A poem by Brian Bilston recently featured on Facebook. Called "Refugees" it went like this:-
They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way
(now read from bottom to top)
Well, whatever is thought of that (and it first made me think of how we see things and how we all see differently, even though "samsara and nirvana are one" and we "all have Buddha Nature") I eventually zeroed in on the line "should life have dealt a different hand". Could there have ever been a different hand dealt? Various doctrines, beliefs, creeds all jostled for position. Karma and the words from the OT, "as you sow so shall you reap". Then, as usual with me, some words of Thomas Merton came to mind, from his "Raids on the Unspeakable", where he spoke of the deeper question of the nature of reality itself:-
the world of consistency is the world of justice.........
but justice is not the final word.........
mercy liberates from all the rigid and deterministic structures...............
Law is consistent. Grace is "inconsistent".
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| Consistency |
There was an English football manager, Glen Hoddle (known as Glenda by his detractors) who once got into hot water for suggesting that those born with physical defects were inheriting bad karma from a previous life. Sadly, this was a perfect example of mixing up various beliefs of "east" and "west" with a bit of New Age thrown in and coming up with some unpalatable nonsense. Anyway, Glen (or Glenda) got the sack and the world moved on.
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| Glen Hoddle |
At that time I was aware that karma was far more profound a doctrine, at least according to a few Suttas to be found in the Majjhima Nikaya and one or two other Buddhist texts. But now, I was given pause to consider just how mercy could cut across karma, interrupt the "reaping what we sow", enter any deterministic world and offer another perspective, another way of being and knowing.
Having considered, paused, I find little left to say. Pure acceptance, of others as well as oneself, is both Grace and Mercy. Anyone wishing to remain within a world of justice, of calculation, of judgement, can do so. After acceptance a degree of diversification can follow, but Mercy Rules OK. As the poet above, Brian Bilston, has written elsewhere......."amongst the rubble of reality were found traces of humanity and an understanding that stretches beyond borders."
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| Seeing/knowing with the eye of consistency - is there another way? |
Related Quotes:-
Karmic law is inconceivable
And only understood by the Omniscient
(Shantideva, The Bodhicharyavatara, Chapter 4, Verse 7)
For I am like a blind man who has found
A precious gem inside a heap of dust.
For so it is, by some strange chance,
That bodhichitta has been born in me.
(Shantideva, The Bodhicharyavatara, Chapter 3, Verse 28)
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