>>16000
>>16001
It depends on which version you would use and if you were acting like a Tipitaka purist.
https://www.urbandharma.org/udharma6/militarycanon.html
>The Buddha himself, in his last life and in previous lives, renounced the apex of kshatriya life, that of a king. The skills and actions of a warrior are said to lead to a rebirth in a purgatory or hell.
>The military also figures in the category treating the utopic rule of the cakkavattin (a Wheel Turning King). Here, the military plays a strange role where the cakkavattin maintains a complete four-limbed army and his sons are described as "foe crushers"; yet, neither performs a military function. They seem to appear only as a necessary symbol of kingship.
The religion is definitely anti-imperialistic so Rome would have rejected it. Obviously a religion that rejects the necessity of a kshatriyan way in the current age could easily be considered subversive. The Romans would have butchered Buddhist monks, or more likely nailed them to trees. But it's not so clear cut, as you can see below.
>The next category I termed The Metaphor: Nibbanic Action is War. Here the military plays an important role in serving as the referent in this metaphor. Striving for nibbana, i.e. performing Path actions, is so difficult that the Buddha expresses this endeavor in a series of analogies, which express the powerful metaphor Nibbanic Action is War. In order to explain the difficulties of Path actions, and the superior qualities and skills necessary to overcome them, a monk is frequently told that he must be like a warrior or elephant skilled in battle. The Canon frequently speaks of "conquering" various mundane elements, and just as a raja would have his senapati, his army leader, the Buddha had his second in command the dhammasenapati, Doctrine army leader. And finally, there is the Buddha's "battle" with Mara just before his enlightenment. The use of military elements in such a fashion expresses implicitly a favorable attitude towards the military.
The greater Jihad, an inner Jihad for the soul, could be said to mirror this, although it exists in a religion that condones the smaller material Jihad. Buddhism eschews the latter entirely.
>The final category is titled The Bodhisatta in Battle. Here we find militarily involved Jataka or past life stories of the Buddha. In them the Bodhisatta and future arahants participate in military conflicts. Several of these Jataka present the battlefield as an excellent place to perfect energy (viriya, often appearing as perseverance in translations). Several stories raise questions as to the kammic fruits reaped by the Bodhisatta because of his military actions. As we have seen these kammic fruits should be negative, but the Canon remains silent on the matter. From the Jataka we learn that being a soldier in no way negates one's ultimate ability to attain nibbana; and, in fact, being a soldier might be an aid, since, as seen in the category Nibbanic action is War, a superior soldier has the necessary qualities for a monk to succeed. The fact that the Bodhisatta and the future arahants were able to perform military actions and still reach the ultimate Buddhist goal could and can reassure any Buddhist soldier that with the right effort their ultimate well-being could and can be assured. Within the Jataka, the military and military actions come across as perfectly normal in ancient India.
So obviously people who live by the sword can never accrue any positive kammic rewards. The positive aspect is that it gives them the discipline to attain Nirvana once they dedicate themselves to the Path.
>The military appears frequently in the Pali Canon. In fact, if all the military sutta and passages were collected together in one text, they could form a separate volume of the Canon, as together they number over five hundred pages in length. However, if we place these references in the context of the entire Pali Canon, we see a minimal numerical representation. It is possible that these references have a greater impact than their numbers suggest.
>Of the one hundred ten references to the military collected nearly half of them came from the Jataka. This is important because the Jataka are the main source from which the laity obtain Buddhist instruction. Thus, there is an exaggerated importance of the Jataka in teaching the Theravada point of view on the military.
Christianity with its emphasis on the New Testament would certainly be at pain to pretend having that much material relating to war per se.
>The Pali Canon's descriptions of the ancient Indian army fall in line with those of other contemporary sources. Some specific details remain uncorroborated, but these are the exceptions and not the norm. Given that the Buddha is said to have been a kshatriya and considering the number of kshatriya said to have entered the sangha, one would expect this kind of accuracy from the Canon when treating military subjects. As a whole, the military references lack in both technical details of the army and detailed descriptions of battles. The Canon never describes explicit scenes of blood, severed limbs, or the deaths of men, animals and supernatural beings, as does epic Indian literature. Whether this stems from the Canon's pacifist ethos or another source remains unclear. The Pali Canon does, however, echo the kshatriya ethos of duty and honor in battle.