THE WARRIOR MONKS

DOB DOB
All of us imagine Tibet with hermitages hammered among peaks Himalaiane lived from mystical that practise the Buddhist doctrine: they meditate, "they wave" the OM and mantra to reach the elevated states of the Knowledge and the Awareness he dictates Illumination or Nirvana.
But all the philosophies and the religions have had to pay a tribute of blood, of duresses, of contradictions.
The struggle between the good and the evil is full of shades, of booby-traps, of parallel roads.
This devoted country to the peace and the mysticism has to its inside of the warriors the Dob Dob that they served to maintain the public order and to defend the country. Tibet doesn't have only monasteries and mystical, but tradesmen, agriculturists, artisans, political that were not mystical neither they persecuted the peace. They were born so around the XV century the warlike (him "Shaolin" Tibetan or the "Riders of Malta" Tibetan or him "Ospitalieri" Tibetan) Dob Dob-monks.
The Dob Dob took the votes and they were arranged in brotherhoods in which they elected his own leader that remained inside the various orders and monasteries (Gelug - one of the most famous are that in the Evening). They were of the warlike-police officers to which various duties were submitted by the public order to that to escort other prelates, county clerks, but also noble that crossed areas infested by bandits and brigands.
They took above all foot to Lhasa. The education of the warlike monks was the same one of the Tibetan monks but the objective and the impossibility to use the same tools of the monk for excellence, the spiritual Realization it made difficult, even if after the forty years they deposed the weapons and they were reinstated in the monastery.
The vestizione, the hair, the weapons (swords and knives) and the training to the weapons and sportsman (jump in long, throwing of the weight, raced struggle: that they concluded him in tournaments) they differentiated the mystical monk from the warlike monk.
Surely Norbu is very famous in Tibet, his rebellious character and sometimes violent he has brought it to become Dob Dob (so it didn't lose the facilitations that the monks had to that times). Around 1950 he tells has lost an arm fighting against three warriors, but a warrior of another monastic order immediately challenged later and with an alone arm he succeeded in killing it. From that moment it became a legend.
As the Samurai and in particolar way the ronins went in the various dojos to challenge the teacher and to make to be worth his own school (ryu), so Tibetan brotherhoods were challenged (even if it was forbidden) comparing his own champions. It certainly was not a sporting meeting with rules and arbitrators: it won who was standing. We are some distant from the road of the mysticism or the monastic rules. But we don't forget that the roads for the illumination are not linear and you asphalt, but floods of paths, of standstills, of biases, a route full of pebbles and holes.
The legends of the warlike monks of any nation I am full of contradictions and of men from the dualistic character.
Famous other Uin Dob Dob named Uandu was usual to give everything to the pedlars of Lhasa, but then in the inns he ate and he drank without paying.

SHOEI
The warlike monks of Japan Sohei-monk soldier (also called bad Akuso-monk, that is in weapons), was armed deprive you constitute in the monasteries around the X secolo.combattevano against the samurais and against the warriors of the other monasteries.
In short the human desire to overpower, to emerge, to show his own superiority doesn't even stop him inside a monastic lay-out.
the greatest party of the Soheis they were monks of the schools Tendai, Hosso, Shingon and subsequently Jodo. These deprived army or brotherhoods that for ferocity, aspect and armaments they didn't have anything to envy to the samurais, they arranged him in seven fanatical.
One of the most famous were the Ikko-ikki been born around the XV century.
Also them Buddhists didn't practise meditation or other, but they believed in the eternal beatitude and therefore they fought without fear of the death.

YAMABUSHI
The warlike monks of the mountain Yamabushi "He who are found among the mountains." ( in origin solitary Yamahoshi-men, santoni of the mountain also known with other names kenja, kenza and shugenja).
Warlike invincible with supernatural powers owed to severe "trainings" ascetic on the body and on the spirit. They followed and they follow the doctrine Shugendo a combo of elements of the doctrines Buddhist and Shinto.Occasionally they also participated in battles beside the samurai and of the soheis. Their origins can be made to go up again to the solitary hijiris of the VIII and the IX century.
"They followed and they studied the teachings of the sect Tendai of the Buddhismo, or of the sect Shingon. Was the Shingon one of the principal seven of the mikkyo (??) or esoteric Buddhismo, according to which the illumination is found through the isolation, the study and the contemplation of itself same, as well as of the nature and of images esoteric callings send it. Is the sect Shingon that that Tendai they saw the mountains as the ideal place for this type of isolation and for the contemplation of the nature.In their recalls of mountain, these monks not only studied the nature and texts and images religious or spiritual, but also a variety of martial arts. It is doubtful if they heard the necessity to defend from the bandits, from the other monks or from the army of the samurais but the idea to study the martial arts as mean to mentally improve him and spiritually, and not he has always had only physically a central place in the Japanese culture, beyond the specific principles of a religious sect or another. This way, to the peer of the soheis, the yamabushis became as many warriors as monks." (Wikipedia)
Toward the Period Nanboku-cho, in the XII and XIV century, the yamabushis had formed brotherhoods arranged callings konsha, which, together with the soheis and to other monks, they started to take over the central temples of their seven.
Quite a lot centuries later, in the Period Sengoku, the yamabushis could be found between the counsellors and the army of almost all the most important contenders for the dominion on Japan. Some, driven by Takeda Shingen, Oda Nobunagas helped against Uesugi Kenshin in 1568, while others, included the abbot Sessai Choro, Tokugawa Ieyasu advised. Many fought close to their mates monks, the ikko-ikkis, against Nobunaga, that destroyed them at the end and it put elegant to the epoch of the warlike monks.
As the other types of warlike monks, the yamabushis were skilled in the use of an ample variety of armament. It doesn't owe therefore to surprise to find references that unhide them while they are fighting with arc and arrow, or with sword and dagger. Nevertheless, to the peer of the soheis and the ikko-ikkis, the weapon of election for the yamabushis was the naginata.

