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Buddhist Anti-Semitism

 
Filed under: Anti-Semitism
Publication: Jewish Political Studies Review

Jewish Political Studies Review
Volume 31, Numbers 3-4

Introduction

Interesting works of scholarship have recently been produced on the topic of religious anti-Semitism. The June 2020 publication, The Return of Religious Anti-Semitism? Special Issue of Religions, by the Institute of the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism at Indiana University, being the most recent example. Jerrett A. Carty’s study1 on Martin Luther’s anti-Judaism in Anti-Semitism Studies being another recent one. The importance of the topic of religions for the study of anti-Semitism is also reflected in the “Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust” at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, especially their conferences on “Interreligious Studies and the Holocaust.” While the importance is widely understood, what these works on the topic have in common is that they deal with anti-Semitism (or anti-Judaism) in its Christian or Islamic contexts but completely overlook another world religion: Buddhism. This text seeks to close this gap in the literature.

The term “religion” is certainly a Protestant concept and remains contested, and not all scholars of anti-Semitism even see it adequately applying to it. Kenneth L. Marcus argued well in The Definition of Anti-Semitism that

In short, religious anti-Semitism has seldom been driven primarily by disagreements over the tenets of religious belief. Rather, it has emerged with perceptions of an ethno-religious group associated with various negative social attributes…This anti-Semitism may be ‘religious’ in the sense that it has been informed by the religious beliefs of those who have persecuted the Jewish people. It is not, however, religious in the sense that of being directed at Jews as an exclusively religious group.2

Indeed, if one would define religious anti-Semitism as anti-Semitism that derives from religious beliefs such as the Bible, it misses the fact that anti-Semitism can exist in a religious setting without any reference to the founding text of the given religion. Buddhism’s founder nor his disciples have ever referred to the Jewish people, and it is unlikely that they had even heard of them (should one assume the historical Buddha to have existed). Nor does the Buddhist scripture talk about Jews or Judaism. Yet, anti-Semitism has occurred within the Buddhist religious context. And so, this text seeks to explore how anti-Semitism can be informed by Buddhist beliefs, how anti-Semites have been attracted to Buddhism, which is commonly misunderstood as a religion free of violence and anti-Semitism (especially by Jewish Buddhists), and that Buddhism can even lead to anti-Semitic terrorism.

When exploring Buddhist anti-Semitism in terms of religious anti-Semitism, rather than one that is culturally occurring in Buddhist societies independent of Buddhism itself, a problem arises: is Buddhism, in fact, a religion? Buddhism is often described not as a religion because it has no God, but rather a philosophy or “ancient science,” similar to modern psychology. This notion is, however, false. If one applies the term “religion,” then it must include Buddhism as well: Buddhism relies on belief, ritual, devotion, celestial deities, spirits, and the supramundane nature of the Buddha. The idea of the Buddha himself being not religious but a spiritual freethinker and rational empiricist philosopher is, moreover, a modern image that has been constructed by Orientalist scholars3 and contemporarily advocated in many Western spas, therapy rooms, or meditation classes.

Naivety Regarding Buddhism

Another common, perhaps modern Western, misconception of Buddhism is that it is purely a “religion of peace.” Since the 1950s, many (especially American) Jews turned to Buddhism to escape a perceived failure of Western modernity because Buddhism appeared like an alternative practice, without any God or history of persecution of the Jewish people. Unfortunately, this is a rather naïve idealization of Buddhism that has not yet adequately been addressed in the academic field. “Jewish Buddhist” (also often called “Bujus,” “Jewbus,” or “Jubus”4) account for only 2.5 to 6 percent of American Jewry, but they also account for up to 16 percent of American Buddhists5 and constitute the vast majority of American Buddhist teachers.6 Moreover, studies have found that American Jews are more than five times more likely to be attracted to Buddhism than other Americans.7 Emily Sigalow, on the other hand, disputes these numbers. “While scholars do not have precise statistics about the number of Jews involved in Buddhist communities in the United States, it seems safe to assert the proportion of Jews in Buddhist circles is disproportionate to the percentage of Jews in this country [the United States] (Jews constitute about 2 to 3 percent of the population).”8 Unfortunately, studies on the Jewish-Buddhist connection, such as Sigalow’s recent book American JewBu: Jews, Buddhists, and Religious Change,9 ignore the problem of anti-Semitism in Buddhist settings entirely.

