Making peace with mass media tragedies in our society

Today in the news we have: Officials: Gunman dead after bloody campus rampage ... the story? A lone shooter goes on a rampage on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg VA, he managed to kill 31 people and wound many more. The police sent in SWAT teams, found the killer, and shot him dead.

This is clearly a tragedy, one which will be a focus of the mass media attention for a couple weeks. Or at least until the next mass media tragedy comes along. We don't yet know why this happened, what motivated the person who perpetrated the shooting. We know from past shooting incidents like this that the people have been disaffected people in pain about their lives, etc.

Such violence can only be perpetrated by a person who believes violence is a way to ease their pain. Perhaps they are unwilling to acknowledge their pain, and need to lash their pain out to others instead. But it's easy to get lost in second-guessing why someone else might commit such an act. Many spiritual traditions such as Buddhism teach that the universe is one consciousness, and that our ego's create an illusion of being individuals with identities separated from the identities of everybody else. Hence, the spiritual teaching is that our true identity is unitive consciousness and that everything which happens, every persons individual thoughts and hopes and fears and pains, all happen within that unitive consciousness.

Clearly in our world as it stands a lot of people are in pain. We have seemingly unnecessary death happening all over the world in all forms. If the teachings of the spiritual traditions are true, then in our true identity as a being of pure universal consciousness, all those unnecessary deaths and pain is happening within us. In particular Buddhist practices ask us to seek inside ourselves the pain we see in the world. And to hold that part of ourselves in compassionate awareness.

Essential Phowa Practice contains a very good and clearly described method from a Buddhist perspective.

While looking at the CNN.COM web site for news I saw the following title: Having baby at 12, 18K dead a day; $34 to stop it

It's a link to a video about world hunger, and discusses how at least 18,000 people per day die of hunger. There's an intriguing contrast between this figure, 18,000 people per day, and a single incident involving 32 deaths. This clicked something in my mind .. often the mass media goes into a frenzy over certain stories while ignoring other stories that have similar attributes. Last week the frenzy was over "shock jock" Don Imus and an inflammatory and racist statement he said on his radio program. The frenzy over that event led to his firing as a radio personality, but isn't it interesting how there's a whole industry of "shock jocks" who are famous for pushing the bounds of indecency, who regularly get fined by the FCC for public indecency, etc, and why does this one incident by this one guy get so much frenzy when the same thing happens every day by dozens of other shock jock's?

Similarly why will this shooting incident get so much coverage compared to the tragedy of 18,000 deaths per day due to hunger?

Tragedy is happening every day in every corner of human society on this planet. While we may be led to incredulously ask Why?, it's clear this has been the path of human society for millennia and it shows every indication of continuing for the forseeable future. I believe that a practice of praying for and manifesting peace around the world is a necessary part of changing the course of this pattern in human society.

Deep compassionate forgiveness

Former Christian Peacemaker Teams Hostages Harmeet Singh Sooden and James Loney Remember Murdered Colleague Tom Fox and Explain Why They Forgive Their Captors is a Democracy Now interview and story which begins in November 2005, over a year ago. A team of Christian oriented peacemakers was kidnapped while they worked for peace in Iraq. They were held for 118 days, and one of the team members was killed by the kidnappers. A few days ago Authorities captured one or more of the people who kidnapped and held these people. The team members have, as a response to being asked to testify in an upcoming trial, called for unconditional forgiveness of their captors and forgiveness of all involved with the conflict with Iraq.

These people are giving us an interesting and very public demonstration of forgiveness in action. They were clearly "wronged" by the standards of any human. In the interview you can clearly hear their struggle between the desire for some kind of retribution, for the payment of the time during which their liberty was denied, and the depth of their spiritual stand.

Since September 11, 2001 this idea has returned to me over and over: Violence piled upon violence only begets more violence

The use of the word begets is purposeful, in that there is a biblical element to the struggle in the middle east. And as we think back over time we see how none of the retributions conducted for past aggressions managed to prevent future aggressions.

The principle of forgiveness is very well stated by the people in this interview. There is a futility in seeking retribution for some act of violence. Seeking retribution only continues the cycle of violence and it cannot erase the past act of violence. The moving finger having writ the deeds which occur now, move on and no act of Man can undo the truth of what happened in the past.

Consider ... something happens to you .. you seek "justice" and "retribution" .. you get to confront your attacker, smack them around a bit or worse .. and then, what? How do you feel afterwards? Have you managed to erase anything? Or have you instead stooped to the depths to which they sank in attacking you? What does attacking them say about you? Would they feel justified in attacking you again because you attacked them?

The continuing Israel and Palestinian war is a huge example of retribution gone awry. They are continually attacking one another over past grievances, and after nearly 60 years of conflict have not been able to resolve anything. An eye for an eye is quickly leaving them all very blind.

Instead forgiveness is a divine process of healing. You begin by realizing the extent of the harm done to you, and then you let go, you give up all thoughts of retribution or repayment.

It is a difficult path to follow. The human ego really wants retribution.