Buddhist scholars say there is no justification for war in Buddhist teaching.
Yet there is historic
documentation that in 621 CE monks from the Shaolin
Temple of China fought in a battle that helped establish the Tang Dynasty.
In centuries past, the heads of Tibetan
Buddhist schools formed strategic alliances with Mongol warlords and reaped
benefits from the warlords' victories.

The links between Zen
Buddhism and samurai warrior culture were partly responsible for the
shocking collusion of Zen and Japanese militarism in the 1930s and 1940s.