Buddhism has gained a reputation in the West for being a religion of peace in contrast to Christianity or Islam. This stereotypical view is, however, an orientalist fantasy of Western exoticism. Contemporary Buddhist monks frequently engage in nationalistic violence in Burma and Sri Lanka, especially against non-Buddhist minorities of the Tamil or Muslim Burmese, and the history of Asia is filled with Buddhist rulers committing massacres. There are fully ordained Theravāda Buddhist monks in today’s Thailand who at the same time serve in the military as armed soldiers, navy, marines, or air force personnel. Buddhist warrior monks of medieval and feudal Japan, the Sōhei, are also an example of how violent Buddhism can be. Korean despot Kungye (c. 869 -918 CE) was a former Buddhist monk, and so were the Khmer Rouge’s “butcher” Ta Mok and Pol Pot, along with many of his lower-level cadres. Cases of self-harm in the name of Buddhism come to mind as well, like the self-immolation of monks during the Vietnam War or historical self-mummifications of Buddhist monks in Japan, China, and India. From the enthusiastic support of Chinese Buddhist monks and nuns for the Korean War,10 to the Mongol warfare against shamanic practices, to the sacralized warfare of the Fifth Dalai Lama of Tibet, Buddhism is no more a religion of peace than other religions that were abused to commit evil acts.11

Some scholars go even so far as to see the root of Buddhist violence in the Buddha himself as he was born into a warrior caste and was raised to be the ruler of his clan before he became the Buddha – the Awakened One. Michael K. Jerryson has argued that it was the Buddha’s knowledge of statecraft that influenced the construction of Buddhist monasticism,12 and Elizabeth J. Harris, in her study of early Buddhist texts, describes a ruler asking the Buddha for advice before invading a neighboring kingdom.13 What supports this notion of early Buddhism are descriptions of the Buddha’s armed bodyguard accompanying him and threatening to kill those who offend him in a debate by splitting their head into two pieces.14 In the jātaka, the literature on previous lives of Gautama Buddha, he is also often described in a romanticized fashion as a warrior.15

Interestingly, Arno Tausch found in his analysis of the World Values Survey that participants with a Buddhist background “are much more anti-Semitic than the adherents of mainstream Western Christianity, Orthodoxy or people without any denomination.”16 In fact, the World Values Survey found that 33 percent of its Buddhist respondents rejected having a Jewish neighbor compared to 19.9 percent of Protestants and 17.7 percent of Roman Catholics (the highest religious group were Shia respondents at 83.0 percent).17 This may largely be due to a xenophobic confusion of Jews as Muslims,18 but there cannot, of course, be any kind of excuse that anti-Semitism is always a mental confusion and malfunction. Interestingly, Buddhists who give greater importance to their religion in their lives were also found to be more anti-Semitic than the more secular Buddhists.19 One of the most anti-Semitic countries in the world, South Korea,20 has been historically influenced by Buddhism. However, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) 2014 survey found that Buddhist South Koreans, at 45 percent, are less likely to be anti-Semites than Christian South Koreans (60 percent) and “None/Atheists” (51 percent).21 In Japan22 and Singapore,23 however, the ADL survey found Buddhists to be slightly more anti-Semitic than “None/Atheists.” Practicing any kind of religion can lead some to feeling morally superior to others. Buddhism is no exception. And feeling morally superior is linked to anti-Semitism. In the case of Buddhism, this is especially concerning since the violent history of Buddhism is not widely known.

