The teachings of Ajahn Suchart.
“There are many more people who died from natural causes than from terrorist attacks.”
Question: There are many terrorist attacks in many countries nowadays. As Buddhists, how do we deal with this kind of events?
Than Ajahn: We have to look at the big picture. There are many more people who died from natural causes than from terrorist attacks. There were three people died from yesterday’s terrorist attack, but how many thousands of people who died from natural causes every day?
There are only a small number of people who died of terrorist attack compared to those who died of natural causes. The number of people who died of natural causes just don’t become news. That’s all.
The news wanted to highlight some events, and made it look terrible. But the news didn't report how many number of people died in the world today, how many died in Africa, how many died of sickness. There are plenty of people who die every day. We make it worse if we follow the news. So what we have to do is just taking the news as a natural event. There were three people died, two policemen and one terrorist.
What is the difference between many other thousands of people who die every day compare to these three people? Do you see what I mean? We tend to react to something that is magnified, when it is just as normal as apple pie.
More people died of car accidents compared to those died on yesterday’s terrorist attack.
Question: What about people who died in the name of religion?
Than Ajahn: Whatever the reason is. It is the way how people think. People died in the name of religion, in the name of country, in the name of race. People can kill others for various reasons. If you look at the big picture whether they died of natural cause or were being killed by the terrorists, they died anyway. We all will die. But we try to magnify something natural to become unnatural. Instead of leaving it as its nature we make it worse by reacting to it.
There were reasons why people did such things. We only look at the event from our point of view, we don’t look at it from their point of view. We don’t see the part where the other side were hurt by our actions. We have our own justification for killing them, so they also have justification for killing us. You kill us so we have to kill you. That’s why the Buddha said that hatred can never be eliminated by hatred.
Hatred can only be eliminated by love, by forgiveness. So we have to forgive them and look at the event as a natural thing. People were born and died. It doesn’t matter whatever the causes are. We all will die when it is the time for us to die. If we think this way, it will prevent us from taking revenge, prevent us from taking more bad actions.
Everybody dies. How many people are there in France? 80 million? They are all gonna die. How many people are there in Thailand? 70 million? They are all gonna die. So what is the big deal about three people died yesterday? There are more people died caused by drinking alcohol.
Lay (M): It is not the number of people who died, but the way they died.
Than Ajahn: That’s what I mean. You look at the wrong point. I look at the death itself, I don’t look at how they died. If you look at how they died, you become angry. If you look at death as the end result of life, regardless of how these people died, they are gonna die anyway, what can you do? Should you do anything about it? If the person is going to die, let it be. Apparently we don’t do that. We take revenge. If you try to kill me, I will kill your father and then your father’s son will come after me. It’s a never-ending event. Instead of living together peacefully, we live in hatred, live in violence.
If you contemplate on the nature of the body, you will see that death is part of the nature of the body. It doesn’t matter of how it dies. May be there are more people being killed by their spouses compared to people being killed by terrorists. If you look at the statistics, it is more likely that one is killed by his spouse than by a terrorist. If you make your wife angry, she can kill you.
In Buddhism, it teaches us to be ready to die. Just accept it. Besides, we know who dies and who doesn’t die. To Buddhists, it doesn’t mean anything. We know what die is not us. The body is like a robot. Right now we are building robots to do things for us, so if the robots died, would you be angry? Would you become sad? The body is a robot, it is a biological robot, not a mechanical robot. That’s all it is. It is not you, it is not me, it is a robot. So why get upset when your robot dies? You just go and get a new one. You come back and be reborn again, you get a new robot.
By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto
Youtube: Dhamma in English
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g
No comments:
Post a Comment