This story doesn't relate directly to Buddhism, but I think it is inspiring -- Rais Bhuiyan is a Muslim from Bangladesh with a degree in aeronautics who immigrated to the United States. Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he was working at a Dallas gas station when he was shot in the face by Mark Stroman, a white supremacist on a shooting spree.
Before shooting Bhuiyan, Stroman had killed two other men, one a Hindu from India, the other a Pakistani Muslim. Bhuiyan survived the shooting, but his face is disfigured even after several surgeries, and he has lost the use of one eye. He still has more than 35 pellets embedded in his face.
Stroman received the death penalty, and he is scheduled to be executed on July 20. But Rais Bhuiyan is trying to save Stroman's life. He is working with Anmesty International and Stroman's attorney to have the sentence changed to life in prison. Bhuiyan's website, World Without Hate, includes a petition one can sign on behalf of Stroman. Bhuiyan says also that the family of one other the other victims is supporting his cause.
Bhuiyan attributes his forgiveness of Stroman to his religion. Surely this is an example we would all do well to follow.
At the very least, I would think executions are a violation of the First Precept. I remember, several years ago, a young man convicted in Arizona of killing six Thai Buddhist monks, a nun, and two novices. The prosecutor sought the death penalty. Many American Buddhists, plus some of the families of the victims in Thailand, petitioned the court to spare the young man's life, in part to show respect to the monks he allegedly killed.
The judge did spare the convicted man's life, although this was mostly because he suspected the conviction might be overturned some day. And it was; an appeals court overturned the conviction on grounds that a confession appeared to be coerced, and a new trial has been ordered. The Supreme Court later refused to reverse the appeals court.
Murder and killing other people is horrendous! Take Charles Manson and then try to determine if the killings he perpetrated were justified. No, indeed they were not. But, every day we go to work, and pay Uncle Sam some of our hard earned money to kill innocent women and children half way around the world. Do we stop it? No. We justify it, saying it is the American way that we all voted for. Wrong. But no one will do anything about the wealthy and power mongers waging war all over the world so that our empire remains intact. We even dance in the streets when our special forces crash into a foreign land and into someone’s residence and shots a person in the head and kills them ( Osama Bin Laden ).
We have evolved slightly above the animals that crawl on all fours. I guess it will take another 1000 years before we learn to treat our fellow humans with love and respect, of which America is not doing, not even to its’ own citizens. Go figure.
A statistic that Eckhart Tolle quotes in The Power Of Now is that, in the 20th century alone, humans killed 100 million other humans. No other species on the planet comes even close to this kind of wanton violence against its own kind. Scary.
And yet, spiritual scriptures from a whole variety of traditions extol the human form, with its particular nervous system, as being especially suited to “waking up” to its own divinity — its Buddha Nature. Go figure.
“A statistic that Eckhart Tolle quotes in The Power Of Now is that, in the 20th century alone, humans killed 100 million other humans. No other species on the planet comes even close to this kind of wanton violence against its own kind. Scary.”
What is scary is that you do not know what you are talining about. Just to take ONE other species — fish!