Karma

Contemporary Buddhism has, to my knowledge, not yet adequately addressed the issue of karma and the Holocaust. If the belief in karma means that action driven by intention would lead to consequences and that those intentions are taken into account in the kind of rebirth one experiences, the Jewish victims of the Holocaust would be seen as having been guilty of some prior wrongdoing. This would clearly be anti-Semitic. Yet, Buddhist leaders seem to avoid the topic. Karma could also be used to somehow rationalize contemporary anti-Semitism and other evils such as racism, economic hardship, or birth handicaps. Buddhist scholar Dale S. Wright has, therefore, proposed that the doctrine of karma be reformulated and “separated from elements of supernatural thinking.”24 Yet, I do not see enough effort from Buddhist communities around the world to distance the religion from this misguided way of thinking. Someone’s belief in karma, as valuable as it may be as a religious belief system, can never justify the blame of Jews for their fate in the Holocaust. As long as Buddhism is not explicitly expressing that the concept of karma is not meant to be seen that way, it inherits the danger of being understood in anti-Semitic terms by its followers. Especially since there are already disturbing incidences of Buddhist practice in relation to Holocaust memory such as an “Auschwitz retreat” by an organization called Zen Peacemakers.25 On their website, Bernie Glassman explains their intention as follows: “Why does a Zen teacher go back to Auschwitz-Birkenau again and again? At the Zen Peacemakers, which my former wife, Sandra Jishu Holmes, and I co-founded, we practice three Core Tenets: Penetrating the unknown by letting go of our fixed ideas; bearing witness to joy and suffering, and loving actions. At Auschwitz, it is not hard to let go of fixed ideas.”26

Buddhist Modernism in Japan

Anti-Semitism became part of Buddhist Modernism in Japan. Zen master Hakuun Yasutani (1885-1973), the founder of the Sanbo Kyodan organization of Japanese Zen, who later became famous in the West through Philip Kapleau’s book The Three Pillars of Zen, was a virulent anti-Semite and did not hesitate to publish his anti-Semitic views.27 While the majority of Zen masters in Japan actively supported Japanese militarism during World War II,28 Hakuun Yasutani actively supported the killings of “as many [enemies] as possible”29 and wrote in 1943:

Men should fulfil the way of men while women observe the way of women, making absolutely sure that there is not the slightest confusion between their respective roles. It is, therefore, necessary to thoroughly defeat the propaganda and strategy of the Jews. That is to say, we must clearly point out the fallacy of their evil ideas advocating freedom and equality, ideas that have dominated the world up to the present-day…The result was the almost total loss of the spirit of Japan, for the general citizenry became fascinated with the ideas of freedom and equality as advocated by the scheming Jews, not to mention such things as individualism, money as almighty, and pleasure-seeking…They are caught up in the delusion that they alone have been chosen by God and are therefore an exceptionally superior people…It must be said that this is an extreme example of the evil resulting from superstitious belief and deep-rooted delusion.30

After World War Two, Yasutani traveled to the United States and became a principal teacher of influential people in the American Buddhist community, such as Robert Baker Aitken and Taizan Maezumi, and consequently the “lineage holder in three of the largest and most established Zen centers in the United States.”31 Tanaka Chigaku (1861-1939), a Buddhist scholar and preacher of Nichiren Buddhism, promoted anti-Semitism in Japan as well. He “argued that Jews were fomenting social unrest in order to rule the world…that Jews advocated liberalism, especially within academic circles, as part of their plan to destroy the people’s moral sense.”32

Another controversial figure who was highly influential in introducing Zen Buddhism to the United States was Japanese author D. T. Suzuki (1870 – 1966), who went on a lecture tour of American universities and taught at Columbia University in the 1950s. The killing of enemy soldiers he called an act of “religion during an emergency.”33 Regarding the Jewish fate under the Nazis, Suzuki recognized that the Nazis had enacted “a very cruel policy.” Yet, on the other hand, he also stated: “when looked at from the point of view of the current and future happiness of the entire German people, it may be that, for a time, some sort of extreme action is necessary in order to preserve the nation. From the point of view of the German people, the situation facing their country is that critical.”34 Suzuki also wrote: “Therefore, morally and philosophically, there is in Zen a great deal of attraction for the military classes.35 Brian Victoria, author of Zen at War, has demonstrated in his fascinating work Suzuki’s multiple contacts with leading Nazis in wartime Japan, particularly Nazi propagandist (and later Zen master) Karlfried Dürkheim. Victoria, moreover, brought evidence for a strong Nazi interest in Zen Buddhism, which appeared to them as a mirror of their own völkisch religiosity. In the introduction of D.T. Suzuki’s publication Zen and Bushido, Handa Shin, its editor, wrote, “Dr. Suzuki’s writings are said to have strongly influenced the military spirit of Nazi Germany.”36

