I'm a writer, publishing both as SJ Rozan and, with Carlos Dews, as Sam Cabot. (I'm Sam, he's Cabot.) Here you can find links to my almost-daily blog posts, including the Saturday haiku I've been doing for years. BUT the blog itself has moved to my website. If you go on over there you can subscribe and you'll never miss a post. (Miss a post! A scary thought!) Also, I'll be teaching a writing workshop in Italy this summer -- come join us!
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Buddhists and Bombs
What I want, for the terrorists who bombed London, and Madrid, and Bali, and, of course, lower Manhattan, is for them to roast in hell. But it's not what I WANT to want. That's what they want for us, after all; they worship a god who loves to see people bleed and die for riding the bus to work. I don't want to be like them. And I don't believe in hell anyway, any more than I believe the victims of these sons of bitches are at peace in heaven now, looking benevolently down on us. They're just GONE.
I don't buy the whole afterlife thing. But if I did, the one I'd choose would be the Buddhist one. The central Buddhist belief is, there's suffering in this world. The way out is a cosmic game of chutes and ladders. You behave decently, thus working your way up through the animal kingdom, finally becoming human; then you work your way through as many human lifetimes as it takes to achieve perfect wisdom and compassion, and you can get out. At that point the cycle ends for you. No more returning to this world, so no more suffering.
The comfort of believing this is, these terrorists enthusiastically jumped down a chute, badly blowing their next lives. They'll come back as beef cattle or bait worms. They'll have to live very skillful cattle or worm lives to get a shot at human again, and it'll take quite awhile before they're anywhere near the top ladders, to the place where they can get out. They'll be suffering through many, many more lifetimes, and it's a fate they caused, a fate they chose.
The fact that I find comfort in that probably means a few dozen more lifetimes here for me, too: my wisdom and especially my compassion aren't what they ought to be. But the really good thing about this theory is, everyone does eventually make it out. Every lifetime, if you behave a little bit better, gives you a start for the next one at a slightly higher wisdom-and-compassion level, and sooner or later, you figure it out -- this is called enlightenment -- and you get to get off the carousel. So even these s.o.b.'s become decent human beings eventually, and then, genuinely good beings.
So no one has to roast in hell.
I wish I believed all this. It would be a very great comfort.
I don't buy the whole afterlife thing. But if I did, the one I'd choose would be the Buddhist one. The central Buddhist belief is, there's suffering in this world. The way out is a cosmic game of chutes and ladders. You behave decently, thus working your way up through the animal kingdom, finally becoming human; then you work your way through as many human lifetimes as it takes to achieve perfect wisdom and compassion, and you can get out. At that point the cycle ends for you. No more returning to this world, so no more suffering.
The comfort of believing this is, these terrorists enthusiastically jumped down a chute, badly blowing their next lives. They'll come back as beef cattle or bait worms. They'll have to live very skillful cattle or worm lives to get a shot at human again, and it'll take quite awhile before they're anywhere near the top ladders, to the place where they can get out. They'll be suffering through many, many more lifetimes, and it's a fate they caused, a fate they chose.
The fact that I find comfort in that probably means a few dozen more lifetimes here for me, too: my wisdom and especially my compassion aren't what they ought to be. But the really good thing about this theory is, everyone does eventually make it out. Every lifetime, if you behave a little bit better, gives you a start for the next one at a slightly higher wisdom-and-compassion level, and sooner or later, you figure it out -- this is called enlightenment -- and you get to get off the carousel. So even these s.o.b.'s become decent human beings eventually, and then, genuinely good beings.
So no one has to roast in hell.
I wish I believed all this. It would be a very great comfort.
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