Well, perhaps not, but should I try? It’s a good question for those of us who want to practice Buddhist loving kindness and compassion meditations. Should I include people like Trump, (or Putin, Netanyahu, Modi or whatever other psychopath), in my wish that they should know happiness and not suffer? After all, they have caused unimaginable amounts of pain to all those around them, and although some of them may have come from traumatic backgrounds themselves, they still have (at least some) free will and, as we know, not all who are abused turn into abusers. Many turn into extremely kind human beings. So an explanation is not an excuse.
And then there is the thing of forgiveness - if I wish them well am I forgiving them? And how can I forgive someone I still feel really hurt or damaged by? How can this be real? And what is this thing ‘forgiveness ’anyway? Does being forgiven somehow clean the slate, that someone - ourselves - once forgiven are somehow no longer responsible for what was done?
I’m not sure I know the answers to these questions but I do know that when we practice loving kindness and compassion we are not pretending that the truly terrible person is anything other than what they are nor are we trying to conjure up some forgiveness. Rather, we are remembering that when a person who is driven by fear and hatred begins to feel safer, less persecuted, less deeply unwanted, then there is a chance that they will begin to be less evil bastards to all those around them. And even if this doesn’t work, (which incidentally with psychopaths it may not), then at least we prevent ourselves getting pulled into their world and becoming as full of anger and hatred as they are. As the Dalai Lama said of the Chinese who had destroyed Tibet. Why give them my mind when they have already taken my country?
Now something less grim.
Our small sangha met for the last time last night before the summer break. (Morning meditations continue). And there was a real celebration of Tsoknyi Rinpoche’s notion of ‘essence love’. I’m not going back to all the stuff I have written about this previously but suffice to say that the being in touch with a basic feeling of well being in our body and mind, being in touch with essence love - something that we can engender through things like the handshake practice and yoga - does create the necessary foundation for the loving kindness and compassion practices talked about above. It’s simple really.
NW. 1 August 2024
I love the 'usually'!
Good to read this, Nigel. I agree that practising compassion for the tyrants helps us, if not them, and means we're spreading out into our world just a bit less anger and bile and fear - they are producing quite enough of that themselves.
I also find it helpful to think how it must be to be Trump, or Netanyahu or any of the others ... to have all that blood on my hands, to be responsible for causing so much suffering .... and to be so far from my own common humanity. Then I do feel compassion, usually.
Jen