“According to Buddhism, to even begin to practice, one must accept the Five Precepts.”
Before a stallion can be trained, it must be broken in order to accept the commands of its trainer. The Precepts are the skillful means for the “breaking” of the mind’s wild behavior, thus to even begin to practice (mind training, which is what the Buddha was all on about), you must assiduously follow those Precepts first, or you’re just going to be wasting your time:
“Ananda and all in this assembly! In explaining to you the rules of the Vinaya, I have frequently emphasized three good lessons, namely, (1) the only way to keep the Precepts is first to be able to concentrate the mind; (2) by keeping the Precepts you will be able to attain Samadhi; (3) by means of Samadhi one develops intelligence and wisdom. Having learned these three good lessons, one has gained freedom from the intoxicants and hindrances.”
“The reason for practicing dhyana and seeking to attain Samadhi is to escape from the suffering of life, but in seeking to escape from suffering ourselves, why should we inflict it upon others? Unless you can so control your minds that even the thought of brutal unkindness and killing is abhorrent, you will never be able to escape from the bondage of the world’s life. No matter how keen you may be mentally, no matter how much you may be able to practice dhyana, no matter to how high a degree of Samadhi you may attain, unless you have wholly annihilated all tendency to unkindness toward others, you will ultimately fall into the realms of existence where the evil ghosts dwell.”
Notice, he doesn’t say anything about being a good citizen because, or in spite of, the Precepts. The Precepts are not like the Christian Ten Commandments, that is, their purpose cannot be separated from Buddhist mind-training. They are, rather, a skillful means to advance your practice towards eventual freedom from “the intoxicants and hinderances.” So your statement: “But by definition, the state must violate these two in order to exist” is a non sequitur since the State doesn’t have a mind to train. The Precepts are directed inward, rather that outward, even though by applying them in your life they will result in behavioral changes. The latter are just a happy coincidence and not the point of them.
In order to even begin to make a linkage like you are trying to make you would first have to prove that in living in an unjust society all of its citizens are unjust in their hearts, and thus wracked by violent thoughts. I find in practice today, living in our modern violent and over-reaching societies, that my thoughts are focused on the suffering our societies inflict on its citizens, rather than on increasing the violence myself, and I am sure that holds for others as well.
You are attempting to use the Buddha’s Precepts to show a logical fault in his teachings, by categorizing the Precepts as primarily an ethical system of behavior, which they are not. But perhaps if everyone trained their minds, rather than letting them become jammed up with conceptual misunderstandings, the people of this world might make some progress away from the need for deadly force in order to control the clashing intoxicants driving most of us today.