The Nazis

The Nazis had a vast interest in Asian mysticism that goes deeper than their adaptation of the swastika symbol, especially in esoteric Tibetan Buddhism and Japanese Zen Buddhism. Between 1938 and 1939, Heinrich Himmler sent an official expedition led by SS officer Ernst Schäfer to Tibet, saw in the Japanese samurai a model for his SS, and sought to create meditation retreats in Germany.37 He also appointed Sanskrit scholar Walther Wüst to the position of director of the Ahnenerbe (Bureau for the Study of Ancestral Heritage) and rector of the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich in 1941. Having been one of the most influential scholars of the Nazi regime, Wüst assumed a new Nazi religion to be rooted in Hinduism and Buddhism and saw a direct line from the Buddha to Hitler. Consequently, the Nazis celebrated Suzuki in the Nazi propaganda newspaper the Völkische Beobachter. They published four pages of his book Zen und die Kultur Japans (Zen and the Culture of Japan) on January 11, 1942. Victoria calls Zen Buddhism in this regard a “cult of death.”38

Earlier German anti-Semites such as Richard Wagner showed a great deal of interest in Buddhism, too. Wagner even wrote the opera Die Sieger (The Victors) with Buddhist monks as a theme.39 German philosophy professor Eugen Herrigel, who is often credited for the introduction of Zen Buddhism to Europe with his book Zen in the Art of Archery (Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschießens), was a strong Nazi supporter. Gershom Scholem discussed “Zen-Nazism” and wrote that “Eugen Herrigel…had in fact become a member of the Nazi Party after his return from Japan and having obtained whatever Zen illumination he might have got there…Herrigel joined the Nazi Party after the outbreak of the war… He was known to have stuck it out to the bitter end.”40

Terrorism

In a psychiatric evaluation, Norwegian fascist and mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, who in 2011 killed eight people with a car bomb and 69 others at a summer camp, described how he sought enlightenment and used meditation to “numb the full spectrum of human emotion — happiness to sorrow, despair, hopelessness, and fear.”41 While being a worshipper of Odin, not a Buddhist, he, however, “compared himself to a Japanese banzai warrior seeking enlightenment.”42

On March 20, 1995, the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo (now called Aleph) carried out a sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, which killed 13 and seriously injured 54 other commuters. The cult, which had officially been recognized in Japan as a religious organization in 1989, was also found responsible for other smaller terrorist attacks in the 1990s, including an attack on the Japanese parliament.43 However, could these be classified as anti-Semitic terrorist attacks of a Buddhist cult? Ely Karmon of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) in Herzliya wrote that:

From 1984 until 1986 the group under [the cult leader] Asahara developed around yoga lessons and “miracle” experiences. In 1987, however, it began to assume an ardently religious character, its doctrine based on early Buddhism…It should be noted that Asahara claimed to be Jesus, which allowed him to add to Aum’s Buddhist doctrines the Judeo-Christian concept of the Last Judgment and the final battle of Armageddon. The scheduling of Armageddon enabled the guru to append a fashionable millennial urgency to Buddhism’s timeless world view.44

While some reject the classification of the cult as Buddhist, most understand it as an offshoot of Japanese Buddhism.45 After all, in its self-understanding, the cult sought to restore what they saw as “original Buddhism.”46 Daniel A. Metraux has argued that Aum Shinrikyo justified its terrorism and violence through its interpretation of Buddhist ideas and doctrines. “The goal, says one member, is to ‘bring back the next era of shoho’ – the golden age when the teachings of Buddha are followed by everybody.”47 Robert J. Lifton describes how the cult killed to forcibly remove bad karma that would dominate humankind.48

Two months prior to the Tokyo subway attack, the cult published an extremely anti-Semitic tract called “Manual of Fear: The Jewish Ambition – Total World Conquest.” Karmon sees anti-Semitism as a central theme in Aum Shinrikyo’s ideology: “If America was Aum’s first target, the world Jewish community was its second. In the tract “Manual of Fear: The Jewish Ambition — Total World Conquest,’ Aum claimed that the Jews had taken advantage of Japan’s devastation after World War II as a step in their conspiracy to achieve total world domination. Aum saw the United States as controlled by Jewish capital…the ‘Manual of Fear’ is actually a ‘declaration of war’ on the Jews.’“49 D. W. Brackett, moreover, wrote that the cult published an enemy list, including Japanese people, whom they labeled “Jewish Japanese.”50

Conclusion

The given examples are not representative of Buddhism as a whole, just as the crusaders do not represent all of Christianity. Anti-Semitism is certainly not as much of a problem within Buddhism as it is among other world religions such as Christianity or Islam. Yet, one should not view Buddhism naively as a religious practice that is entirely free of the problem. This specific form of anti-Semitism should not remain unnoticed when the literature speaks of religious anti-Semitism.

