Shoot Me First

I've been doing a lot of editing in the last few days and am now working on Teacher's address that he gave at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris in October 2006. He was talking about Chinese education and the importance the Chinese placed on "benevolence and justice, love, and supreme harmony." When I came to that line, I remembered something that happened in the US almost at the same time Teacher was giving his talk.

It began with one of those senseless acts, when a person is in so much pain that the suffering overwhelms him and he lashes out at the most innocent beings he can find.

In a Lancaster County schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, a man entered an Amish school and bound several girls. One of the girls, thirteen-year-old Marian Fisher, realizing what the gunman was going to do and trying to save the younger girls in the room said "Shoot me first."

Then Barbie, her eleven-year-old sister, said, "Shoot me second."

Barbie survived. As did four other girls.

Five girls died: Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7; sisters Mary Liz Miller, 8, and Lena Miller, 7; and Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12.

And Marian Fisher.

Benevolence and love and supreme harmony. They are possible in our world. But to such a degree, I'd say they are rare. And yet they existed, surely in pure perfection, in two young Amish girls. To have such love for another human being to be able to quietly say:

"Shoot me first."

"Shoot me second."

But How can We Tell?

Question: How can we know if we are practicing properly?

Response: We know if our behavior begins to improve even just a bit. How? We might find ourselves reacting more calmly. Instead of becoming frustrated with the person at work who always gives us a hard time, we might find ourselves wondering why he does so. And wondering if he’s unhappy about something. Or worried. Or afraid.

When something occurs that previously would have had us angrily voicing our frustration, we might find ourselves wondering if we could have contributed to the situation. Did we do something that frustrated the other person in the past? Perhaps instead of quietly pointing out something they had done wrong, we blurted it out and embarrassed them in front of other people.

It's not uncommon to feel that we may not be making any progress. But others notice a difference and comment on it. They may say that we're more patient and less irritable. That we seem more considerate, less hurried when we do things.

We know we are practicing properly if we just feel happy when chanting. We look at the Buddha or bodhisattva image and just feel good. We feel that this chanting is the most important thing to be doing, that this is one time we don't need to worry about doing anything else.

And we smile.

You Just Never Know

Sometimes, okay often, it feels that as individuals we don't have the power to make a difference. We try to do what is right, and that feels good, but is it really helping? Really changing a negative situation for the better?

On September 17th in New York City on a busy street with much traffic, a black Mercedes suddenly veered to the left. The problem was that there was a bicyclist directly to the left of the car. The bicyclist quickly tried to avoid being crushed by tapping on the car's window to let the driver know he was there. The driver rolled down his window not to see what was wrong, but to swear at the bicyclist and to tell him to stop touching the car.

There ensued a conversation between the driver and bicyclist, then the car pulled away. However the car had special plates indicating the car belonged to a New York State Senator. The bicyclist caught up with the car at the next stoplight and tapped on the window—more tentatively this time—and asked the driver his name. The driver replied he was Senator Jeff Klein.

Now it might have ended there except for one thing: the bicyclist is a well-known blogger and something of a local celebrity. Colin Beavan is known to many of us as "No Impact Man." He and his family have reshaped their lives to lessen their impact on our planet, and Colin writes about their year-long experiment in simple living and related issues. He is an articulate writer and a concerned citizen. And his blog is read by many people.

Colin, a board member of Transportation Alternatives, wrote a letter to the senator requesting a meeting to discuss how to make roads safer for bicyclists and the environment better for all New York City citizens. It was a polite letter, not an angry one. But to try to encourage the senator to meet with him, Colin asked his readers to please contact the senator by phone or email to express the wish that the meeting would be held.

That afternoon Colin received a phone call from the senator's office to set up the meeting and to ask if the phone calls and emails could be stopped. It seems many of us wrote and called, and the senator's staff was a bit overwhelmed.

Lesson One: Well the obvious one is that if you have vanity plates on your car, you need to drive more thoughtfully. Especially when you're a public servant, like a state senator. 

Lesson Two: Think twice before being rude to others, if for no other reason than you don't know what you could be getting yourself into. That innocuous-looking guy riding a bicycle and wearing a purple helmet might be someone important. And with influence of his own.

