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The Buddha: If One Harms the Innocent, Suffering Will Come in These Ten Ways

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Since 2001, the Bush Administration has invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, launched various bloody raids and/or drone attacks into various sovereign nations such as Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and God knows who else, and is supporting shadowy organizations, such as the PKK, who perpetrate terrorist attacks inside Iran. God knows what else the White House, Pentagon, CIA, Special Forces and Blackwater are up to, to name some of the lethal players on taxpayer payrolls or underwritten by taxpayer dollars. The common denominator in all this US-financed mayhem is that almost always, innocent civilians get killed.  

The dead as a result of the war in Iraq may be as high as one and a quarter million and I beleive at least in several hundreds of thousands, with over 4 million internally or externally exiled, not to mention an entire country suffering from trauma, sickness, malnutrition, vast unemployment and a toxic environment.

 

Similar catastrophes to the civilian population are unfolding in Afghanistan and creeping into Pakistan. We recurringly read about villages being bombed or wedding parties being strafed in the Afghan countryside, or Madrassas being blasted in the Pakistan agencies by drone missile attacks. The catastrophe in Somalia is also immense ever since the CIA and Pentagon aided the overthrow of its Islamist government back in 2006, as well as supporting the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia.

 

No matter how you cut it, our involvement in violent geopolitical actions has killed or harmed scores of innocent civilians. Yet the government, the media and politicians carry on as if this is just business as usual, as if these are just sterilized operating procedures as inconsequential as cutting out tumors or removing kidney stones. Are they inconsequential though? Is there such a thing as Karma? Is it possible that you actually do reap what you sow, even if you are a superpower? And the fact that the entire world is also experiencing economic nightmares perhaps infers that there is plently of bad Karma to go around for every country, not just our own.

Well, Gautama the Buddha had a few blunt things to say about the consequences of doing evil and harming the innocent, such as this, from verses 137 – 140, Chapter 10 of The Dhammapada, one of the key Buddhist scriptural texts: 

If one harms the innocent, suffering will come in these ten ways. He may suffer grief, infirmity, painful accident, serious illness, loss of mind, legal prosecution, fearful accusation, family bereavement, or financial loss; or his house may burn down, and after death he may be thrown into the fire of suffering. 

Now look around you at what is happening in America right now, with the country teetering on the brink of financial disaster and tens of thousands of Americans losing their homes or seeing them destroyed in record numbers by forest fires in the west or by hurricanes in the south; and with military personnel both in or returning from our wars in Afghanistan or Iraq suffering from high if not record rates of PTSD and suicide.

 

Are the negative events, systemic failures and various pathologies massively afflicting Americans right now at least partially the direct consequence of our government's actions that harm the innocent overseas (not to mention policies that harm the innocent within our borders)?  If the answer is yes, then carrying on business as usual in the new Obama Administration, recycling the faux War on Terror, bleeding other countries until they bend to our will, using proxies and technologies to attack other countries, and on and on, will only exacerbate the negative vortex we are experiencing. In other words, we are a part of the collateral damage that we euphemistically and callously try to dismiss with a shrug and a phrase.

 

Here are more words of wisdom from the Buddha for America as well as President-elect Barack Obama that will slowly pull us out of the vortex sucking us downward if we accept them: 

Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draw it. (ch. 1, v. 1, ibid.)

 

Let no one think lightly of evil and say to himself, "Sorrow will not come to me." Little by little a person becomes evil, as a water pot is filled by drops of water. Let no one think lightly of good and say to himself, "Joy will not come to me." Little by little a person becomes good, as a water pot is filled by drops of water. (ch. 9, v. 122 & 122, ibid.)

We would do well to meditate on these words.

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I am a student of history, religion, exoteric and esoteric, the Humanities in general and a tempered advocate for the ultimate manifestation of peace, justice and the unity of humankind through self-realization and mutual respect, although I am not (more...)
 
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