Desire

The cause of suffering is selfish desire,

whether it is the desire for pleasure,

desire for revenge

or simply desire for a long life.

~ Buddha 

Comments

[Gloria]

"Desire for revenge."

When we learn of a man who has raped his son repeatedly, and of the mother who has sat by and watched, and of the son who is scarred for life (eating his feces and urinating on everything, waking up nightly with nightmares of what happened to him) -- how do we NOT desire revenge?

How can we have compassion for this man? Understanding that something as bad or worse happened to him when he was a child does not lessen the damage he has done to his own son. It doesn't take away from the fact that his son will most likely grow up exhibiting the same behaviors as his father. Which will continue this cycle of abuse. There is no end in sight.

If one life can affect hundreds, how many lives will this man ruin before he dies? How much suffering can he cause?

Looking strictly at cause and effect, this man has caused an innocent life to suffer deeply, to a point that he may never recover from it in 1,000 lifetimes. If this man were killed, so that he could no longer effect lives this way, would it not help?

[Venerable Wuling]

Anger never provides a good solution. And the wish for revenge—to kill another—arises from anger. We may call it righteous or justified but it is still anger. And when we are angry, we are not thinking with clarity and awareness. Without clarity and awareness, we will not be able to truly help anyone. Most likely we will make the situation worse.

The son, mother, and father are each in this horrific situation as a consequence of their own past causes. This does not mean we throw up our hands in resignation and say it’s all their own fault. Understanding why these people are in this situation means we need to want to help make sure no further harm is done.

Not having the ability to know their past lives, and thus their past actions, we do not know the reasons why these people are suffering, so we are in no position to judge.

Killing the man will not help. It will only add to his anger and in a future life his actions will be even more terrible.

[Gloria]

Yes, it is anger. There are many people in my life that I care deeply about who have been sexually abused. I feel their pain (the meaning of compassion) and it angers me. I'm not sure I comprehend the idea of NOT being angry at that behavior.

Do you mean to say that the people who have been abused and are abused deserve what has happened to them because of past actions and they must learn to deal with it on their own?

This is a difficult concept for me. Is it not natural to protect the ones we love?

[Venerable Wuling]

Gloria, you are raising very good questions that have been raised before by caring people struggling to do what is right. Watching those we love suffer is unimaginably difficult for us. We want to help, which is obviously good. But we need to help wisely. The following is an excerpt from a recent talk.

“Compassion is not just feeling another’s pain—it is the intention and capability to lessen suffering and, ultimately, to transform this suffering.

…We need compassion not just for the abused but also for the one who is the abuser. One who hurts others does not understand causality, does not understand that by doing this he or she will continue to be pulled back again and again into the cycle of inflicting and receiving pain. People who hurt others do not understand that the persons they are hurting had hurt them in the past. By retaliating now, they are just perpetuating this cycle of pain.

We need sympathy and compassion to understand how both the victimizer and the victim are caught in this cycle. Unaware of the cause and effect that has brought them to this point, they are unable to act wisely.

...If we are sympathetic to others’ welfare, maintain goodwill, commiseration, and loving-kindness for all people, then we will not judge others. We will not say that this person is right and that person is wrong because we will come to understand that we do not know what is really happening, and so will likely mistake falsity for truth. But if we are able to regard both friend and foe with sympathy and loving-kindness, we will then be able to practice the non-judgmental, unconditional giving of love and thus wish for all beings to be happy.”

Yes, the abused was an abuser in the past. So being abused accords with the law of cause and effect. But this insight can never allow us to throw up our hands and say it's their own fault. We are all mired in ignorance and delusion, caught by our own negative emotions. We have all done horrible things.

What we need to do now is understand that it is not our place to judge others. We need to generate both compassion and wisdom, wish to alleviate the suffering of ALL beings, and act accordingly.