From: Darrell
Sent: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 12:39:09

I heard a story once that someone asked Chogyam Trungpa what he would do if Hitler was about to launch weapons of mass destruction, and Trungpa was in the same room with a gun. Trungpa said that he would very cheerfully shoot him.

My Buddhist beliefs do not prevent me from supporting a worldwide police action against the terrorists. Is it compassionate to allow them to do this again, if it is in our power to stop them? There will be hard issues regarding what exactly is done, but the wish to stop these people could have its roots in compassion.

Acting out of anger and blindness, practically speaking, won’t be very effective. So we can extend the loving-kindness to all beings and just act out of a sense of what needs to be done. Being “nice” might just be “idiot compassion” which only spreads further pain. I don’t think that loving-kindness translates simply into nice.

Those engaging in "loving-kindness meditation" of the sort practiced by the Meditation Circle of Charleston, repeat a formulaic wish that all beings, specifically including our "enemies," (and those, I must assume, include the guy who wants my ass, Saddam Hussein, Moammar Gadhafi, Osama bin Laden, and whoever played a role in what happened September 11) "be well, happy and peaceful." We say out loud, "May no harm come to them, may no difficulties come to them" or some variant.

In most religions, believers see God or "the gods" as powerful beings, capable of answering petitionary prayer. They pray their children be healed of leukemia, that peace will come to the world, even that WVU will beat Pitt. They look for help from someone capable of giving it. They pray that some being will make something happen or keep something from happening.

Perhaps it is important to realize that Buddhist loving-kindness meditation is not a prayer to a god. Or am I misinformed? There is no petition to someone who can give these enemies what makes them happy or protect them from harm and thus no chance of it "working."

So if it won't "work" what is the purpose of loving-kindness meditation? It is a means of calming and centering "ourselves." It is a means of bringing peace to "ourselves" in the face of unpeaceful circumstances. It's a recognition that carrying hatred and revenge is not peaceful and does not make us "well" or "happy." Not in the long run. Because loving-kindness meditation is not prayer, the practitioner of it should not be seen as hoping Hussein or Osama or whoever else "gets away with it." Loving-kindness meditation is a personal balm -- which collaterally may affect and effect the peace and happiness of those who come into contact with us personally.

In a sense, loving-kindness meditation is a ruse, a trick, a way to bring peace to ourselves (collaterally, others) and free us (collaterally, others) from our own suffering. But when the time for individual personal action comes, the Buddhist delivers.  Darrell reports Chogyam Trungpa would "very cheerfully shoot" Hitler. I think the minute before, Trungpa could have sat cross-legged outside the room and wished that his enemies be "well, happy and peaceful." And there would have been no contradiction.

Joe, I wanted to respond to this, sorry for the delay. To me, loving kindness meditation for enemies is, number one, a sort of self-inoculation of fellow feeling so that I don't mirror animosity or hatred or dislike generated at me (and possibly caused, in part, by me given the complex nature of karma in a shared world).

I undertake such effort so that I don't merely reflect back what has been beamed my way. I make the effort, a positive step, to avoid the easy negative one. Anger and hatred is so easy, and you will often be endorsed by a society for expressing it.

But I think it is more than "a personal balm." Because in making oneself more centered and peaceful you make the world in which you travel more centered and peaceful. And since all things are interconnected -- one big thing, no differentiation -- you affect the whole. It may seem like a small effect, but it is part of the whole, so it is a part of the whole world you are affecting, and by extension the actual, real world.

Having said all that, Chogyam Trungpa's remark makes me wonder if there is not a more complicated sort of compassion and loving-kindness. Is it, in fact, a compassionate act to kill a Hitler? I sure am glad Hitler went down. I will be glad when bin-Laden does, too. Yet I wish that we would capture him and put him in a room with pictures of his victims on the walls, and feed him bread and water till his dying day.

Doug, Thanks for your reply. I like what you said. Loving kindness meditation helps us avoid mirroring animosity and hatred.  I also agree, but didn't say it very well in my note, that one's own peace can spread to others just like one's agitation and hatred can infect others.  You're right. All our states of being and personal actions affect those they touch. Sometimes it's dramatic. Sometimes it's imperceptible. If that's part of what some call "karma," good.

Me, I want to acquire a better ability to reflect peace in the face of personal affronts where self-importance, getting my own way, and other such matters are at issue. I'd like to learn to sit back and let somebody else be right without challenge from me. Our loving kindness meditations have helped me do that in small ways noticeable to me, if to no one else. It's good medicine, this loving kindness.

But I also believe one may justly and even compassionately hold some principles inviolable, principles which when attacked require violent, deadly response.  Mine were violated last Tuesday. While I might like to be skillful enough to suffer Tuesday's deliberate airplane crashes without reflecting the animosity that motivated them, I don't wish to acquire along with that skill the inability to act with violence. Maybe the line that has to be breached before one fights fire with fire is farther back for some, but I think it's right to have a line-- even if you never knew before where it was.

PAGE 3: Loving-kindness as chore and ego-trip

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