradictory understandings has been a Western tendency to idealize and romanticize both Buddhism and the martial arts, removing them from their historical and institutional contexts. Abetting such tendencies has been an uncritical use of categories that have emerged over the past two centuries in the study of religion both in Asia and the West, including the category of religion itself. To understand the relationship of the martial arts to Buddhism, then, it is necessary to know something of the history and nature of Buddhist institutions in Asia, and, also of the ways in which Western perceptions of Eastern religion and spirituality have contributed to contemporary understandings and, in many cases, distortions of Asian Buddhism.