* * *

Notes

1 Jarrett A. Carty, Martin Luther’s Anti–Judaism and Its Political Significance, Anti-Semitism Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Fall 2019), pp. 317-342.

2 Kenneth L. Marcus (2015). The Definition of Anti-Semitism, Oxford University Press, p. 76.

3 Tomoko Masuzawa, Invention of World Religions, University of Chicago Press, chapter 4; publication by the author of this article; Evan Thompson (2020). Why I Am Not a Buddhist, Yale University Press, p. 41.

4 publication by the author of this article

5 James William Coleman, The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition (Oxford, 2001) p. 192; publication by the author of this article.

6 Mira Niculescu, “Mind Full of God,” p. 146; publication by the author of this article.

7 J. W. Coleman, (2001), The New Buddhism, p. 192; publication by the author of this article.

8 Emily Sigalow (2019). American JewBu, Princeton University Press, p. 2.

9 Emily Sigalow (2019). American JewBu: Jews, Buddhists, and Religious Change, Princeton University Press.

10 See for example: Xue Yu, “Buddhist in China during the Korean War (1951-1953),” in Buddhist Warfare, edited by Michael Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer (Oxford, 2010), pp. 131-156.

11 Publication by the author of this article.

12 Michael K. Jerryson, “Introduction,” in Buddhist Warfare, Michael K. Jerryson and Mark Mark Juergensmeyer (eds.) (Oxford, 2010), p. 10.

13 Elizabeth J. Harris, “Violence and Disruption in Society: A Study of the Early Buddhist Texts,” Dialogue, Vol. 17, Nos. 1-3 (Jan.-Dec. 1990), p. 35.

14 A. Syrkin, “Notes on the Buddha’s Threats in the Dīgha Nikāya,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Vol. 7 (1984), Vol. 7, Nr. 1, pp. 147-158.

15 Publication by the author of this article; The Buddha also was not always a supporter of pacifism and people fleeing war. At least Buddhist scripture gives one that very impression: “During the time to the Buddha there was a war on the boarder of the northern Indian Kingdom of Magadha, one of the primary supporters of Buddhist monasticism. Several generals who did not want to join the battle entered the Buddhist Sangha. At the request of the king, the Buddha declared that henceforth soldiers were not allowed into the Sangha [monastic community]. (Vin. I, 73-74), quoted in: Michael Jerryson, “Militarizing Buddhism: Violence in Southern Thailand,” in Buddhist Warfare, Michael Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer (eds.), (Oxford, 2010), p. 183.

16 Tausch, Arno. The return of religious anti-Semitism?T he evidence from World Values Survey data, MPRA Paper No. 90093, posted 18 Nov 2018,

https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/90093/1/MPRA_paper_90093.pdf (access date June 19 2020).

17 Ibid.

18 Arno Tausch and Stanislaw Obirek (2019). Global Catholicism, Tolerance and the Open Society: An Empirical Study of the Value Systems of Roman Catholics, Springer, p. 81

19 Tausch, Arno. The return of religious anti-Semitism?The evidence from World Values Survey data, MPRA Paper No. 90093, posted 18 Nov 2018,

https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/90093/1/MPRA_paper_90093.pdf (access date June 19 2020).

20 Christopher L. Schilling, Jewish Seoul: An Analysis of Philo- and Anti-Semitism in South Korea, Modern Judaism – A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience, Volume 38, Issue 2, May 2018, Pages 183–197.

21 https://global100.adl.org/country/south-korea/2014 (access date June 22 2020).

22 https://global100.adl.org/country/japan/2014 (access date June 22 2020).

23 https://global100.adl.org/country/singapore/2014 (access date June 22 2020).

24 Wright, Dale S. (2004), “Critical Questions Toward a Naturalized Concept of Karma in Buddhism”, Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 11, pp. 89-90.

[25] https://reformjudaism.org/blog/letting-go-auschwitz-birkenau-lessons-zen-peacemaker-retreat “Your sense of personal identity is displaced by all the elements of Auschwitz-Birkenau, causing the distinction between self, victim, and perpetrator to vanish.”

