Compassion: Another Form of Justice

Born in Somalia, Abdi was the fourth of eight children. His family had fled the brutality that overtook his country, first living in a refugee camp in Kenya for several years and then in New Zealand. Abdi eventually migrated to Australia. 

While riding his electric bike early one morning before sunrise, he was hit by a four-wheel drive vehicle. Knocked off his bike, Abdi got to his feet only to find the vehicle revving its engine and again coming after him. The driver was screaming racist vitriol at him. For nineteen terrifying minutes, the driver pursued Abdi, driving over pavement and plowing through fences alongside the road. 

Abdi frantically called the police on his cell phone as he tried to elude the pursuing vehicle. When the police arrived, the woman had already left the scene. She was later identified, arrested, and found guilty of several charges. 

At her sentencing, Abdi did what few people would—he appealed to the judge for compassion for his assailant. There was no hatred, no thoughts of revenge. The judge said Abdi's plea was “one of the most extraordinary documents”1 he had ever seen in court.

Abdi told how his life was changed by the incident. He doubted he would ever be the same. And yet, despite everything his attacker had done, Abdi felt that jail was not the right place for her. He also worried about how her actions would affect her children and longtime partner. He then pleaded with her to get help and change her life for the better.

Abdi later said, “I choose to forgive her because I believe that compassion and forgiveness is justice in itself. It's another form of justice. . . . I knew for me to recover and move on, I will have to forgive her; and for her to get better, she would have to be forgiven.”

Abdi chose to forgive not only for his own benefit but also for that of his attacker and her family. The sentence was a jail term of three years. He knew that he would not find peace if his attacker spent all that time in jail. 

He felt that “the best way to disarm people of their rage, their anger, is through love, compassion and forgiveness.”3 These offer the possibility for transformation. Justice as punishment without hope of transformation wasn’t just, wasn’t fair. Any parent knows that punishing their child for doing something wrong—without the child understanding why—would hardly change their behavior, the point of the punishment. That child will just focus on avoiding being caught the next time. Wrong lesson learned!

What can we do to embrace compassion and forgiveness as Abdi was so incredibly able to do?

This fact is integral to developing an intentional approach to forgiveness, something we need to constantly remind ourselves of. Understanding that everything we do starts with what we think and tell ourselves, we must be vigilant in choosing how to interact with others wisely. 

Over time, the compassionate thoughts we reinforce will ensure that our automatic and spontaneous reactions are compassionate as well. But until now, how have we handled our thinking on what is justice? Over uncountable lifetimes, our thoughts have run the gamut from admirable to reprehensible. Not surprisingly, what we feel and what we think at any moment of any situation dictates what we think of justice. Too often, our moral compass doesn’t work, so we act on our emotions and fall into our old habits. 

And so, while saying that we want justice, we may actually be hoping for revenge, retaliation, to get even. And to feel safe. There is an undercurrent beneath all our anger and wanting the person to pay for harming us—that undercurrent is fear. Fear that they will return and harm us even more. If they are locked away, we will be safe, at least for that length of time. And so when the judicial system sends the person to prison, we are able to feel safe. Our fear is eased. It is also validation that someone has harmed us. And even perhaps that we have been officially avenged.

With revenge and our wish to feel safe as goals, it is little wonder that our concept of justice is that people need to pay for what they do and that we need to set up systems to ensure that happens. And so we have police departments, the judicial system, and prisons. All very neat and tidy. Except when it isn't. Even with the best of intentions, when justice is meted out, it might well not seem just. Those on the side of the victim may feel the sentence is too light, while those on the side of the perpetrator may feel it's too harsh. 

Also, in any system, mistakes can be and have been made. And tragically, in a system in which both the rules and the staff who are empowered to enforce those rules, are focused on punishment rather than rehabilitation, rehabilitation is almost impossible. 

