Killing field, Phnom PenhRead this post by Lokiloki (via DailyKos), about how torture became prevalent in Cambodia, a Buddhist society: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/22/45733/3235
It's hard to believe that a practising Buddhist could accept, let alone apply, torture on another sentient being. Tibetan Buddhist monks, including the Dalai Lama, have always explained that to cultivate compassion, one has to consider and treat every person as one's mother, since after eons and eons of rebirth, every person in the world has indeed been one's mother. Would you be capable of using an electric drill on your mother or waterboarding your child?
And yet, most countries in the Third World, including the ones where Buddhism is prevalent, if not the national religion, practise torture: China, Vietnam, Thailand, etc... In the case of Cambodia, one has to remember that the Khmer Rouge have imposed on the country a regime of terror and rigid ideology, so technically, the atrocities and brutality suffered by the population were not the work of Buddhists but of paranoid, illiterate and sadistic peasants acting under the threat of becoming themselves victims of torture if they don't obey orders, or out of revenge after being oppressed for so long, or even out of conviction that their enemies must be destroyed, since they don't share Pol Pot's point of view.
Therefore, one can easily understand why some people in the US are not unduly shocked and outraged by President Bush's attempt to legalize torture. One doesn't have to be an illiterate Cambodian peasant to be confortable with the idea of torturing another human being. All you need to do is to convince yourself that «the other» is not, and can never be, you or your loved ones: they are Muslims, dark-skinned, Liberals, Democrats, pro-abortions, foreigners, etc... in other words, they are guilty of being «not you» and therefore torturable. All the rest (the war against terror, the suicide bombers, the ticking bomb, etc...) are excuses and justifications.
But if there is a lesson to be learnt from the killing fields of Cambodia, it's that if that you decide that it's OK to torture a person, sooner or later, that person could/would be you or someone you love. This is one area where the Buddhist principle of oneness with the universe should be better understood and applied: the other is you, you are the other.
If there is any justice in this world...http://billmon.org/archives/001864.html
3 comments:
Dizzy, not sure what you are trying to say here. Would it make it better if the murderers were not «ethnics»? Do these crimes against «indigenous people of Britain» justify the use of torture? What about crimes where victims are «ethnics»?
Hello BWA and all,
Understand that I respect Buddism the most of all religions, even though it has incorporated the utter folly of hero worship and lost touch with its original wisdom, as Buddha predicted.
Why do religious leaders and followers so often participate in and support blatant evil?
History is replete with examples of religious leaders and followers advocating, supporting, and participating in blatant evil. Regardless of attempts to shift or deny blame, history clearly records the widespread crimes of Christianity. Whether we're talking about the abominations of the Inquisition, Crusades, the greed and genocide of colonizers, slavery in the Americas, or the Bush administration's recent deeds and results, Christianity has always spawned great evil. The deeds of many Muslims and the state of Israel are also prime examples.
The paradox of adherents who speak of peace and good deeds contrasted with leaders and willing cohorts knowingly using religion for evil keeps the cycle of violence spinning through time. Why does religion seem to represent good while always serving as a constant source of deception, conflict, and the chosen tool of great deceivers? The answer is simple. The combination of faith and religion is a strong delusion purposely designed to affect one's ability to reason clearly. Regardless of the current pope's duplicitous talk about reason, faith and religion are the opposite of truth, wisdom, and justice and completely incompatible with logic.
Religion, like politics and money, creates a spiritual, conceptual, and karmic endless loop. By their very nature, they always create opponents and losers which leads to a never ending cycle of losers striving to become winners again, ad infinitum. This purposeful logic trap always creates myriad sources of conflict and injustice, regardless of often-stated ideals, which are always diluted by ignorance and delusion. The only way to stop the cycle is to convert or kill off all opponents or to end the systems and concepts that drive it.
Think it through, would the Creator of all knowledge and wisdom insist that you remain ignorant by simply believing what you have been told by obviously duplicitous religious founders and leaders? Would a compassionate Creator want you to participate in a system that guarantees injustice and suffering to your fellow souls? Isn’t it far more likely that religion is a tool of greedy men seeking to profit from the ignorance of followers and the strife it constantly foments? When you mix religion with the equally destructive delusions of money and politics, injustice, chaos, and the profits they generate are guaranteed.
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Peace…
Thank you so much Seven Star Hand and Dizzyfatplonka for your contributions in the discussion. I've always said that we should abolish all organized religions and let people deal directly with their own spirituality. May be in the far, far future...
SSH, your blog is fascinating. Dizzy, thanks for the link.
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