[26] https://zenpeacemakers.org/2019/12/why-bernie-kept-going-back-to-auschwitz-birkenau/

27 Publications by the author of this article.

28 Some branches of the Zen school, including the Myōshinji branch of the Rinzai Zen sect, acknowledged their war responsibility. A 2001 proclamation by the Myōshinji General Assembly stated that: “As we reflect on the recent events [of 11 September 2001] in the U.S. we recognize that in the past our country engaged in hostilities, calling it a “holy war,” and inflicting great pain and damage in various countries. Even though it was national policy at the time, it is truly regrettable that our sect, in the midst of wartime passions, was unable to maintain a resolute anti-war stance and ended up cooperating with the war effort. In light of this we wish to confess our past transgressions and critically reflect on our conduct.”, quoted in Brian Victoria, Zen at War, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD, 2006), p. ix.

29 In 1943 he wrote, for instance: “Of course one should kill, killing as many as possible. One should, fighting hard, kill every one in the enemy army. The reason for this is that in order to carry [Buddhist] compassion and filial obedience through to perfection it is necessary to assist good and punish evil…Failing to kill an evil man who ought to be killed, or destroying an enemy army that ought to be destroyed, would be to betray compassion and filial obedience, to break the precept forbidding the taking of life.” Quoted in Brian Victoria, Zen at War, p. 72; publication by the author of this article.

30 https://tricycle.org/magazine/yasutani-roshi-hardest-koan/ (access date June 29 2020).

31 https://tricycle.org/magazine/yasutani-roshi-hardest-koan/ (access date June 29 2020).

32 Brian Victoria, Zen War Stories, London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003; p. 80.

33 D. T. Suzuki wrote in first book, published in November 1896 and entitled A Treatise on the New Meaning of Religion (Shin Shūkyō-ron): “At the time of the commencement of hostilities with a foreign country, marines fight on the sea and soldiers fight in the fields, swords flashing and cannon smoke belching, moving this way and that. In so doing, our soldiers regard their own lives as being as light as goose feathers while their devotion to duty is as heavy as Mount Tai [in China]. Should they fall on the battlefield they have no regrets. This is what is called “religion during a [national] emergency”. Quoted in Suzuki Daisetsu Zenshū, vol. 23, p. 140.

34 Quoted in Brian Victoria, “D.T. Suzuki, Zen and the Nazis,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, No. 43 (2013), p. 5.

35 D.T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhism And Its Influence on Japanese Culture, Eastern Buddhist Society (Kyoto, 1938), pp. 34-35; publication by the author of this article.

36 Quoted in: Brian Victoria, “Japanese Buddhism in the Third Reich,” Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, Volume 7 (November, 2014), p. 191; publication by the author of this article.

37 Ibid., p. 205.

38 Brian Daizen Victoria, “Zen as a Cult of Death in the Wartime Writings of D.T. Suzuki,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, No. 30 (2013); publication by the author of this article.

39 Work on Die Sieger was never finished. His opera Parsifal however took on elements of the story.

40 Gershom Scholem, “Zen-Nazism?”, Encounter, Vol. 16, February 1961, p. 96; publication by the author of this article.

41 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/may/22/anders-behring-breivik-meditation (access date July 1, 2020)

42 Ronald Purser (2019), McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality, Repeater, p. 213.

43 https://www.ict.org.il/Article.aspx?ID=1322#gsc.tab=0 (access date June 21 2020).

44 https://www.ict.org.il/Article.aspx?ID=1322#gsc.tab=0 (access date June 21 2020).

45 Mark Juergensmeyer (2003). Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. University of California Press, p. 103.

46 Richard Danzig; Marc Sageman; Terrance Leighton; Lloyd Hough; Hidemi Yuki; Rui Kotani; Zachary M. Hosford (2000). Aum Shinrikyo: Insight into How Terrorist Develop Biological and Chemical Weapons, Center for a New American Security, p. 10.

47 Daniel A. Metraux, Religious Terrorism in Japan: The Fatal Appeal of Aum Shinrikyo, Asian Survey, 35 (12): 1153.

48 Robert Jay Lifton (2000). Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism, Macmillan, p. 61.

49 https://www.ict.org.il/Article.aspx?ID=1322#gsc.tab=0 (access date June 21 2020).

50 D.W. Brackett, Holy Terror: Armageddon in Tokyo (New York, 1996), p. 108.