Lesson Two-and-a-half: Think twice before being rude to others because everyone is important!

Lesson Three: Think before you act. Period.

It's so easy to live in own little world, unaware of what is happening around us, unaware of the harm we are about to do. We get caught up in our perceived self-importance and forget the other person is just as important as we are.

Lesson Four: Caring to help another do what is right has the potential to make a difference. The opportunity to help presented itself, and many people accorded by responding. One person acting alone would probably not have gotten an appointment. Many people coming together to support that one person made a difference. 

When Our Karma Comes to Grab Us

I'm going to make a generalization, something I try not to do.

I'm going to guess that most of the people who read this blog live in a pretty safe environment. Most of us don't experience the anger that seeks to destroy, to intentionally inflict pain. That kind of hatred happens in other places: in war zones, police states, places where religious intolerance is the norm. It doesn't happen where we shop. It doesn't happen to us.

Or does it?

Celine, Charles, and I went to Kingaroy today, a town about ten miles away where we do our weekly shopping. Charles needed some dental work done. I wanted to get some night lights and other things for our Buddhist center to make it safer and nicer for the people who stay there for retreats. I offered to take my car. Celine drove.

After we left the supermarket and picked up Charles, we headed back to Nanango. But first we stopped at the big hardware store on the outskirts of Kingaroy. Celine parked the car, handed me the key, and we all went in. After about five minutes or so we came out. Celine called me and I went to the driver's side of the car.

Someone had deliberately keyed (gouging a car with a key or similar sharp-edged instrument) the front quarter panel, both doors, and the rear quarter panel. The gouges were deep—down to the metal and into it. We went back into the store, but when they checked their security cameras, they said regrettably that our section of the parking lot wasn't covered. We called the police station to report the incident, went to the station to fill out a report, and drove home. 

So there you have it. I came up hard against the realization that someone is so angry with me that they very possible hate me. Too strong? I really don't think so. I saw the calculated maliciousness of the damage.

And I know about karma.

Today it came out of the past to grab me. I know how hatred can fester and grow over time from unintentional thoughtlessness to calculated maliciousness to uncontrolled retaliation. Where on this escalating slope of hatred my "adversary" is I don't know. But on it, he, or she, is.

So how did I react? Initially, I was angry. This felt personal. The damage was carefully done to cause the most damage. It didn't feel like random act. Thankfully, the anger passed fairly quickly. It would have been nice if it hadn't arisen at all, but I did a lot better than I would have before Buddhism.

Then apprehension. Someone who hates me enough to take the risk of being caught and charged with malicious mischief is in a town I visit regularly. Paranoid? Not really. A karmic enemy has surfaced, and while I have no idea who he or she is, my karmic enemy may know who I am. This will certainly give one pause.

What next? Questions arise. Can I let go of the anger enough for both of us? How deeply compassionate can I feel for this person? The money I will use to pay for the repair work was given to me to be used for my work. The person will have been culpable in a situation where Dharma money is not used for its intended purpose. This is very serious.

How does my karmic adversary feel now? Happy? Worried? Surely not calm. Seeking comfort in thoughts of how to let go of negative emotions and destructive reactions? I'm afraid that someone who is capable of such ugly emotions as those that lead to the violence I saw a few hours ago is not calm, not happy, not reflective.

And so I feel sadness. Someone I am connected to through my past actions is in pain and will suffer from his or her actions today. And I contributed to their suffering with my previous involvement with this person. So tonight the verse I say every night will be even more poignant:

All evil actions committed by me since time immemorial,
stemming from greed, anger, and ignorance,
arising from body, speech, and mind,
I deeply repent having committed.

It’s so easy to make an enemy. We do it all the time. It’s not so easy to let go of anger to the point of not feeling even the slightest twinge of it arising. To not even have the thought of “no anger.”

But letting go of the anger, not even thinking of it, is something we each need to do.

Completely Letting Go

If you let go of arguing,

you even let go of the thought “no argument."

If you let go of expecting,

you even let go of the thought "no expectation."

If you let go of grasping,

you even let go of the thought "no grasping."