Additionally to their spiritual workmanships or mysticisms, the yamabushis skilled apprentices of the ninjutsu were often held, the art of the ninjas. You knows that the monks of the mountain engaged the ninjas to fight to their side and to help them in various ways, more clandestine. And he is also known that the ninjas were often disguised by monks or ascetics of the mountain, so that to pass more easily unnoticed in certain environments. This
can very, probably have been the origin of the confusion among the two figures; it seems in fact unlikely that an elevated number of yamabushi they had been trained in the ninjutsu by the clans ninja of the Japanese islands.
In reality, according to some hypotheses, the style of lifetime and the organization of the clans ninjas would be derived from those of the yamabushis, elaborated again to the light of the particular conceptions of the ninpo (the tallest form of the ninjutsu) and other influenzas type popular.

SAMURAI
It would seem that in this list of warlike monks there is no affinity, but for many of them the route was inverse. The study of the Buddhist philosophy and above all zen (Mu the nothing, the void) helped them to face the death subliming it and the continuous practice not only brought them to also sublime the martial art that became tool, as for the Shaolins, to transform the character and the mind and therefore ready to face a spiritual walk and the attainment of the Satori.

And after having slaughtered, killed and massacred they deposed the weapons as the Dob Dob and they were closed again in the Buddhist monasteries crossing a spiritual and more warlike road.

SHAOLIN
But the most known warlike monks are the Shaolins order that was born in the 540 d.c. with the construction on the Songshan mountain, in the Chinese province of Henan, of the first temple Shaolin.
History L and the origin are to the course of everybody, in particolar way of those people that practises the Chinese martial arts and also from those people who practise the Japanese martial arts.

The monastery Shaolin had a fundamental characteristic the coalescing, the amalgazione, the improvement and the codification of the various martial disciplines that were already practiced in China in a ritual and in a tool for the illumination, but also of self-defence that was called Shaolin Chuan. Boxing of the small forest.
Me famous telefilms Kung was with Corrode they represent very well the history, the philosophy, the study and the objectives of the monks of it Shaolin.

Conclusion
Today it seems still that the spirit of these monk-warriors lodges in the body of many Buddhists in the world.

The monks go out of their monasteries to mix with the population to fight for the human, political and geographical rights.
"Of these times to preach is not enough. The monks must act for to improve the company, to eliminate the evil" Samdhong Rinpoche says,
Prime Minister of the Tibetan government in exile and blade of tall ranking. And it adds "it is a liability of every individual, monks and laymen to act
to improve the company."
In Thailand the followers of a Buddhist sect, the Saints Asoke, they have taken party to demonstrations that have brought to the two years ago
hunting party of the Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
In the Sri Lanka the party ultra nationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya, conducted by monks, he has insisted for the use of the forcibleness bruta against the
rebellious tamil of the country. In 1959 a monk murdered a Prime Minister for a lex that offered one some protection to the language tamil.
Despite the passive aspect and pacifist of this faith, the school Buddhist Mahayana, practiced in Japan, Korea, China and Tibet it is the more trained
The soheis, Japanese monks, have fought sour battles between them and against secular clan for over 600 years up to around 1600.
To the temple Chinese Shaolin, a center of martial arts, has been still today authorization to have warlike monks beginning from the seventh century from emperors that at times they used them to repress rebellions and banditry.
The monk Saya San has become a national hero in the years '30 in Myanmar - then Burma - driving a revolt. The British colonialist they hung him after having impegato 12.000 soldiers to repress his farmers' army.
Him auto-immolamento of the monk Thich Quang Duc in a road of Saigon is diventao an icon of the protest against the war in Vietnam.
Before the occupation of Tibet from China in 1959, monks warlike be had able anymore at times - and weapons - of the army.
The monastery Evening of Lhasa, source of the recent protests, was particularly known for his warriors of elite, the "Dob-Dob", that took in 1947
party to a rebellion that claimed 300 lifetimes.
"You use the pacific means when they are appropriate, but when they were not appropriate, not you hesitate to refold on the use of the forcibleness" it said the next to last, hourly dead, Dalai Lama when Tibet fought the Chinese in him years '30.
Also God becomes angry (the general purpose Downpour - Buggery and Gomorra) and Jesus makes plaza cleaning up of the tradesmen inside the synagogue and the great whole Avatar and Spiritual Commanders they have also fought with the forcibleness the reintegration of the Human Values. In short the Warrior of the Light that is us knows how to be mild, but troubles to whom tries to hamper his walk toward the trailing objective.

Francesco Palandri