How do I find unity with people who tried to kill me or destroy me or harm me in some way? HOW TO DO THAT? What am I supposed to see as "good" in that? Are the Nazi Jew survivors supposed to see "good" in their captors?
In India's first war of independence (1857), in the fighting, a soldier speared a monk who happened to be in the vicinity. As the monk lay dying, people overpowered the soldier and dragged him to the monk, asking how he was to be punished. The monk replied, "The one who speared me and the one who I've worshipped all my life are no different." He asked for the soldier to be forgiven in his last breath. The public did not listen to him and the soldier was put to death - that is another matter.
If you believe in the divinity of all, and you believe that those who are evil do not have that same divinity in them, that is a contradiction. Gandhi's entire philosophy was around awakening the divine within the perpetrator. That involved love, not hate, which really comes from fear, which can be traced to not knowing the truth. As a mother who is superivising children on a beach, and sees the kids do wrong, the mother has to step in sometime, and mete out punishment, but she does so without a trace of hatred for her children, knowing this is in their best interest. That perspective, that height at which you can see another's interest as your own is what is called for.
Gandhi did ask the Jews to stand up and be prepared to die without a trace of hatred for the Nazis. It is quite speculative to ask how that would have stopped the Nazis - we will never know because it was not tried and is a counterfactual question. I've read one essay on Gandhi and Hitler that I've found quite illuminating.
One of the biggest copouts of our times is to think the Nazis as brutes, when infact, they were perhaps some of the most cultured people of their times. And yet, there were major ethical lapses. I have a professor who, in a moment of great clarity, cried for Hitler. He realized that because of Hitler, we had the greatest lessons in ethical clarity, and he took it upon himself to develop course material that involved, year after year, going through the Nazi decision-making apparatus, parsing out how ordinary people like us made decisions in those times, recognizing that times haven't really changed, and formulating an ethical code for ourselves to prevent similar lapses.
If you look at the Tibetan situation, the world had not really heard or cared about them. Because of the Chinese government's brutality, everyone knows about them and takes the time to understand their philosophy. Thanks to the Chinese, we have given ourselves the opportunity to help ourselves by receiving so much from the Tibetans. And thanks to the Tibetans' insistence on nonviolence, everyday Chinese are standing up for greater rights for all their citizens.
I would of course much rather have my ethics and philosophy lessons without having such violence visited upon fellow beings. However, your question was on what good can be seen in it, and this is the good that I see.
On Feb 1, 2011 Somik Raha wrote :
How do I find unity with people who tried to kill me or destroy me or harm me in some way? HOW TO DO THAT? What am I supposed to see as "good" in that? Are the Nazi Jew survivors supposed to see "good" in their captors?
In India's first war of independence (1857), in the fighting, a soldier speared a monk who happened to be in the vicinity. As the monk lay dying, people overpowered the soldier and dragged him to the monk, asking how he was to be punished. The monk replied, "The one who speared me and the one who I've worshipped all my life are no different." He asked for the soldier to be forgiven in his last breath. The public did not listen to him and the soldier was put to death - that is another matter.
If you believe in the divinity of all, and you believe that those who are evil do not have that same divinity in them, that is a contradiction. Gandhi's entire philosophy was around awakening the divine within the perpetrator. That involved love, not hate, which really comes from fear, which can be traced to not knowing the truth. As a mother who is superivising children on a beach, and sees the kids do wrong, the mother has to step in sometime, and mete out punishment, but she does so without a trace of hatred for her children, knowing this is in their best interest. That perspective, that height at which you can see another's interest as your own is what is called for.
Gandhi did ask the Jews to stand up and be prepared to die without a trace of hatred for the Nazis. It is quite speculative to ask how that would have stopped the Nazis - we will never know because it was not tried and is a counterfactual question. I've read one essay on Gandhi and Hitler that I've found quite illuminating.
One of the biggest copouts of our times is to think the Nazis as brutes, when infact, they were perhaps some of the most cultured people of their times. And yet, there were major ethical lapses. I have a professor who, in a moment of great clarity, cried for Hitler. He realized that because of Hitler, we had the greatest lessons in ethical clarity, and he took it upon himself to develop course material that involved, year after year, going through the Nazi decision-making apparatus, parsing out how ordinary people like us made decisions in those times, recognizing that times haven't really changed, and formulating an ethical code for ourselves to prevent similar lapses.
If you look at the Tibetan situation, the world had not really heard or cared about them. Because of the Chinese government's brutality, everyone knows about them and takes the time to understand their philosophy. Thanks to the Chinese, we have given ourselves the opportunity to help ourselves by receiving so much from the Tibetans. And thanks to the Tibetans' insistence on nonviolence, everyday Chinese are standing up for greater rights for all their citizens.
I would of course much rather have my ethics and philosophy lessons without having such violence visited upon fellow beings. However, your question was on what good can be seen in it, and this is the good that I see.