You could say that Angulimala deserved to suffer, but the Buddha saved a lot of other people by showing him how to cure his suffering.

"You know the story about Angulimala who had killed 999 people and then, not long after the Buddha taught him, became an arahant. A lot of people like that story. It shows that no matter what your background, there’s hope.

But we have to remember that, at the time, there were a lot of people who didn’t like what had happened and were pretty upset. Here was Angulimala who had killed all these people and he was literally getting away with murder. You could say that he deserved to suffer, but the Buddha didn’t take that into consideration at all. He said, “Here’s a person who’s suffering really badly and his suffering is spilling out and affecting other people.” By curing Angulimala’s suffering, or showing him how to cure his suffering, he saved a lot of other people, too.

So if there’s the question of whether you deserve to be happy or not, you learn how to put that aside. Realize that that’s a non-issue. The issue is that you’ve got actions. The mind is an active principle."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "So Little Time" (Meditations8)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Two dangers whenever talking about awakening: impossibility and complacency

"Whenever talking about awakening, there are always two dangers. The first danger is thinking that awakening is so far away that you give up any hope of attaining it. The other danger comes from the fact that there are many stages of concentration that sound very similar to awakening, and if you attain one of those you may think that you’ve attained awakening when in fact you haven’t. You’re still stuck in a fabricated state. In both cases, the danger lies in giving up your pursuit of being more skillful in your actions. The path to the end of suffering exists, but you stop or turn around. One way to avoid these dangers begins with having a right understanding of both kamma and mindfulness." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Kamma & Mindfulness Together"
Read more

Fortunately we don’t all have to join in some enlightened society in order to be enlightened. It’s an individual quest. You focus on doing good where you can — both inside and out — and that becomes your strength.

"Learn how to develop as much goodness within yourself as you can, so that even though you have to be guarded in this world, you can treat people with goodwill [mettā] . The basic attitude of goodwill is that you wish them well — realizing that, in some cases, the best thing for you and that other person may be to stay away from each other. This realization comes, not from ill will, but from noticing that this relationship is not working out — it’s not going in the right direction. And fortunately, we don’t all have to join in some enlightened society in order to be enlightened. It’s an individual quest. And you have to face the fact that, with some people, you’re never going to find reconciliation. But you don’t get worked up over impossibilities. You focus on doing good where you can — both inside and out — and that becomes your strength." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Guarded"
Read more

You bring the mind to balance with a sense of well-being, a sense of completeness.

"All too often, there’s the idea that awakening comes by stringing yourself out until you reach the end of your rope, and then, in desperation, you go for awakening. Well, that’s not the pattern the Buddha set forth. You bring the mind to balance with a sense of well-being, a sense of completeness. That’s one of his words to describe awakening: completion. Everything comes to the culmination of its potential. In fact, that was his actual last word: achieve completion — in which the factors of the path are all fully developed and they all support one another." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Mindfulness & Effort"
Read more