Justice administered this way, that is, by people, will be flawed. Because whatever is meted out only takes into account the current situation. What transpired between the two parties in their past lifetimes never comes into the picture. 

But so many people don’t see any systemic flaws in our current approach. An immediate injustice deserves immediate justice, we tell ourselves. And so, for us, judgment and retribution can't come soon enough. But when conditions are right and we learn about the pervasive, timeless law of cause and effect, we will know that there are more connected dots out there. Dots from lifetimes past, from eons past. And some of those dots are about compassion, not revenge. It is not just about being killed if we kill someone. Not just about being robbed if we steal. We will learn that justice is about giving, just as Abdi gave.

Revenge should never be a want. Immediate retribution should never be sought. Seen in light of the long-term perspective of cause and effect, it is even more crucial that such causal actions and thinking must not occur. Retribution—be it good or bad—will surely come. Understanding this, we will be more inclined to just focus on correcting our own behavior. And perhaps set a good example while doing that.

With compassion and understanding, we will see that our holding on to resentment and the desire for retribution will inevitably lead to suffering for both the other person and ourselves as we take turns being victim and perpetrator. Left unchecked, each time we meet, our anger and resentment will escalate. Our suffering will also escalate. Each time it will be harder for the current victim to forgive the current offender because there will be more to forgive. And our anger and desire for revenge will have become even more relentless. More unforgiving.

 

Understanding all this, wise people would do all they can to forgive the slights and minor misdeeds of others when they have the chance. It will be incredibly difficult to do so when the perpetrator's actions are as horrific as they were in Abdi's case. He was able to forgive because he had the rare insight to understand that the woman who had tried to run him over had once been a victim herself.

After suffering trauma as a child, she became an alcoholic and had had multiple run-ins with the police. To come to terms with what she had done and to change, she needed to get help, not be punished and suffer more. 

Abdi, whose family had fled violence in a war-torn country and lived in a refugee camp, had seen and experienced far too much suffering. He did not want to be a part of inflicting it on another human being.

Most of us, not having experienced such suffering growing up, are personally removed from such horrific conditions. It is not surprising, then, that when we desire justice, we are unlikely to consider the suffering that our justice system can inflict.

Perhaps if we could personally see the suffering of others, such as the daily lives of those sentenced to years in prison, we would better understand that punishment alone is ineffective and all too often needlessly cruel. With few options, inmates can become even more entrenched in a culture of violence and crime. How many have the conditions to focus on regretting not acting the correct way rather than regretting being caught? And then have the numerous necessary conditions—supportive prison staff, other inmates with a similar wish to improve themselves, access to good role models, reading material, and classes—to change their lives?

By not learning to regret and reform, those who commit wrongful acts are likely to become even more bitter and angry, and thus plant more seeds of suffering in their future.

With this understanding and the compassion to forgive those who harm us, we will begin to reduce our own store of bitterness.

Abdi understood that punishment would not be justice, would not be just, because there would be no forgiveness on his part, no commitment to reform on the woman’s part. No realization of mistakes made and of reform taking place. He had to forgive, to let go of resentment and the desire for revenge for the wrongs committed against him.

The woman had to know of his forgiveness in order to forgive herself. How could she acknowledge her mistakes, understand why she had committed them, and then truly reform, if she continued as she had always done—lurch back and forth between periodic bouts of guilt and lapses into destructive behavior? It would be a never-ending cycle. She needed to break the cycle to be free of it.

 

Through Abdi's forgiveness, the woman was given the opportunity to break the pattern of alcohol abuse and guilt triggered by her childhood trauma. It was up to her to be moved by his forgiveness and use it as motivation for changing her destructive behavior. And to hopefully, in turn, extend her own forgiveness to those who had previously harmed her.

Ultimately, forgiveness provides both the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven the opportunity to break out of their shared karmic relationship in which they are alternatively the victim in one life and the perpetrator in the next. With forgiveness, their karmic chain of revenge can be broken.