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Old 05-03-2011, 07:07 AM   #5
lbb
Location: Massachusetts
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 3,202
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Re: Martin Luther King, Jr and O Sensei

Quote:
Nathan Masse-Foster wrote: View Post
then ask yourself how did you feel the first time you heard the news ?
Initial reaction: "Wait, what?" Honestly, I don't know when was the last time I thought about bin Laden. Certainly I'd stopped waiting for "us" to "get him".

After that: nothing, really. I had a busy day.

When someone first asked me how I felt about it, and I took the time to explore that...well. It's said that when the Dalai Lama heard the news of the death of Mao Zedong, he wept, because of his feeling of compassion for Mao. For anyone who doesn't know, it's estimated that between 600,000 and 1.2 million Tibetans have died under the Chinese occupation that began under Mao's leadership and that continues to this day. Countless others have been imprisoned, tortured, exiled, and suffered under relentless attempts to eradicate their culture.

Now, there's a common reaction to any reference to a compassionate reaction to the misfortune of an evildoer, when that reaction comes from someone like the Dalai Lama (or Martin Luther King Jr., or Mahatma Gandhi, or Mother Theresa) -- and I expect that those posting that MLK quote (you're the third or perhaps fourth one I've seen so far) are getting some of that. "But he/she was a saint, and I'm not!" Well, maybe. But we do ourselves and our world a disservice when we draw an uncrossable line between ourselves and those we label as saintly, just as we do when we draw such a firm line between ourselves and those we call evil. The Dalai Lama wept for Mao out of compassion -- and the meaning of "compassion" is a lot closer to "understanding" than it is to "saintliness". Mao was given a precious human life, as we all have been -- a life with so much potential. We all have language and intelligence and the ability to communicate, to pass on our understanding and receive understanding from others, and that is what makes each human life such a precious opportunity. And Mao had squandered his. With a lifetime of opportunities to develop understanding and compassion and to do good, he had instead become a terrible oppressor. Now his last chance to do good was gone. And that is why the Dalai Lama wept, for that lost chance, and for the pain that soul would carry into its next life.

That was my reaction when I thought about bin Laden's death. Beyond the precious opportunity that we all have, he was born to money and privilege and countless opportunities to do good. And he squandered it all. What a sad, sorry waste.

Discussions like this always have the risk of devolving into an argument of "you should feel this" or "you shouldn't feel that". Well, you feel what you feel. But maybe we can set aside the reflex to justify our feelings, and spend some time simply trying to understand them instead.
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